Child beauty pageants are the epiphany of over-parenting, which most of us would gasp upon. And yet, children are being projected online, by their parents-but under the pretence of love, acceptance and adoration. What happens when they no longer meet the mark?
Over-parenting, an easy mistake many of us could make whilst bringing up our children. Living in the 21st century puts pressure on us all, and that includes our children. Take school for instance, we attend school and by the time we are 10 years of age-the comparison between you and a school friend is hard to ignore.
Who Are You In Relation to Them?
When we are growing up and learning, it is a rational and some might say-a vital part of growing up. We experience ourselves in relation to others and recognise ourselves in others. Where this is an enjoyable experience, it can also be daunting and threatening. It is called social comparison theory, which can either motivate or de-motivate. It can either make you up your game, or chastise yourself for not doing better.
‘Struth’, the complexities of being’
The problem with making comparisons in adolescence is that the rational brain has not yet developed, and therefore it is difficult to make balanced judgements. This is not necessarily in relation to only yourself, but also in relation to others. Living in today’s society only confounds this further when the brain is continually bombarded with ‘other people’ and their supposed perfections, via social media.
And It Doesn’t Stop at Adolescence
We may benefit from the experience and wisdom of age-but it certainly does not vanquish doubt or insecurity. Social comparison is a natural process when we are getting to know someone, and a safeguard, as well as an education. We have to be able to trust the person before us, and so we must understand first who they are. Normally, we do this from our own experience, and therefore we look for our own selves in another.
Although all we may see is:
‘what we would like to be’ instead.
With all this self-comparison surrounding us, is it any wonder we turn to our children and prepare them for this upcoming onslaught. The pre-millenial generation did not grow up with computers or social media, they have discovered this in their adulthood. Where this has always been a fact of life, it is now more physical than ever in the daily feeds that are hard to get away from.
Neuroticism In The Pre-Millennial Generation
This, perhaps for the pre-millennial generation is more alarming. Certainly, it is the pre-millennials who have taken up Facebook as a daily habit. Where millennials seem to have deserted it and moved over to Instagram, the pre-millennials are using it as a child parade-I have never seen so many pictures of people’s children. It is the new accepted form of kid pageants…
“you know those hideous American spectacles; where parents dress their children up asbeauty queens”.
We are literally surrounded by affirmations left, right and centre from friend and foe. And most of these affirmations are now in relation to their children, since pre-millennials are now the ones taking up the news feed…with their children.
Research has in fact found-those sensitive to the social media of others, and active participants in the demoralising aspect of social comparison, exhibit neurotic behaviour. They found neurotic behaviour, was a precursor in motivating a tendency towards over-emphasising one’s profile and status on Facebook. A type of narcissism, because it is motivated by the need to be above others, rather than to be accepted by them.
Facebook practically breeds the neurotic mother.
So, my thinking is: have pre-millennials birthed their own narcissism in the idealisation of their children on Facebook? And what an outlet Facebook is.
What Does This Do To Children?
As someone who has spent a lot of time with children, I can tell you: the over-parenting, or the over-expectations of children, will-in the end, either turn them into fellow narcissists, or make them run the other direction. It is emotional abuse in its true from, but often goes overlooked and undiscovered. A lot of children are suffering from this these days, because in one instance-the world is tough and competitive, and in another-they are not receiving the kind of attention they need.
Instead of love being the foundation of a child’s upbringing-money, status and power become the preferred threshold.
And yet, mothers parading their children at child beauty pageants may only be admired by onlookers.
‘How they must love their girls!’
One of the mother’s of a child pageant contestant remarked:
“I’m a perfectionist-I have to get it right”
(in conversation with Sky News)
This behaviour, although extreme-shows a mother living her life through her child. All the regrets and dashed dreams, can be re-born again.
The over-personification of children is introducing the world of adulthood at far too quick an age. Where many proud parents will be happily sharing a big part of their lives online, these are often images and descriptions, which only seek to idealise their child over another.
‘Kayla came first in gymnastics…we are so proud’ And so follows perfect ballerina esque photo after photo. Where ‘Kayla’ may adore gymnastics, and respectfully her parents ought to be proud-why does there seem to be a price tag attached to it? Aren’t parents always ‘proud’ of their children? And why are we being bombarded with so many adolescent children-still in single digits?
Young girls love to dress up, I did too-still do, but my mother didn’t put me on display or idealise my status within a group. I wasn’t pampered as a child and I wasn’t the princess. I largely grew up unassuming and approached those topics in adulthood, rather than childhood, because that is where it is meant to be explored.
