Not All Children Woke Up This Eid: Gaza’s Grief and Our Government’s Shame

Child lays next to his drawn mum one last time.

Across Australia, and around the world, Muslims have come together in prayer, celebration, and family. Eid is a time of joy. A time of reflection. A time of gratitude. Children are dressed in new clothes, parents exchange gifts, homes fill with laughter, and mosques echo with the words “Taqabbal Allah minna wa minkum.”

But while our cities come alive with festivity, a very different scene is playing out in Gaza.

There, children are not waking up to Eid sweets and hugs from their parents. They’re waking up in tents, hospitals, or not waking up at all. Some are lying under rubble. Some are etched into the walls of broken homes, their photos pinned next to bullet holes and bomb scars. Some children in Gaza—those lucky enough to survive—draw images of their mothers in the dirt just to remember what it felt like to sleep beside them.

This is not Eid. This is survival. And it is happening while our government remains complicit through silence.

As we sit at dining tables with overflowing plates, Palestinian families break their fasts with stale bread or not at all. As our children run through parks, giggling, thousands of Palestinian children spend the day searching for water, shelter, or the familiar faces of loved ones now gone.

Many of them have no homes left.

Many of them have no families left.

And yet, here in Australia, the government offers nothing but hollow statements, if any at all. No condemnation of the Israeli military’s indiscriminate bombings. No sanctions. No calls for accountability. No grief. No recognition. Just quiet political diplomacy, while entire generations are erased.

The same government that rushes to make statements on distant conflicts is curiously mute when it comes to the daily, brutal, and deliberate killing of Palestinians—children, women, the elderly. Civilians. Human beings.

Where is the Australian conscience?

How many more videos of bleeding children, collapsed buildings, and weeping fathers must we scroll past before someone in Parliament admits: this is not a “conflict.” This is an extermination.

And still, the Australian Government continue their cowardly balancing act—vague calls for “restraint,” tepid support for a ceasefire only when politically convenient, and a refusal to hold Israel to account. Instead, Australia continues military partnerships, economic cooperation, and diplomatic shielding at international forums.

All while Palestinian blood soaks the earth.

All while Eid passes over the ashes of those who will never celebrate it again.

This Eid, millions of Muslims feel the ache of a broken Ummah. Some of us are praying. Some are crying. But all of us are watching—watching the betrayal of those in power who claim to uphold human rights while ignoring genocide in real time.

We are told to celebrate Eid. But how do we celebrate when Gaza’s children spend it burying their parents?

How do we rejoice when mothers cling to the last shirt their child wore before being blown apart?

How do we move on when fathers search bombed-out ruins, hoping to find the tiny bodies of their sons and daughters?

We cannot.

We must not.

To the Australian Government:

Your silence is not neutral.

It is violent.

It is complicit.

It is shameful.

You are accountable for every moment you’ve chosen diplomacy over dignity.

For every dollar sent to support weapons over aid.

For every child who has died while you refused to even say their name.

This Eid, we ask not for pity. We demand justice.

Stop hiding behind vague politics. Stand on the right side of history.

Recognise the human cost of your inaction.

Recognise Palestine.

Recognise the children who will never see another Eid.

Because they were children.

Not terrorists.

Not statistics.

Just kids.

And you let them die.