The new report by the UN appointed Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory has revealed shocking details about Israeli attacks on Gaza and specifically the torture and killings of Palestinian children.

Several instances of children being shot, tortured and sexually abused have been recorded in the report. “This includes a girl who was stripped. So, you know, this public shaming, we call it public nudity. If you subject children to this kind of, it's actually a very deep psychological trauma,” Justice Srinivasan Muralidhar, who was the chairman of the Commission said in a podcast discussion with Sidharth Bhatia.

“In our report, We say that mental harm has become intergenerational, producing a distinctive occupied psyche in which the freedom to play, imagine, hope and develop an identity has been eroded,” he said.

“No Palestinian child has been able to have a formal education in the last three years. Where a child should be sitting in a classroom, the child is running around looking for firewood. Gaza city had the highest literacy rate even as recently as 2021 and yet you target a place like that, you destroy all its schools. The message is so clear.”

The Israeli government has issued an 18 page rebuttal of the report. “Israel says Hamas is using children as shields and that is something that we have missed. A 10-day-old baby breastfeeding on his mother is not involved in any hostility,” he said.

Justice Muralidhar stated that Israel was sent all the Commission’s reports and asked to comment, but never got a response. “We have absolutely nothing to gain by falsely accusing either the state of Israel or its soldiers.”

Speaking about India, he said, “We can't afford to keep silent. We have been in the forefront of many of the international human rights movements. The values of human dignity, human liberty, which also forms the fundamental constitutional values in our Indian constitution. So, we're not acting contrary to anything at all. When we stand up for the rights of the Palestinian people, particularly Palestinian children."

India has not backtracked from its official stance that it stands with the Palestinian people. And it stands with the two state solution. People should also realize, your viewers should realize that the origin, one origin of all of this is 1947, a UN resolution, which talks of the creation of two states, the State of Israel and the State of Palestine. India should seriously introspect and ask itself, with this level of evidence having come forth on the atrocities against Palestinian children, does India want to take a stand at all or not? This is a moment of reckoning.”

Joe Sacco is An internationally known cartoonist journalist famous for his books on Palestine and Gaza. His first book on India — The Once and Future Riot — was published last year, about the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013 between Jats and Muslims that ended in the death of 60 people and the displacement of 60000, mainly Muslims. The book was set to be sold from August onwards, but last week, the distributors Penguin Random House India stepped back from it. He got a five page list of queries from Penguin UK asking for clarifications and changes. “The main thing for me was changes that seemed like editorial changes they were asking for, which were removing quotes, removing quotes about public figures, removing quotes from a public figure I talked to, even to the extent of move this caption down the page. And I mean, there were like four or five things that were called requirements that I simply wasn't going to do,” Sacco said in a podcast conversation with Sidharth Bhatia.

Crucial elections will take place in West Bengal in two phases on April 23 and 29. Mamata Bannerjee’s Trinamool Congress has to fight anti-incumbency, because it has been in power since 2011, and the main challenger the Bharatiya Janata Party sees its best opportunity to win the state. This time, the Special Intensive Revision ordered by the Election Commission has also complicated matters since over 90 lakh voters have been struck off the rolls and between 30 and 34 lakh have appealed their removal. The Trinamool Congress and other opposition parties have said that the Election Commission is playing a partisan role and helping the BJP. “The Election commission is the key player in this election. It is election commission that has issued an ultimatum to the Trinamool Congress. It is the election commission that is taking the administration in their control,” said Snigdhendu Bhattacharya. In this election, it looks like Gyanesh Kumar has emerged as the face that wants the change to happen in Bengal. So that means Trinamool Congress, which is the main party in West Bengal and the other smaller opposition parties are fighting not the BJP so much as Gyanesh Kumar,” he said, in a podcast discussion with Sidharth Bhatia.