It means, even though I have an idea of who I am, it has been birthed from my own self-discovery and not via someone else. Think mothers and daughters in tow at the supermarket-in matching outfits, and Kayla is only aged 4. When you decide a child’s destiny-you are suppressing a child’s development.
What happens when little Tilly doesn’t grow up to be the apple of her mother’s eye?
She becomes ostracised. Emotional abuse at the ‘heart’ of the perfect family.
As the world turns its gaze toward the upcoming Gaza peace moot scheduled in Sharm el-Sheikh, anticipation mixes with skepticism. Delegations from more than 25 nations, including Egypt, Qatar, Indonesia, Pakistan, and the United States, are expected to participate. The summit’s stated goal is to chart a post-war roadmap for Gaza: one that ensures reconstruction, stability, and long-term governance. Yet, beneath the diplomatic smiles lies a deeper unease. Will this summit bring justice, or simply repackage occupation in the language of peace?
While Egypt positions itself as a mediator and the United States attempts to portray itself as a peace broker, many in the Muslim world view this as an exercise in image management. For Gazans who have endured months of devastation, the word “peace” feels hollow when their children are still being buried beneath rubble.
The International Stabilization Force: A New Guardian or Another Overseer?
Central to the summit’s agenda is the proposed International Stabilization Force (ISF). It is a multinational security body meant to take charge of Gaza once Israeli troops withdraw. According to policy outlines discussed at the Council on Foreign Relations, the ISF would be composed of troops from Muslim-majority countries such as Egypt, Indonesia, and Turkey, supported logistically by the U.S. and possibly NATO allies.
Its mission is to oversee security, prevent rearmament, and assist in rebuilding civilian police institutions. Yet this concept immediately triggers questions of legitimacy and control. Who will the ISF answer to, whether it be the United Nations, the Arab League, or Washington? And will it protect Gazans or impose an externally dictated order?
Critics warn that such a force could serve as a buffer between Israel and Gaza rather than a guarantor of Palestinian sovereignty. A security expert quoted, “If the ISF’s mandate comes from Western powers, it may enforce stability at the cost of freedom.”
Gaza’s Sovereignty Between Protection and Control
The idea of international troops in Gaza is not new. Similar arrangements in Lebanon and Bosnia offered mixed results when peacekeeping often turned into passive observation, and local populations remained powerless. For Gazans, the fear is that the ISF might become an instrument to monitor them rather than protect them.
While Israel seeks guarantees that Hamas will not regain control, Palestinians demand something far simpler: the right to self-govern without occupation or military oversight. Many analysts argue that unless the ISF’s command structure includes Palestinian representation, it risks deepening mistrust.
Furthermore, there are legal and ethical dilemmas. If Israeli forces withdraw but still control Gaza’s airspace and borders through the ISF, can Gaza truly be called free? The world has seen this model before, which is an illusion of autonomy wrapped in the language of international cooperation.
The Politics Behind Peace: Competing Interests
Every participating nation arrives with its own agenda. For example, Egypt, leading the ISF, offers regional prestige. For Qatar and Indonesia, participation reinforces solidarity with Palestinians. For the United States, it is a strategic opportunity to maintain influence over the post-war narrative. Yet, for Gaza, each external interest risks turning the strip into a geopolitical chessboard.
Observers note that the absence of any confirmed Israeli participation in the summit is telling. It suggests that while plans are made for Gaza’s future, the voices of those who live there remain marginalized. Without Gazan and broader Palestinian leadership at the table, the summit risks becoming an exercise in deciding the fate of a people without their consent.
Reconstruction and Responsibility: The Road Ahead
Rebuilding Gaza will require an estimated $70 billion, according to updated UN and World Bank figures. Roads, hospitals, power grids, and schools must be reconstructed almost from scratch. The ISF, if deployed, will play a role in securing aid routes and ensuring humanitarian access, but security alone will not heal Gaza. Without justice, accountability, and economic sovereignty, reconstruction will be little more than rebuilding the cage.
Experts emphasize that any real peace must involve lifting the blockade, restoring trade access, and giving Palestinians control over their borders and ports. Without these measures, even billions in reconstruction funds will fail to bring lasting stability.
The Moral Imperative
The peace summit in Egypt and the proposed International Stabilization Force are being presented as symbols of hope. However, hope without accountability is fragile. If the world truly wants to guard Gaza’s future, it must begin by addressing the root cause of its suffering, which is occupation, displacement, and systemic denial of human rights.
True peace cannot be imposed, but it must be built on justice. For Gazans, peace is not about foreign soldiers on their streets. It’s about waking up without fear, owning their land, and rebuilding their lives with dignity. The question that remains is whether the world will finally allow them that chance.
