Charita Goshay: Kids always bear the brunt of adults' failures

The conflict between Israeli Jews and Hamas is a Gordian Knot that has defied time and diplomacy.

It's a dilemma made even worse by those who have something to gain by the absence of a solution.

We're constantly being told we should fear artificial intelligence when it is clear that the biggest threat to humankind remains us humans.

There are certain things that occur in this very divided and contentious world of ours which don't need to be debated. There are moments which need no interpretation because there is none to be had. They don't require hand-wringing or hair-splitting, or to be spun into a whataboutism.

No one can possibly be OK with kids dying because adults can't sort it out.

It has triggered violence that has become like a virus. Last week, a 6-year-old in suburban Chicago was stabbed to death, simply for being Muslim. In retaliation, two innocent people in Belgium — completely unconnected to the crime — were shot and killed by a Muslim extremist, who in turn was killed by police.

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You can support the Palestinians' bid for autonomy and still agree that terrorists slaughtering kids is the wrong way to go about it. Murdering Jewish toddlers wasn't justified when Hitler did it 80 years ago, and it isn't defensible now.

In its original 1988 charter, Hamas justifies violence as a means to transform Palestine/Israel into an Islamic state, but that strategy has only served to endanger ordinary Palestinian families who are just trying to survive.

Israel, on the other hand, made the huge mistake of reelecting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who by all accounts, downplayed warnings of an impending attack because he's been preoccupied with dismantling the courts and fighting off corruption charges.

Netanyahu, who has thwarted any attempts at a two-state solution, insists on building Jewish settlements on land Israel seized during the Six-Day War in 1967, knowing full well it antagonizes and enrages the Palestinians who have occupied it for generations. In 2004, the United Nations' International Court of Justice published an opinion that the settlements were illegal under international law.

Like a Greek chorus, history reminds us over and over that it is the world's children who suffer for our sins.

Of the Palestinians who have been killed since Oct. 7, an estimated 1,000 of them have been children.

The news that more than 11,000 children in Yemen have died there since 2015 because of conflict, with another 2 million on the brink of starvation, barely elicits a news brief. Approximately 20% of the world's children go to bed hungry on a planet capable of feeding us all. Desperation leads them into doomed lives as criminals, terrorists, beggars, child soldiers, child brides, sex slaves and literal slaves.

Even in so-called advanced countries, children beset by poverty, gun violence and domestic violence are honestly expected to compete toe-to-toe with those whose lives have never experienced a moment of upheaval. Yet, even the most fortunate of children carry the worry of mass shootings, online bullying and the pressures of trying to be perfect.

The children who survive the Israel-Hamas war will emerge with their adulthoods warped by it, whereupon one of two things will happen: Either they will give into their bitterness and continue to feed the beast, or they will throw down their arms and declare that they've had it with the blood and loss and tears.

Once upon a time, every person wreaking havoc was a sweet-faced, trusting child who was betrayed by some adult who poisoned his or her heart with a fear and loathing of others.

Every day that we remake children into our image, the world becomes a more dangerous place.

Charita M. Goshay is a Canton Repository staff writer and member of the editorial board. Reach her at 330-580-8313 or charita.goshay@cantonrep.com. On Twitter: @cgoshayREP

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Charita Goshay: Children suffer the most from adults' failures