FLASH
Shkruar nga Carlo Verdelli
Thousands of children killed or maimed, five million under the age of ten forced to move towards nothingness, one every ten seconds...
While all the wars in progress, from Ukraine to Iran, show no sign of ending, among those who are unrelated and yet die, besides civilians, are also children. Tens of thousands of children. More than 20 thousand in Gaza alone, and 107 more on the new front opened by Netanyahu in Lebanon. More than a thousand, in the attack and counterattack of the Tehran regime, in less than a month: another massacre of innocents that L'Osservatore Romano, the Pope's newspaper, has put on the front page with a photo of a space covered in bloody white sheets.
In the four years of resistance to Putin, according to Kiev's estimates, over 3,000 children were injured or killed, in addition to those abducted from their cities and "Russified." Moscow denies it. Tel Aviv denies it. The warring parties in the Persian Gulf currently do not provide data.
Our lack of attention increases with increasing distances. Since 2023, there is hell in Sudan, the largest humanitarian disaster in the world according to the UN. Thousands of children killed or maimed, five million under the age of ten forced to move towards nothingness, one every ten seconds.
The objection: collateral damage of any conflict at any time. True in part. It is permissible to note, along with an increase in neglect, also an increase in child deaths. As early as 2024, the United Nations pointed out that the 4,676 children killed on various fronts, plus 7,291 seriously injured, constituted the highest number ever recorded since the end of the Second World War. Today we have come a long way. And the total of March 2026 does not include the little ones on dinghies: the Mediterranean is confirmed as the deadliest migratory route in the world for minors, a mass grave with 3,500 missing or drowned, the equivalent of 140 school classes, between 2014 and 2024. But even by sea, these figures have already been exceeded. A few days ago, a boat sank near Lampedusa: 64 people were rescued, including the mother of one of the drowned, estimated to be between two and three years old.
Objection: but this is not a war, if they would stay in their country, etc. The problem is that the war is often in their country and they leave for this reason; and when they are caught again, if they do not die at sea, they end up in camps like the Libyan ones, which resemble other camps, with all the camps that degenerate humanity has produced and continues to produce. But for our blinded sensitivity, the issue is solved by blaming everyone: as if the children had not been on that raft, as if they had not been born in the Hamas tunnels, and endless other similar deplorables.
The only ones who deal with the children who survive, with their stuffed toys turned into rags like torn memories of perhaps a family, a home, a little brother, orphans in the fullest sense, are the humanitarian organizations, to which Trump has cut funding, going from a contribution of 72 billion dollars to a charity of 12 billion. In the Convention on the Rights of the Child, there is one that prevails above all: the right to life. After the right to development, to education, to non-discrimination have effectively been extinguished, even the main one has become a dead letter.
"Now the children sleep in the bed of Sand Creek," De André imagines in a song dedicated to an episode of the genocide of Native Americans by whites, who then, with the help of several propaganda films, managed to present the "Indians" as the bad guys.
Now many other children, every day, sleep forever. But in the time of Herod, which makes us insensitive to every atrocity committed against the most defenseless, we forget that under every white sheet, just as under every sea that swallows little bodies, there is a part of ourselves denied. Give your children a caress and tell them that we are denying that caress to the rest of their brothers, left to the mercy of wars, hunger and waves./Adapted from "Pamphlet" by "Corriere della Sera"
* Note : Herod was a cruel king. He ruled for nearly three decades, over 2,000 years ago. His kingdom was centered in Judea and included some of the surrounding areas. Herod is best remembered as a jealous murderer, who killed not only some of his own family but also defenseless young boys. Once, when astrologers from the East told him that a future king had been born, Herod told them to find him and then return to him. But when God warned the astrologers not to return, Herod ordered the killing of all the boys two years of age and under in Bethlehem, the town where the astrologers had found Jesus, and in the surrounding region. According to history, about 14,000 children were killed on Herod’s orders.
Kjo pjesa e fundit eshte e supozuar. Nuk ka asnje fakt qe provon se Herodi urdheroi vrasjen e femijeve!