When a fragile truce was declared a few days ago, a brief wave of hope washed over Gaza. Families thought they might finally rebuild their shattered homes, search for missing relatives, and sleep without the thunder of jets. However, within days, Israeli warplanes were once again striking the besieged strip. The so-called ceasefire, brokered with international backing, proved to be another chapter in a series of broken promises and shattered faith.
Israel claimed its latest strikes were a “response” to alleged violations by Hamas. Yet, on the ground, the victims were overwhelmingly civilians. Gaza’s health authorities confirmed more than a hundred people killed in the first hours of renewed bombardment. Most of them are women and children. Hospitals, already operating on the brink of collapse, struggled to treat the flood of casualties amid power shortages and dwindling medical supplies.
The truce, meant to bring calm, instead became a cruel illusion. The hum of drones returned, the fear crept back, and families once again fled for survival through rubble-strewn streets. International media outlets described scenes of panic as people searched for shelter, knowing there was none.
Bombardment Under a Banner of Peace
Each new airstrike tears away the thin veil of diplomacy that labels this as a truce. Residential blocks in Khan Younis and Gaza City were flattened, as eyewitnesses described entire families buried under rubble. Aid convoys waiting at Rafah were delayed yet again, leaving tens of thousands of displaced families without food or shelter. Even temporary medical camps reported running out of anesthesia and blood supplies as wounded civilians poured in.
For many Gazans, this ceasefire was never about peace. It was a pause for breath, which means the one that Israel chose to weaponize. As one humanitarian worker told, “Every time they say peace, we prepare for more funerals.” The despair among civilians is palpable, as they question whether the world even listens anymore.
This renewed round of bombings underlines a haunting reality that every so-called truce has become another opportunity for Israel to reposition militarily while Gaza’s people pay with their lives.
Truce Without Trust: The Myth of Protection
The fragility of the ceasefire exposes an uncomfortable truth that there is no enforcement mechanism strong enough to hold Israel accountable. Western governments condemned the bombing with soft statements but continued supplying military aid. The United States, which once called for restraint, quietly approved another arms shipment days before the strikes resumed.
This moral contradiction fuels Gaza’s anguish. Washington preaches human rights yet funds the very machinery that violates them. The European Union speaks of international law but rarely acts when those laws are broken. For ordinary Palestinians, the message is clear that their lives are negotiable, their suffering expendable in geopolitical bargains.
Human rights analysts argue that without credible monitoring, ceasefires will remain political performances rather than pathways to peace. As one UN official said, “If a truce allows bombing to continue, it is not a truce but just a theater.”
The Humanitarian Fallout: Life Amid Rubble
The humanitarian picture is grim. The United Nations estimates over 1.7 million Gazans are internally displaced, living in makeshift tents, classrooms, or under broken walls. Clean water remains scarce, fuel is nearly exhausted, and disease spreads faster than aid. Children draw pictures of bombs instead of butterflies while mothers ration bread to feed hungry infants.
Entire neighborhoods lie in ruins while their residents wait for food deliveries that rarely arrive. The World Food Programme reports that over 90% of Gaza’s population faces acute food insecurity. Hospitals are short on insulin, cancer medicine, and even basic painkillers. In some areas, people boil seawater to drink. Aid agencies have warned that if the siege continues, famine could arrive before winter.
Yet trucks full of aid remain parked just across the border, which is a cruel reminder of political paralysis and global indifference.
Legal and Moral Accountability
Under international law, targeting civilians during a ceasefire violates the Geneva Conventions. Still, Israel acts with impunity, shielded by its Western allies. Human rights groups have repeatedly called for independent investigations, but efforts stall at the UN due to American vetoes. The International Criminal Court’s pending case on alleged war crimes in Gaza remains stalled by diplomatic pressure.
For the people of Gaza, these violations are not abstract. They are lived experiences with the sound of collapsing roofs, the dust in the lungs, the endless funerals of neighbors and friends. Each airstrike deepens a collective trauma that future generations will inherit.
International experts now warn that without accountability, the world risks normalizing war crimes. As Amnesty International stated, “A ceasefire without justice is a countdown to the next tragedy.”
What Lies Ahead
As diplomats gather to discuss the next phase of Gaza’s future, the ground reality remains unchanged. The truce is more fragile than ever, and the people it was meant to protect are once again paying the price. Unless the international community enforces accountability and demands a genuine end to hostilities, this cycle will repeat.
A ceasefire should mean safety, not survival between strikes. For Gaza’s people, peace cannot come from pauses in bombing, but it must come from the world’s moral awakening to their right to live, rebuild, and breathe free. The global community must decide whether it stands for human life or for silence in the face of genocide.
