Gaza’s children bear the hidden cost of war

While the bombs fall on Gaza, the deepest wounds are carved into the minds of its children — shaping a future of fear, rage and loss, writes John Frew.

WAR AGAINST CHILDREN does not end with death. It continues in their minds.

The unseen casualties

While world leaders debate ceasefires and redraw maps, the most devastating consequences of the Gaza war are not in the rubble but in the children who survive it. According to the United Nations, children account for more than 40 per cent of all casualties in the current assault. By mid-2024, Save the Children estimated that 14,000 had been killed, 21,000 were missing and more than 17,000 were orphaned or left entirely alone in an active warzone.

These numbers are staggering. But they do not measure what cannot be counted: the trauma burned into the minds of the survivors. Gaza is not just losing lives. It is losing futures.

Even before this latest escalation, a 2020 study found that 53.5 per cent of Palestinian children suffered post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). After months of bombing, siege, starvation and displacement, that figure can only be higher. In truth, it is hard to imagine a child left untouched.

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What war does to a child’s brain

Childhood trauma is not just emotional; it is neurological. Dr Bruce Perry, one of the world’s foremost experts on developmental trauma, has shown that children raised in fear literally develop different brains.

The prefrontal cortex shrinks, weakening reasoning, empathy, and impulse control.
The amygdala enlarges, priming the brain for fear, mistrust and aggression.
The hippocampus deteriorates, damaging memory and learning.
Stress systems become deregulated, creating chronic anxiety, depression and volatility.

In short, war rewires children for survival, not for reflection or connection.

This is not just a humanitarian concern. It is a political one. Traumatised children are not merely tomorrow’s patients. They are tomorrow’s actors in the social and political theatre they inherit.

The psychological infrastructure of terror

This is how terrorism reproduces itself — not through ideology alone but through untreated trauma. A child who grows up orphaned, malnourished, abused and hunted will not emerge as a peaceful adult. For them, Hamas may not appear as a terrorist group but as the only force that offers dignity, revenge and a sense of belonging.

Israel’s declared aim of eliminating Hamas through overwhelming force is, in this light, self-defeating. You cannot bomb trauma out of a child. You can only embed it deeper. Every strike that collapses a building also collapses the fragile scaffolding of a child’s trust in the possibility of peace.

This is not security. It is the mass production of rage.

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Australia’s silence and double standards

Here is where Australia’s leaders cannot hide. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong have been quick to condemn Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians. Yet, they remain muted as Israeli bombs kill thousands of Palestinian children. They rush to sanction Moscow, but refuse to cut military or trade ties with Israel. They champion a “rules-based international order”, but look away when those rules are trampled by an ally.

At the United Nations, the Albanese Government has abstained or voted against resolutions calling for ceasefires, accountability and humanitarian protections. While Gazan children starve, our leaders express only “concern”, a diplomatic euphemism for inaction.

This hypocrisy is not lost on the world. To Ukrainians, we send weapons and aid. To Palestinians, we send silence. One set of children deserves protection; the other, apparently, can be buried under rubble.

A generational curse

Abuse of a single child is rightly called a crime against humanity. What, then, do we call the systemic destruction of a generation? To condemn children to grow up in an environment of permanent fear, deprivation and grief is not just an atrocity. It is the seeding of endless war.

The logic is brutal but simple: if you raise children in rubble, do not be surprised when they grow into rage.

And yet the responsibility does not end with those who drop the bombs or order the sieges. It also falls on the governments that enable, arm and excuse. Albanese and Wong cannot escape that responsibility. Nor can the public who look away. To pretend neutrality is to be complicit.

Choosing the next chapter

History is littered with the consequences of ignoring child trauma. The child soldiers of Sierra Leone, the orphans of Afghanistan, the dispossessed of Rwanda — every one of these stories warns us of what happens when the psychological cost of war is ignored.

Gaza’s children are not collateral damage. They are the next chapter. Whether that chapter is written in the language of revenge or reconciliation depends on the choices being made now: whether the world continues to build war or finally decides to rebuild hope.

Because one truth is unavoidable: children cannot recover in the rubble.

If Albanese and Wong cannot find their voices for Gaza’s children, history will record their silence alongside the rubble.

John Frew has worked in education for almost 50 years including as foundation principal at a secondary school for students with Conduct Disorder and Oppositional Disturbance.