Why Does Israel Wage War on Palestinian Children?

They walk barefoot through rubble—children carrying children, tiny arms wrapped protectively around younger siblings, desperately clinging to what remains of their families.

In Gaza, there is no safety, no silence, no pause—only constant motion: fleeing, digging, fleeing again. Bombs chase them across the strip, tanks lurk in alleys, drones hover overhead, watching, ready to strike.

We’ve seen their faces, some smeared with ash, too stunned to cry; others screaming through the dust, calling out names—names whose owners no longer answer. Children utterly alone, wandering among graves.

Many no longer have names, just markings—a number or scribbled sign—drawn on their arms so someone might identify them if they perish.

And still, they are hunted.

Earlier this month, before dawn broke, nearly two hundred children were killed in a coordinated barrage of Israeli airstrikes. They weren’t caught in crossfire; they didn’t die by accident. They were sleeping in their homes, in tents, wrapped in blankets beneath roofs that quickly collapsed upon them.

Asked about the massacre, Israeli ambassador to Britain Tzipi Hotovely neither flinched nor apologized nor expressed regret. She did not even utter the word “children.” Instead, she repeated familiar lines about Hamas, human shields, and self-defense.

A Strategy of Concealment

Inside Israel, the rhetoric was worse. Victims were described as “terrorists eliminated.” No names or ages mentioned. Israeli journalist Orly Noy remarked, “The media adopted the claim that there are no innocents in Gaza.”

Such language has become routine, “mobilized so Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the army can continue genocide.” This is no linguistic oversight—it’s a calculated strategy of concealment.

Yet, the world has seen the small bodies counted one by one. Since October 2023, more than 18,000 children have died in Gaza, and many more remain buried beneath rubble.

These aren’t accidents but part of a systematic strategy.

Starvation is another siege. Last year, UNICEF announced that one in three children under two in northern Gaza suffered severe malnutrition—a startling escalation. In Khan Yunis, 28% of children faced starvation, and over 10% were on the brink of death due to emaciation. Bellies swell, limbs shrink, hunger digs its claws while world leaders debate “humanitarian corridors.”

When disease strikes, there are no hospitals, no medicine, no clean water. Gaza’s children are bombed, starved, and their bodies left untreated.

According to an article published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet last year, Gaza had one toilet per 220 people and one shower per 4,500 people. Disease has become a new weapon, with hundreds of thousands suffering severe respiratory infections and diarrhea rampant among children under five.

Survivors frequently lose limbs; over ten children undergo amputations daily. In dark rooms, without anesthesia, surgeons amputate shattered limbs under flashlight illumination.

Gaza currently holds the world’s highest proportion of children with amputated limbs relative to its population. What type of warfare produces a generation of legless children? What kind of country wages such a war and calls it self-defense?

A new acronym now circulates in Gaza’s hospitals: WCNSF (Wounded Child with No Surviving Family). Hurriedly noted on the records of orphans pulled from rubble—burned, bloodied, alone. No surviving relatives remain to identify them.

Viewing Them as Threats

While children are buried and torn apart, they are also silenced and cornered in the occupied West Bank.

Every year, between 500 and 700 Palestinian children—some as young as twelve—are arrested and brought before Israeli military courts, typically charged with stone-throwing.

Dragged from their homes at night, blindfolded and gagged, interrogated without parents or lawyers present, beaten, threatened, and forced into signing confessions in Hebrew—a language they don’t understand.

Last month, 14-year-old Mu’een Ghassan Fahd Salahat became the youngest Palestinian placed under administrative detention without charges or trial, his detention renewed based on secret evidence inaccessible to him or his attorney.

This isn’t exceptional; it’s standard practice. Between the start of the Second Intifada and 2015 alone, over 13,000 Palestinian children were detained by Israeli forces.

The killing of children never ceases. According to Defense for Children International Palestine, at least 2,427 Palestinian children were killed by Israeli forces between the Second Intifada and mid-2024, excluding those in Gaza since October 7, 2023. The killing continues for decades at checkpoints, camps, and cities. Such systematic violence can’t simply be termed collateral damage; it is deliberate policy.

The brutality extends beyond physical violence into language.

In late 2023, during a hostage exchange, Palestinian prisoners exchanged included minors. Yet, BBC and even The Guardian described these minors not as “children” but as “teenagers” or “individuals aged 18 or under,” an intentional softening of language designed to erase sympathy. Stripping them of childhood also strips away innocence, allowing their cages to remain locked.

This isn’t linguistic neglect; it’s ideological strategy viewing Palestinian children as threats, not victims. If they’re not children, killing them isn’t a horrific crime.

Decades of Erasure

This practice isn’t recent; it’s decades-old.

During the First Intifada (1987-1993), Palestinian children revolted. Israeli Defense Minister at the time, Yitzhak Rabin, ordered soldiers to break their bones—a command brutally carried out, captured in images of children having their limbs shattered by soldiers.

Today, the same logic applies, with rockets and white phosphorus replacing sticks, and mass amputations replacing broken bones, aimed at crippling the future.

This ugly legacy was epitomized by Muhammad Al-Durra’s killing in 2000, captured on camera as Israeli snipers shot him beside his pleading father. Despite Israel’s denial and manipulation, the truth stood stark: a child’s execution witnessed globally.

Fourteen-year-old Faris Odeh, standing alone against an Israeli tank, stone in hand, symbolizes this brutal reality. Days later, Faris was shot dead, yet his image endures.

From Deir Yassin (1948), Bahr El-Baqar school in Egypt (1970), to Qana in Lebanon (2006), targeting children remains a long-standing Israeli doctrine.

War on Continuity

Even in “peaceful” moments, killings persist. In 2015, settlers burned the Dawabsheh family’s West Bank home, killing infant Ali. Israelis later celebrated this atrocity publicly.

Today, Israeli politicians and rabbis openly label Palestinian children as enemies, even urging their killing. Netanyahu invoked biblical Amalekites to frame child killings as divine obligation.

A UN child rights official described Gaza’s child deaths as “almost unprecedented historically,” yet the world watches the small bodies pile up.

This genocide isn’t merely numerical but intentional, stripping survivors of childhood. Over 80% of Gaza’s schools are damaged or destroyed; playgrounds reduced to rubble, football fields bombed.

Still, Palestinian children endure, smiling amidst tears, playing amidst ghosts, determined to embrace life.

Golda Meir famously said: “The old will die, and the young will forget.” But Palestinian children haven’t forgotten, inheriting keys, memories, and the right of return.

That’s why Israel seeks their elimination, viewing Palestinian children as its greatest threat.

For as long as there are children, Palestine lives.