Killing Palestinian children rises to an industrial level

Of all the many crimes for which Israel has gained notoriety, the killing of Palestinian children ranks among the most heinous. Time has not erased the memories of the long list of innocents killed in the most ghoulish manner. They include the 2000 killing of 12-year-old Muhammad Al-Durra cowering in his father’s arms, and the 2024 killing of five-year-old Hind Rajab who pleaded for help while surrounded by the bodies of her slain relatives in a bullet-ridden car. They are just a small tip of the iceberg.

Since the beginning of this year, 2025, Israel’s occupation army has taken its sadistic campaign to an industrial level. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) confirmed that at least one child in Gaza was killed every hour. Throughout the last year and a half, an average of 30 children were killed every day. Most recent estimates show that Israel has killed at least 17,400 children, of these 15,600 have been identified. Added to these are the many thousands who remain buried under the rubble of their destroyed homes, schools and shelters. After resuming its aggression in March 2025, more than 300 children have been killed in Gaza according to UNICEF.

More than anything else, these figures underscore a premeditated policy of extermination carried out by Israel against the most vulnerable segment of Gaza’s population. Official records indicate that children make up more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million population. The present generation have never experienced freedom; all they have ever known was subjugation and intermittent wars by a military occupation.

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On the whole, life before October 7 was no bed of roses for Palestinians. For those in Gaza, it was always hellish and brutal. Seventeen years of blockade had left their youth with no other option but to resist and act in ways that would awaken the conscience of the world from its self-induced slumber. October 7 was, therefore, the inevitable consequence of years of deprivation. Notwithstanding, Israel’s Western backers all feigned surprise with the launch of Operation Al Aqsa Flood although they were warned time and again that the situation could not continue.

As early as 2003, Avraham Burg – a former speaker of Israel’s Knesset [1999-2003] and former chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel – warned: “Israel, having ceased to care about the children of the Palestinians, should not be surprised when they come washed in hatred and blow themselves up in the centres of Israeli escapism.”

More thoughtfully he addedL “We could kill a thousand ringleaders a day and nothing will be solved, because the leaders come up from below – from the wells of hatred and anger, from the “infrastructures” of injustice and moral corruption.”

Surely, Benyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s incumbent prime minister, would have heard or read these words. He was minister of finance at the time and had just completed his first premiership in 1999. No other politician has dominated the Israeli political landscape for as long as Netanyahu. His entire career was dedicated to the achievement of Jewish supremacy and the total suppression of Palestinian rights.

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Everything comes to an end and Netanyahu’s tyranny is now approaching its end, not in a blaze of glory but in a morass of ignominy and disgrace. Wanted abroad as an indicted war criminal, he is, likewise, dragged through his domestic courts charged for everything from fraud to bribery and breach of trust. Whether he is convicted in the Hague or at home, he is likely to serve a long time behind bars.

Perhaps the only saving grace for the Israeli prime minister is to fulfil his promise of absolute victory in Gaza, even if it involves the collective punishment of its civilian population and continued slaughter of its children. Culpability for these crimes will not, however, disappear with the passage of time. All those who planned, aided and abetted in the execution of these crimes will also have their day of reckoning.

And spare a thought for the survivors of the Gaza genocide. Surely, they will not be sending roses to the occupier or singing its praises. Like those who passed before them, they will continue to resist the occupation that enabled its soldiers to compete and profit from the killing of Palestinian children.

As for the self-righteous leaders of the “Free World” who regularly queue up to condemn the killing of Ukrainian children, they must ask themselves did you not see or hear about the massacre of Palestinian children in their occupied land. Where were you?

“It is this depraved hypocrisy,” which according to Yitzhak Frankenthal, an Israeli father, that pushes the Palestinians to resist the occupation. It is “our double standard that allows us to boast the highest military ethics, while the same military slays innocent children.”

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.