2 weeks Ago By Qamer Soomro
A pall of gloom and despondency hangs over Gaza on Eid, smothering what should be a celebration of joy, exuberance and excitement. Mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers endure fasting in the most trying conditions on Earth—their sehr and iftar seasoned not with dates and laughter, but with blood and tears. The air trembles with the ever-present fear and uncertainty of sniper fire, airstrikes, and precision attacks on homes reduced to rubble.
Even makeshift shelters, flimsy shields against annihilation, offer no respite. Gaza, today is a live prison. Densely populated Gaza has been turned into rows of rubble and dust, It’s people counting breaths between bombardments, mourning premature deaths under skies choked with smoke and grief.
To live here is to exist in a slaughterhouse where death follows like a shadow; where securing a loaf of bread or a drop of water becomes a gamble with fate. Elsewhere in the Muslim world, Eid unfolds in kaleidoscopes of joy: children clasp Eidi gifts, swing in sunlit gardens, and demand their favorite dishes with innocent audacity. But in Gaza, Eid’s rituals lie buried beneath rubble.
Before October 7, 2023, markets like Al-Ramal and Al-Seha buzzed with life and activity as families shopped for festivities. Today, these streets are graveyards of memory. No child here dreams of new clothes, shoes or the savory aroma of ‘Sumaqiyya’ simmering in kitchens.
Instead, young souls wander ruins, their laughter replaced by the wails of mothers clutching shattered bodies. For them, Eid is not a feast but a dirge—two consecutive years of celebrations drowned in bullets and screams. The statistics are a litany of horror: 18,000 children killed, 21,000 missing under rubble, 34,000 injured, and 15,000 maimed for life.
A child is slaughtered every 45 minutes—30 each day for 535 days. These numbers are not abstractions. They are girls who once braided their hair for school, boys who sketched dreams of becoming doctors, classrooms that rang with debates about stars and stories.
Gaza’s 12 universities lie in ruins; 88,000 students have had their futures erased. Not one of UNRWA’s 200 schools remains functional. Over 6,000 attacks on education have turned blackboards to ashes and libraries to dust.
This is not collateral damage—it is a systematic war on knowledge, a crusade to extinguish the light of learning. Arrogant and power drunk Israel shattering the fragile ceasefire on March 18, 2025, let loose a reign of terror killing more than 400 innocent civilians, children and women over a single night. Zionist warlords, emboldened by Trump’s green light for genocide, continue to rain fire on Gaza with renewed ferocity.
The same “civilized” world that mobilized billions for Ukraine averts its eyes as Palestinian children scavenge for water in sweltering heat, their bodies stalked by epidemics and hunger. Where are UNESCO’s “safe schools”? Where is UNICEF’s promise of childhood? Why did Antony Blinken’s 11 Middle East forays yield nothing but empty rhetoric? The hypocrisy is laid bare: when the victims are Palestinian, even democracy and civil liberties’s loudest champions fall silent. The question is no longer how this happened but why we allow it to continue.
Over 62,000 Palestinians are dead—18,000 of them children—yet the world’s “human rights” architects keep on watching with criminal apathy, drafting hollow resolutions. Gaza’s traumatized children deserve more than fleeting pity. They deserve rebuilt schools, unbroken access to learning, and the right to chase balloons instead of fleeing tanks.
They deserve an Eid unmarred by the stench of death. This is not just Palestine’s crisis—it is humanity’s reckoning. If we let Gaza’s children become ghosts of indifference, we surrender our own claim to civilization.
The time for per formative outrage is over. The world must act: halt the weapons shipments, sanction the architects of annihilation, and demand accountability for every stolen dream. The world must assert itself, at the very least, to stop this madness on Eid days and give Palestinian children respite from the fear and ordeal of relentless bombings.
Let them play with their peers on Eid days on sands without the fear and chaos of explosions and killing air strikes. Let them have eternal peace and this and the next Eid in Gaza dawn with books, not bombs; with swings, not sniper fire. For in their survival, Gaza’s children hold a mirror to our collective soul—and what stares back will define us for generations.
Qamer Soomro The writer is a freelance columnist from Sindh..
