{"id":130138,"date":"2019-04-01T12:01:38","date_gmt":"2019-04-01T11:01:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=130138"},"modified":"2019-03-28T11:28:54","modified_gmt":"2019-03-28T11:28:54","slug":"every-war-is-a-war-against-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/04\/every-war-is-a-war-against-children\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Every War Is a War against Children\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

We, in the United States, have yet to realize both the futility and immense consequences of war even as we develop, store, sell, and use hideous weapons. The number of children killed is rising.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

28 Mar 2019 – <\/em>At 9:30 in the morning of March 26, the entrance to a rural hospital in northwest Yemen, supported by Save the Children, was teeming as patients waited to be seen and employees arrived at work. Suddenly, missiles from an airstrike hit the hospital, killing seven people, four of them children.<\/p>\n

Jason Lee of Save the Children, told\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0that the\u00a0Saudi-led coalition<\/a>, now in its fifth year of waging war in Yemen, knew the coordinates of the hospital and should have been able to avoid the strike. He called what happened \u201ca gross violation of humanitarian law.\u201d<\/p>\n

The day before, Save the Children\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that air raids carried out by the Saudi-led coalition have killed at least 226 Yemeni children and injured 217 more in just the last twelve months. \u201cOf these children,\u201d the report noted, \u201c210 were inside or close to a house when their lives were torn apart by bombs that had been sold to the coalition by foreign governments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year, an analysis issued by Save the Children\u00a0estimated<\/a>\u00a0that 85,000 children under age five have likely died from starvation or disease since the Saudi-led coalition\u2019s 2015 escalation of the war in Yemen.<\/p>\n

\u201cChildren who die in this way suffer immensely as their vital organ functions slow down and eventually stop,\u201d\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0Tamer Kirolos, Save the Children\u2019s Country Director in Yemen. \u201cTheir immune systems are so weak they are more prone to infections with some too frail to even cry. Parents are having to witness their children wasting away, unable to do anything about it.\u201d Kirolos and others who have continuously reported on the war in Yemen believe these deaths are entirely preventable. They are demanding an immediate suspension of arms sales to all warring parties, an end to blockades preventing distribution of food, fuel and humanitarian aid and the application of full diplomatic pressure to end the war.<\/p>\n

The United States, a major supporter of the Saudi-led coalition, has itself been guilty of killing innocent patients and hospital workers by bombing a hospital. On October 3, 2015, U.S. airstrikes\u00a0destroyed<\/a>\u00a0a M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res (Doctors Without Borders) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing forty-two people. \u201cPatients burned in their beds,\u201d MSF reported, \u201cmedical staff were decapitated and lost limbs, and others were shot from the air while they fled the burning building.\u201d<\/p>\n

More recently, on March 23, 2019, eight children were among fourteen Afghan civilians\u00a0killed<\/a>\u00a0by a U.S. airstrike also near Kunduz.<\/p>\n

Atrocities of war accumulate, horrifically. We in the United States have yet to realize both the futility and immense consequences of war. We continue to develop, store, sell, and use hideous weapons. We rob ourselves and others of resources needed to meet human needs, including grappling with the terrifying realities of climate change.<\/p>\n

We should heed the words and actions of Eglantyne Jebb, who\u00a0founded<\/a>\u00a0Save the Children a century ago. Responding to the British post-war blockade of Germany and Eastern Europe, Jebb participated in a group attempting to deliver food and medical supplies to children who were starving.<\/p>\n

In London\u2019s Trafalgar Square, she distributed a leaflet showing the emaciated children and declaring: \u201cOur blockade has caused this, – millions of children are starving to death.\u201d She was arrested, tried, convicted, and fined. But the judge in the case was moved by her commitment to children and paid her fine. His generosity was Save the Children\u2019s first donation.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery war,\u201d said Jebb, \u201cis a war against children.\u201d<\/p>\n

_________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Kathy Kelly is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>,<\/em> an American peace activist, pacifist and author, one of the founding members of <\/em>Voices in the Wilderness, and currently a co-coordinator <\/em>Voices for Creative Nonviolence<\/a>. <\/em>Three times since 2000, she has been nominated for the <\/em>Nobel Peace Prize. As part of peace teamwork in several countries, she has traveled to Iraq twenty-six times, notably remaining in combat zones during the early days of both US-Iraq wars. Her recent travel has focused on Afghanistan and Gaza, along with domestic protests against U.S. drone policy. She has been arrested more than sixty times at home and abroad, and written of her experiences among targets of U.S. military bombardment and inmates of U.S. prisons. She lives in Chicago.<\/em> Kathy@vcnv.org<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

This article first appeared on the website of <\/em>The Progressive<\/a> Magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

28 Mar 2019 – We, in the United States, have yet to realize both the futility and immense consequences of war even as we develop, store, sell, and use hideous weapons. The number of children killed is rising.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":74231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}