Syria, Yemen Parents Shipping Kids To Gaza So NY Times Will Notice Their Deaths

In Gaza, at least if they die some tragic or criminal death the international media will pay attention, because Jews.

Gaza City, July 1- Families from elsewhere in the region have taken to paying human traffickers to smuggle children into this coastal territory, in the hopes that at least here, they stand a chance of Western media and NGOs caring that the children suffer or get killed.

Observers of migration patterns have discerned in recent months a trend involving parents in war-torn Yemen and Syria, among other places, hiring third parties to transport the parents’ children into the Gaza Strip through illicit tunnels via Egypt into Gaza, a place that, in contrast to the established practice anywhere else in the world, boasts a mainstream media presence ready to give front page-attention to child casualties of armed conflict. This way, the parents believe, their children have a shot at someone, somewhere, noticing them and calling attention to the injustice and suffering surrounding their tragic deaths, even if by the time the media do so it will be too late for those specific children.

“You’ll never see the New York Times put pictures of dead kids from Yemen or Syria on the front page,” explained analyst Sahar Bivnay-Adam. “And if you’re a resident of some godforsaken place such as Afghanistan, Nigeria, or, God help us, Congo? You’d be lucky if those deaths even get an article with a separate byline instead of some aggregated ‘world news briefs’ without so much as a photo or individual mention of any victims. What’s a parent supposed to do? Well, some of them have managed to scrimp and save enough to get their children to Gaza, where at least if they die some tragic or criminal death the international media will pay attention, because Jews.”

A Yemeni preteen who entered the Gaza Strip last week via a smuggling tunnel gave her name only as B. “It was a harrying trip,” she acknowledged. “I couldn’t tell whether the people ‘processing’ me were going to send me along, hold me for ransom to get more money from my poor parents, or just turn me into a sex slave and sell me to the highest bidder. At least the gang rapes didn’t kill me, which is more than I can say for some of the other kids who were part of the group. Now, because I’m here in Gaza, my death and suffering will be blamed on Israel, and the world will notice.”

A spokesman for the Hamas movement that governs Gaza indicated that B. will be drafted as a suicide bomber in the next round of violence with Israel.

Please support our work through Patreon.