Gaza’s skyline has vanished under intense smoke, while its streets, once filled with life, now echo with silence and grief. Amid this devastation, Israel has chosen to open another front, and this time not with missiles, but with geography. The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, has recently advanced two bills that aim to formally annex large parts of the occupied West Bank. It is an act of political conquest, while on the other hand, Gaza’s children are buried under rubble.
This is not a coincidence but a continuity. As Gaza suffers from genocide, Israel is redrawing borders to make that erasure permanent.
A Legislative Land Grab
Recently, Israel’s parliament approved the first readings of two annexation bills. The first extends Israeli civil law to all West Bank settlements, which is a territory occupied since 1967 and recognized internationally as Palestinian land. When it comes to the second bill, it targets Ma’ale Adumim, a massive settlement east of Jerusalem that splits the West Bank in half, severing its north from its south.
Although the votes were close, with one passing 25–24 and the other 31–9, their meaning was profound. As per the reports, both bills were introduced while U.S. Vice President JD Vance was visiting Israel, symbolizing open defiance of Washington’s diplomacy. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hesitated to endorse them publicly, but pressure from his far-right allies, led by Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, is relentless. Their ideology is clear: no Palestine, no partition, and hence no peace.
Gaza’s Agony: A Genocide in Real Time
While politicians in Jerusalem debate annexation, Gaza’s population fights to survive. The UN Commission of Inquiry has declared Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide, which is a deliberate, systematic, and aimed effort at destroying a people. Till now, more than 67,000 Palestinians have died. Thousands have been displaced, and entire neighborhoods lie flattened. Hospitals function without power while aid convoys are bombed before reaching the hungry.
The International Court of Justice ordered Israel in January 2024 to prevent acts of genocide and ensure humanitarian access. None of those orders was respected. Moreover, the siege tightened, and starvation was made a weapon. Against this backdrop, annexation of the West Bank reads not as policy, but as a strategy that seems to be the second half of a single campaign to erase Palestine from existence.
Illegality Beyond Dispute
When International Law is brought into the limelight, Israel’s annexation efforts are null and void. Even the ICJ’s 2024 advisory opinion confirmed that Israel’s occupation and settlement expansion violate the Fourth Geneva Convention. The United Nations has repeatedly reaffirmed that any attempt to acquire land by force is illegal. States are required not to recognize or assist such measures.
Yet, Israel continues to act with impunity. Roads, checkpoints, and segregated zones have already turned the West Bank into an archipelago of isolated enclaves. The annexation of Ma’ale Adumim would cement that reality, rendering a future Palestinian state geographically impossible. As it was observed,
“Israel no longer hides its intent, and the map of occupation is clearly being turned into a map of sovereignty.”
Washington’s response has been familiar: sharp words, soft hands. Vice President Vance called the Knesset vote an “insult,” with a warning that it endangered the fragile Gaza ceasefire framework. Yet, U.S. military aid, which is nearly $3.8 billion annually, continues without condition. American arms still supply Israeli jets, and U.S. vetoes still block UN resolutions calling for accountability.
This pattern of contradiction has defined U.S.-Israel relations for decades, including public condemnation and private protection. Israel acts knowing that Washington’s rebukes will never reach the language of sanctions. It is diplomacy without deterrence, and therefore, carte blanche.
The Ceasefire Framework
As Gaza starves, diplomats continue to negotiate the truce. According to reports, the ceasefire plan includes a phased release of Israeli hostages, the freeing of about 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, and gradual Israeli troop withdrawals from urban centers. However, each new bulldozer digging into West Bank soil makes these efforts meaningless.
How can peace talks survive when one side expands the very occupation at their root? How can trust grow when homes are demolished under the shadow of negotiation tents? Consequently, the annexation vote mocks every word written in ceasefire communiqués.
What Lies Ahead
Inside Israel, Netanyahu faces a dangerous balancing act. His far-right allies threaten to topple his coalition if he slows annexation. Western allies warn of isolation if he proceeds. The prime minister’s hesitation is tactical, not moral. Whether annexation happens now or later, the machinery of occupation keeps grinding forward.
Internationally, legal pressure is rising but somehow easing, especially after the announcement of the so-called “truce”. The UN Human Rights Council urges accountability, while the European governments debate sanctions against settlers and arms-export suspensions. However, power still shields Israel from the consequences of law. The ICJ’s rulings carry moral weight, yet enforcement remains elusive. Until action matches outrage, international law will remain a promise unfulfilled.
Annexation during genocide is the moment when the world’s excuses run out. Law, morality, and history converge here. If the international community turns away again, the phrase “never again” will lose its meaning forever. And in the dust of Gaza and the stones of the West Bank, humanity itself will stand accused.
