<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<div dir="ltr">
<div dir="ltr">
<div id="gmail-toolbar" class="gmail-toolbar-container"> </div>
<div class="gmail-container" lang="en" dir="ltr">
<div
class="gmail-header gmail-reader-header gmail-reader-show-element"> <a
class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain"
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/why-israel-wants-kill-palestinian-children-gaza"
moz-do-not-send="true">middleeasteye.net</a>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Why Israel wants to kill the
children of Gaza</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Linah
Alsaafin</div>
<div class="gmail-meta-data">
<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time">July 17, 2025</div>
</div>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="gmail-content">
<div
class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element">
<div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page">
<div>
<p><img width="520" height="292"
src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/styles/max_2600x2600/public/images-story/000_66TC868%281%29.jpg.jpg?itok=r0sens39"
alt="Palestinian children queue for hot food distributed by a charity kitchen at the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, 15 July 2025 (Eyad Baba/AFP)"><br>
</p>
<p><font size="1">Palestinian children queue for hot
food distributed by a charity kitchen at the
Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, 15 July
2025 (Eyad Baba/AFP)</font></p>
<p>The western-backed <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">Israeli</a> genocide in the
<a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/israel-war-gaza"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Gaza Strip</a>
has entered its deadliest phase, and the world
continues to slumber on.</p>
<p>This summer has marked an uptick in the daily
killing of <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/palestine" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">Palestinians</a> - an
average of 100 lives massacred each day, most of
them already contending with the pangs of hunger
amid a man-made mass starvation campaign.</p>
<p>The small coastal territory, blockaded by <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/egypt" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">Egypt</a> and Israel with
the complicity of the international community, is
now the most dangerous place in the world for
children, who make up about half the population.</p>
<p>As early as 31 October 2023, Unicef <a
href="https://www.khaleejtimes.com/world/mena/gaza-now-a-graveyard-for-thousands-of-children-says-un"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">described</a>
Gaza as "a graveyard for children, a living hell for
everyone else". This has been <a
href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-chief-says-gaza-becoming-graveyard-children-2023-11-06/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">echoed</a>
by numerous UN officials, most recently last Friday
by the UN refugee agency chief, Philippe Lazzarini,
who <a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/11/the-graveyard-of-children-unrwa-chief-slams-israels-slaughter-in-gaza"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">warned</a>
of Israel's "Machiavellian scheme to kill" in Gaza.</p>
<p>Missiles and shrapnel rip through the fragile
bodies of children in open marketplaces, at water
collection points, at aid distribution sites, and
while waiting in line for nutritional supplements.</p>
<p>Children are bombed inside displacement tents,
burned alive in school shelters and buried beneath
the rubble of their homes. Even before they are
born, foetuses are blown from their mothers' wombs
by the force of bombs.</p>
<p>Last week, the decapitated body of eight-month-old
foetus <a
href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DL5PMaDIfgn/?hl=en&img_index=2"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Saeed Samer
al-Laqqa</a> - documented in footage widely shared
on social media - failed to register even a mention
in mainstream media.</p>
<div>
<p>His absence from the headlines is part of the
institutional silence that has sustained Israel's
genocidal project for more than 21 months.</p>
<p>
Even when their deaths are acknowledged, the
children of Gaza are reduced to little more than
casualty figures.</p>
<p>
But their killing has never been collateral
damage: it is a deliberate effort to extinguish a
future Israel fears: a generation of Palestinians
born under siege, whose survival, memory, and
innate human desire for freedom and dignity
threaten the foundations of a settler-colonial
state built on their erasure.</p>
</div>
<h3>Prison to martyrdom</h3>
<p>On 12 July, <a
href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israel-kills-world-s-youngest-freed-prisoner-in-gaza-airstrike/3629139"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Youssef
al-Zaq</a>, barely 17 years old, was killed
alongside his niece and nephew, Maria and Tamim, in
an Israeli attack on their building in Gaza City.</p>
<p>Youssef, once known as the youngest Palestinian
hostage, was born in an Israeli prison in 2008.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>'Youssef's birth and story exposed the
