Michael Klundt on children in Gaza: "They are being punished collectively"

Michael Klundt on children in Gaza: “They are being punished collectively”

[This interview posted on 10/19/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.telepolis.de/features/Michael-Klundt-ueber-Kinder-in-Gaza-Sie-werden-kollektiv-bestraft-9980680.html,]


Children in Gaza: NGOs and researchers warn of violations of the Convention on the Rights of the Child


Children in Gaza suffer from war and deprivation. Expert Michael Klundt sharply criticizes German support for Israel's policies. An interview with Telepolis.

Over a million minors in the Gaza Strip have been affected by the war. In an open letter, childhood researchers are calling for a ceasefire and the restoration of humanitarian aid. Michael Klundt, a childhood researcher, also recently spoke out in a letter to Rainer Forst. In the Telepolis interview, he spoke about violations of children's rights, black-and-white thinking, collective punishment, the trivialization of the Nazi era and the loyalty of the German government to the US government.
Gaza: Children's rights severely violated

As a childhood researcher, you primarily study poverty and social inequality in Germany. Why are you now commenting on an international conflict?

Klundt: Children's rights are part of the universality of human rights. The fight against child poverty and for children's rights must never be viewed only nationally. In the disaster in the Gaza Strip, we see the worst forms of child poverty and children's rights violations through hunger, thirst, lack of shelter, displacement, drug withdrawal and bombing against more than a million children. I think it is necessary for childhood scientists to speak out against this. Thousands of childhood scientists worldwide have already spoken out on this issue in public letters, statements and studies.

In an open letter dated September 20, 2024, you criticize Jürgen Habermas, Nicole Deitelhoff, Klaus Günther and Rainer Forst, who in a statement dated November 13, 2023 express their solidarity with Israel in the Gaza war in principle. What do you criticize about this?

Klundt: Even Adorno Prize winner Seyla Benhabib is now convinced that Israel's “in principle justified counterattack” in Gaza “has resulted in genocidal war crimes on the Israeli side.” In my letter, I reproach Forst for invoking Adorno, of all people, in his response to an open letter from Adam Tooze, Samuel Moyn and Amia Srinivasan, when Adorno was someone who wanted to avoid black-and-white thinking. But that is precisely what Forst and the others did when they justified Israel's counterattack “in principle” and only described the assumption of genocidal intentions as “devious”. It does not help the cause of the state and the fight against anti-Semitism to encourage friends instead of falling into their arms with helpful criticism when they are about to respond to a terrible crime with an even more terrible one! The “principled retaliation” has not improved the security of Israel, the civilian population, children and hostages. I hope that Forst and many others will soon undergo a learning process like the one at Benhabib.
The explosive power of two atomic bombs

▶ What key figures are important from your perspective to shed light on the Gaza war?

Klundt: At the beginning of 2024, around 335,000 children under five still lived in Gaza. The explosive power of the bombs dropped on Gaza was already the equivalent of two atomic bombs at the beginning of November 2023. Meanwhile, the UN General Assembly, the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court have already gone further on the basis of evidence. Even President Jitzchak Herzog said: “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.” Accordingly, everyone is guilty and must be punished. This includes children, the one million minors who did not collaborate with Hamas. All of this can be read and proven, including in the South African indictment before the ICJ. The inhabitants of Gaza, including children, are being collectively punished for the attacks of October 7: with hunger, thirst, lack of water and medication, bombs and missiles, death and mass expulsion. This is hardly discussed in this country in debates about child poverty and rights.

What role do you think the United Nations, especially the Convention on the Rights of the Child and UNICEF, have in finding a peaceful solution to this war?

Klundt: Like all states except the USA, Israel has also ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and is legally obliged to implement it. This is not happening in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and now also in Lebanon. It is problematic that Israel has declared UN Secretary-General Guterres persona non grata and refused him entry. Prime Minister Netanyahu has called the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court “one of the great anti-Semites of modern times”, while the Israeli ambassador to the UN has shredded the UN Charter, portraying the entire UN General Assembly of all states as a bunch of Jew-haters. This blocks international attempts at resolution and relief and trivializes the Holocaust as well as historical and current anti-Semitism. In addition to tens of thousands of women and children, hundreds of UN employees, doctors and journalists were killed. The fact that of 13,000 UNWRA employees, twelve people allegedly confessed under torture to involvement in the attacks of October 7, 2023, in no way justifies systematic bombings of UN institutions and UNICEF food convoys.
Demand human rights, comply with UN resolutions

What do you, as a child scientist, demand from German politics and science?

Klundt: The UN resolutions on the ceasefire and the release of hostages must be supported. With their vetoes in the UN Security Council and their weapons, the US administration – and the German government in its blind loyalty – have made Netanyahu's wars possible. Politics and science should break the silence, name double standards in international relations, demand the universality of human and children's rights, stop arms deliveries to war zones and end the denial of genocidal war crimes. Despite a few rays of hope – such as the statement by teachers at Berlin universities on how to deal with pro-Palestinian protests on campus in a civilized manner and the statement on the actions of the Federal Minister of Education against said teachers – it still looks like widespread complicity between the prevailing science and politics, while war critics are threatened with defamation and harsh repression.

Benjamin Roth spoke with Michael Klundt, who works as a professor of child policy at the Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences. His books “Kinder in Armut” (Children in Poverty) and “Kinderrechte in Corona-Zeiten” (Children's Rights in the Time of Corona) were recently published by Herder and Beltz. He also supports the statement by German social scientists: “Germany's reactions to the Gaza war do not correspond to its own principles”.