On August 1st, the dusty, beloved, and historic Shikarpur, my city of pride and heritage, came alive. In scenes echoed across countries like Pakistan, India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Canada, the U.S., and beyond, children poured into schools after summer vacation, their faces gleaming with joy and anticipation. Rickshaws, motorcycles, and ching-chis buzzed through the lanes of Hathidar, Hazaridar, and Lakhidar, packed with school bags, lunchboxes, and innocent laughter. These radiant faces, brighter than the sun and the fourteenth moon, carried hope, curiosity, and dreams.
Our family’s little ones, Hiba, Hadia, Khadija, Prince Taimur, and Uneza Japani, joined millions across the globe, eager to resume journeys through math, science, literature, and history. Watching children, especially girls in colourful uniforms, rush to their morning assemblies, racing for the national anthem and prayer, was heartwarming. This yearly ritual of returning to school is more than tradition; it is a celebration of life, learning, and the future.
But my heart sinks as thoughts turn to a different land, torn by fire, fear, and hunger: Gaza.
While children worldwide embrace education, Gaza’s children are denied even the right to survive. Once full of life, Gaza now lies in smouldering ruins. Over 2.3 million people, including nearly a million children, remain trapped under brutal siege, bombardment, and starvation. Food, water, electricity, and medicine, basic necessities, have been cut off with deliberate cruelty. The UN has called it a “horror show.” Gaza today is not just a war zone; it is an engineered apocalypse.
Before October 7, 2023, Gaza’s streets, like Shikarpur’s today, buzzed with school preparations, shopping for textbooks, uniforms, pencils, and notebooks. But that Gaza is gone. What remains is the cruel silence of destroyed classrooms, blood-stained blackboards, and the shattered dreams of a generation.
More than 800,000 students have lost access to education. Two academic years and over 300 school days have been obliterated. According to Gaza’s Ministry of Education: 18,243 students killed, 928 teachers slain, 4,452 wounded, and hundreds detained or missing. Over 21,000 children are missing, more than 34,000 injured, with 15,000 permanently disabled, many losing limbs. Thousands of university students have lost their institutions. All of Gaza’s universities have been destroyed. UNRWA-run schools, once safe havens, are now makeshift shelters, and not immune from strikes. More than 6,000 attacks on educational institutions have been carried out.
This is not collateral damage. This is a deliberate war on education, on the minds, identity, and future of a people.
Come Eid or Muharram, bombs and bullets follow them everywhere. While children elsewhere buy Eid clothes and toys, Gaza’s children spend their days under fire, barefoot and hungry, searching for water and bread among rubble. Instead of sweets, they are fed with bullets. Instead of laughter, Gaza echoes with mourning.
The future torchbearers of Gaza have become the targets. Every day, on average, 58 children are killed. Since March 18, 2025, when Israel resumed intensified assaults, over 100 children have been killed or injured daily, reports the UN.
Instead of school bells, they hear air-raid sirens. Instead of reciting verses or equations, they whisper prayers for survival. Many have lost parents, limbs, and hope. They now dwell in bombed shelters and tents, suffering hunger, trauma, disease, and heat. Psychological scars run deep, and the destruction of education ensures generational devastation.
Where are the self-proclaimed defenders of human rights? Where is UNESCO, UNICEF, or Save the Children? Where is the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack? Where is the Safe Schools Declaration?
Why do Gaza’s schools remain targets? Why do shelters become graveyards? Why have repeated visits of U.S. officials to the Middle East, carried out with fanfare to restore peace, failed to stop the massacre of children and the annihilation of education? Gaza deserved urgent action to end this 22-month madness. Only lip service, only rhetoric for Palestinian children. Everything seems tactical, to drop their massacre off the agenda
The Zionist war machine is not simply targeting resistance; it is targeting the very idea of a Palestinian future. This is cowardice of the highest order: to wage war not on armies, but on children and their right to learn.
Children are not combatants. They are innocent seekers of knowledge, bearers of peace, and custodians of tomorrow. The obliteration of Gaza’s education system is a colossal crime against humanity.
No religion, no law, no civilisation can justify this. This war on children and education is not just an attack on Palestine; it is an attack on humanity itself. The holy books of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam speak of mercy, justice, and the pursuit of knowledge. How, then, can the torchbearers of these faiths condone such darkness? Let the people of Israel reflect: does education pose a threat, or is it fear of enlightenment that drives this savagery?
Let the global North, the Arab League, the OIC, the EU, and the UN lead the rebuilding of Gaza’s schools. Every bombed classroom must be rebuilt. As schools reopen in Pakistan and across the world, the joyous sights and sounds of eager learners give us hope. But in Gaza, that hope lies buried under ruins. Let us not ignore this monstrous disparity.
This is not just a war on Palestine, it is a war on truth, on light, on the spirit of learning. Education is not a privilege, it is a right. Children are not enemies, they are humanity’s greatest promise. Let the world wake up, before the last candle of knowledge is blown out in Gaza.
Qamer Soomro
The writer is a freelance columnist from Sindh.