Gaza: the grim reality of genocide
An injured child cries while receiving medical care at the Al-Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, following an Israeli strike, on 29 May 2025
David Keys writes in North East Bylines on 18 June 2025:
At least a quarter of a million Gazans are likely to face debilitating lifelong physical, mental or cognitive impairment as a result of Israel’s continuing war against Gaza.
Eight factors, rarely seen in such total combination in other war zones, are likely to make the long-term impact on Gazan health particularly severe:
Chronic malnutrition
Very high child bereavement levels
Constant and repeated evacuation and displacement
Very high intensity and length of bombardment
Extremely high levels of destruction
Unusually high levels of civilian deaths and injuries
Appalling levels of mental stress and trauma
Inability to escape
Psychologists, psychiatrists and neurologists fear that it is that almost unprecedented combination of factors that is likely to generate particularly serious long-term medical and social consequences.
The details of those eight factors are horrifying:
Malnutrition: A majority of Gazan children under the age of five are now malnourished – and at least 3,000 have now entered the potentially fatal severe stage – acute malnutrition. Many others have already died.
Child bereavement: Over 17,000 Gazan children have lost both parents as a result of Israel’s bombs and bullets – and over 23,000 have lost one parent.