Please, stop for the sake of children

"Please stop! I ask you with all my heart, it's time to stop. Stop, please! Brothers and sisters, never war, never war! I am thinking above all of children, who are deprived of the hope of a worthwhile life, of a future ... Dead children, injured children, mutilated children, orphaned children, children whose toys are things left over from war, children who can't smile any more."

These are the words of Pope Francis, speaking at Saint Peter's Square on July 27; the Pope's voice seemed to crack with emotion as he broke off from his written script to appeal for peace as Israel and Hamas dilly-dallied over proposals for a humanitarian truce in the Gaza Strip before Eid. But Pope Francis's desperate call seems to have been paid little heed in a world that seems to have gone astray.

Why should the world be bothered about 1,600 Palestinians killed in Gaza in the Israeli offensive against Hamas since July 8? It has more important matters to attend to, the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 for example, because that is where the real action is. And why not? The Ukraine crisis is a de facto standoff between the world's only superpower and a country that seems opposed to everything that the superpower represents. The battle for supremacy is likely to be decided on the burnt soils of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine where the MH17 crashed, not in the poor and dilapidated homes bombed in Gaza.