occupation. That's why they didn't want him to
stay alive'</p>
<p><em>- Ahmed Sahmoud, Youssef's cousin</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>His mother, Fatema al-Zaq, was arrested in 2007
while attempting to cross into the occupied West
Bank and, during the early stages of her captivity,
learned she was two months pregnant.</p>
<p>"The Israeli occupation tortured his mother so that
she would miscarry," Youssef's cousin Ahmed Sahmoud
told me.</p>
<p>Fatema gave birth to a healthy baby boy, but her
arms and legs were shackled during labour, and she
received minimal medical care from Israeli prison
guards.</p>
<p>Youssef spent the first 20 months of his life
behind bars. In 2009, he and his mother, along with
19 other Palestinian female detainees, were released
in exchange for a video showing Israeli hostage
Gilad Shalit alive.</p>
<p>"There was a lot of attention on Youssef after he
came home," said Sahmoud, a journalist who escaped
Gaza last year and now lives in Egypt.</p>
<p>"The al-Zaq family called him the flower of the
family. He was a quiet boy, and very much loved in
his neighbourhood," he added.</p>
<p>The youngest of eight siblings, Youssef was
determined to live a full life and longed to travel.</p>
<p>But Sahmoud said the family believes Youssef was
deliberately targeted by Israel: "Youssef's birth
and story exposed the occupation. That's why they
didn't want him to stay alive," his cousin said,
citing Israel's history of targeting and killing
former Palestinian detainees.</p>
<p>"The Israelis resented the fact that Youssef, who
was born in their prison, was released. He
represented a victory over them, a new lease of
life.</p>
<p>"I can't explain to you the special place Youssef
held in the family," Sahmoud said. "His martyrdom
left a massive hole. The Zionist occupation army
snuffed out the family's source of light."</p>
<h3>Dehumanising children</h3>
<p>Youssef's story should not be the quintessential
tale of childhood in Gaza. He was born in a prison
and lived the rest of his life in an open-air cage.</p>
<p>He witnessed multiple Israeli assaults. He lived
through nearly two years of genocide. He died
hungry, sharing a single piece of bread with his
niece and nephew. He was pulled from the rubble of
his home.</p>
<div>
<p>Death has become a grim constant over the past 21
months. More than 17,000 children have been
killed, according to the Gaza health ministry - a
severe undercount that excludes the missing and
the untold thousands still buried under rubble.</p>
<p>
Even so, that number means an average of 30
children have been killed by Israel every day
since 7 October 2023 - equivalent to one
classroom, or one child <a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2025/3/26/gazas-stolen-childhood-the-thousands-of-children-israel-killed"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">every 45
minutes</a>.</p>
</div>
<p>How does one begin to explain, let alone
comprehend, Israel's disproportionate and deliberate
targeting of children?</p>
<p>With its advanced weaponry, surveillance and
control over the population registry, these killings
are not accidental - they are codified into policy.</p>
<p>From the earliest days of this genocide, Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoked the
biblical story of <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMVs7akyMh0"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Amalek</a>
to justify mass killing in Gaza, including children.</p>
<div>
<p>In Gaza, children are learning the alphabet
through grief and hunger</p>
<p>Ghada Abu Muaileq</p>
<p><a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-children-are-learning-alphabet-through-grief-and-hunger"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Read More
»</a>
</p>
</div>
<p>The killing and maiming of children - still a <a
href="https://childrenandarmedconflict.un.org/six-grave-violations/killing-and-maiming/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">war crime </a>under
international law - has been given full legitimacy,
and even <a
href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/jewish-rabbi-encourages-killing-gazans-even-children/3159767"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">encouragement</a>,
through the rulings of Zionist rabbis and the
rhetoric of Israeli government ministers.</p>
<p>With such dehumanising language and fear of the
other, these figures openly call for the
extermination of Palestinian children and "the <a
href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/jewish-rabbi-encourages-killing-gazans-even-children/3159767"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">women</a>
who produce terrorists".</p>
<p>They <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuC2C4VYuvg"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">proclaim</a>
that "there are no innocents in Gaza", that every
Palestinian child is "already a <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuC2C4VYuvg"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">terrorist</a>
from the moment of his birth".</p>
<p>To that end, Israel has been consistent. Since the
settler colony's founding in 1948, the ethnic
cleansing of Palestinians has never stopped.
Genocide is no longer just an intention; it is
official strategy. "<a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/netanyahu-wants-thin-out-gazas-population-pushing-them-sea-report"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Thinning
out</a>" Gaza's population is now formal
government policy.</p>
<h3>Social collapse</h3>
<p>Why the children of Gaza? One million children in
Gaza represent a growing <a
href="https://www.npr.org/2023/10/19/1206479861/israel-gaza-hamas-children-population-war-palestinians"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">youth
population</a> - a demographic challenge to an
Israeli society that knows, deep down, it does not
belong to a land it has drenched in Palestinian
blood.</p>
<p>Otherwise, why would it persist in violent
subjugation and state murder? What kind of twisted
psyche boasts of killing children and sees it as a
divine right? Who celebrates the murder of innocents
and sees their existence as a threat?</p>
<p>Targeting children serves another nefarious
purpose: a calculated assault on the social
reproduction of an indigenous society.</p>
<div>
<p><a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-waging-war-palestinian-children-why#autoplay"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"><img
src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/styles/read_more/public/video_thumbnails/cSz4vKRagwg.jpg.webp?itok=t56zV6W5"
width="400" height="250" alt=""
class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"
moz-do-not-send="true">
</a></p>
<p>Why Israel is waging war on Palestinian children</p>
<p><a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-waging-war-palestinian-children-why#autoplay"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Read More
»</a>
</p>
</div>
<p>The goal is to collapse communal bonds and societal
structures. There is the fast genocide of bombs and
missiles, and the slow genocide of starvation, mass
internment, and the decimation of <a
href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/01/1158741" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">healthcare</a> - creating a
petri dish of disease where children are the most
vulnerable.</p>
<p>From this chaos - designed to break the spirit of
liberation and justice - colonial powers exploit the
vacuum to <a
href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-announces-new-west-bank-settlements-despite-sanctions-threat-2025-05-29/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">expand</a>
illegal settlements and <a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/3/6/israel-is-pillaging-not-just-gazas-cities-but-also-its-waters"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">plunder</a>
natural resources.</p>
<p>During the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, the <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/uk"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">British</a>
confined 1.5 million Kenyans in detention camps and
tightly controlled villages rife with disease,
starvation, torture, rape and murder.</p>
<p>"Only by detaining nearly the entire Kikuyu
population of 1.5 million people and physically and
psychologically atomising its men, women and
children could colonial authority be restored and
the civilising mission reinstated," Harvard
historian <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/aug/18/uncovering-truth-british-empire-caroline-elkins-mau-mau"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Caroline
Elkins</a> wrote.</p>
<p>In <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/algeria" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">Algeria</a>, too, in
response to anti-colonial resistance from the FLN,
the French forcibly rounded up thousands of peasants
at gunpoint and relocated them to guarded
settlements known as camps de regroupement.</p>
<p>The aim was to drain public support from the FLN by
isolating the rural population, controlling their
movements, and restricting access to resources.</p>
<p>By the end of the <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/france-algeria-israel-settler-colonies-arab-world"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Algerian
War</a> in 1962, some two million Algerians were
confined to these camps, suffering from disease and
malnutrition.</p>
<h3>Future freedom fighters</h3>
<p>From the British to the French to the Israelis,
settler-colonial tactics have followed the same
brutal logic - even as their scale and cruelty have
evolved.</p>
<p>Across time and geography, the settler-colonial
project has relied not only on physical conquest but
also on the erasure of identity, the fragmentation
of community, and the suppression of future
resistance.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>To a violent colonising power, a child with a
book, a dream, or a memory is more dangerous than
any weapon</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Again I ask: why the children of Gaza?</p>
<p>They represent exactly that future - one rooted in
knowledge and historical memory.</p>
<p>In a society with one of the <a
href="https://cupblog.org/2023/08/23/why-palestinians-are-known-as-the-worlds-best-educated-refugeesanne-irfan/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">highest
literacy rates</a> in the region, despite decades
of siege and bombardment, educated youth are not
only symbols of survival; they are agents of
liberation.</p>
<p>To a violent colonising power, a child with a book,
a dream, or a memory is more dangerous than any
weapon.</p>
<p>Targeting children, then, is not collateral damage.
It is strategy. It is part of a broader campaign to
destroy hope, overwrite the future, and maintain the
machinery of occupation through fear and erasure.</p>
<p><em>The views expressed in this article belong to
the author and do not necessarily reflect the
editorial policy of Middle East Eye</em>.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
<br>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>