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defense for children international palestine
Palestinians Mourn Elderly Nonviolent Activist Beaten to Death by IDF in West Bank
Israeli forces also killed a Palestinian boy on his way home from school in the occupied territory.
Oct 08, 2024
Palestinians are mourning the death of a 66-year-old nonviolent activist who was brutally beaten by Israeli troops in the illegally occupied West Bank on Monday.
Middle East Monitor reported that Israeli occupation forces raided the home of Ziad Abu Ehlayyel in Dura, near Hebron, in an effort to arrest one of his sons. The soldiers beat the elderly man until he lost consciousness. He was rushed to Dura Hospital, where he passed away a short time later.
Abu Ehlayyel was a well-known community activist with a history of confronting—and being assaulted by—Israeli troops. The Palestine Chronicle published a video montage of some of his best-known encounters with occupation forces.
Quds News Network, the source of much of the Chronicle's video, also published footage showing Abu Ehlayyel stepping in front of Israeli troops as they're firing on Palestinian protesters.
"We don't want you to shoot anyone, we don't want you to kill anyone; this is a nonviolent procession, why do you keep shooting at them?" Abu Ehlayyel asks the soldiers in the video. "Why don't you stop your settlers from attacking us?"
Also on Monday, Israeli occupation forces shot and killed Hatem Ghaith, who according to reports was either 12 or 13 years old, during a raid in the village of Kafr Aqab, north of Jerusalem.
Defense for Children International-Palestine said Ghaith was on his way home from school when Israeli occupation forces raided the nearby Qalandia refugee camp. Israeli troops then opened fire on a group of young Palestinians, shooting Ghaith in the stomach from a distance of approximately 100-150 feet. The boy was rushed to Ramallah Governmental Hospital, where he was pronounced dead after unsuccessful resuscitation attempts.
Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, the world's attention has largely been focused on Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed or wounded around 150,000 Palestinians and displaced, starved, or sickened millions more in a war for which the U.S.-backed country is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice.
Meanwhile, attacks by Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 695 Palestinians—more than 1 in 5 of whom are children—in the West Bank, according to the most recent figures from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Last week, at least 18 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike targeting the Tulkarem refugee camp. An Israeli military spokesperson said the target of the strike was a Hamas official in charge of infrastructure in the camp.
OCHA has also documented more than 1,400 attacks by Jewish settler-colonists against Palestinians in the West Bank, as well as many
attacks on civilian infrastructure and agriculture including the olive trees upon which many Palestinians rely for their livelihoods.
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'Calculated Brutality': Israelis Killing a Palestinian Child Every 2 Days in Occupied West Bank
"The international community must act urgently to enact an arms embargo and sanctions to protect Palestinian children's lives," said one campaigner.
Sep 09, 2024
Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed more than 140 Palestinian children in the illegally occupied West Bank since last October—a rate of one child every two days—according to an analysis released Monday.
The report, published by Defense of Children International-Palestine (DCIP), details how Israeli occupation forces "routinely targeted Palestinian children with live ammunition and aerial attacks, prevented ambulances and paramedics from reaching wounded children, and confiscated children's bodies in violation of international law" in the 10 months after the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas-led militants.
"Israeli forces are killing Palestinian children with calculated brutality and cruelty all throughout the occupied Palestinian territory," DCIP general director Khaled Quzmar said in a statement. "The international community must act urgently to enact an arms embargo and sanctions to protect Palestinian children's lives."
DCIP field researchers conducted interviews and collected evidence documenting 141 children killed by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops and settlers in the West Bank between October 7, 2023 and July 31, 2024. As Common Dreams recently reported, that's around a 250% increase from the nine months preceding the October 7 attack.
Among the report's key findings:
- 20 percent of the Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 2000 have been killed after October 7, 2023—a rate of one child every two days;
- Israeli forces deliberately target and shoot unarmed children with live ammunition and trained snipers;
- Israeli forces and authorities systematically deny Palestinian children their right to medical care by preventing ambulances, paramedics, or bystanders from aiding them;
- Israeli authorities and forces systematically, deliberately, and specifically embolden Israeli settler violence towards Palestinian children;
- Israeli forces present during armed Israeli settler attacks fail to prevent the aggression, fail to help the Palestinian victims, and often collaborate with the settlers in inflicting lethal harm;
- The fatal shootings of child protesters in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and the use of expanding bullets during the crackdowns constitute war crimes prosecutable at the International Criminal Court;
- Israeli authorities' practice of confiscating and withholding Palestinian bodies is a violation of international humanitarian law and international criminal law; and
- Israeli authorities work to ensure Israeli forces continue enjoying impunity and face no consequence for the extrajudicial killing of Palestinian children.
According to DCIP, there are "no known accounts of accountability" during the period covered by the report.
"When an Israeli soldier targets a Palestinian child, or an Israeli military official orders the targeting of a child, they are in violation of international human rights, humanitarian, and criminal law," DCIP accountability program director Ayed Abu Eqtaish said Monday. "Not a single person has been held accountable for the killing of these children, emboldening Israeli forces to continue killing with impunity."
The new report comes amid the biggest and deadliest Israeli escalation in the West Bank in decades and as Israel's far-right government pushes forward with plans to build new settler colonies and expand existing ones by stealing more West Bank lands from Palestinians.
On Monday, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk pointed to the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) recent opinion that the Israeli occupation is an illegal form of apartheid that must end immediately as he implored the world to reject Israel's "blatant disregard for international law."
Israel is currently on trial for genocide at the ICJ for its conduct in the war on Gaza. According to the Gaza Health Ministry and U.N. agencies, Israel's 339-day assault on Gaza has left at least 145,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing while forcibly displacing, starving, and sickening millions more. More than 17,000 Palestinian children are believed to have been killed in Gaza.
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Investigation Details IDF Use of Gaza Civilians as Booby Trap Detectors
"It's not a one-time incident of a young and stupid company commander who decides on his own to take somebody," said one IDF soldier who admitted to using Palestinians as human shields.
Aug 13, 2024
Believing that "our lives are more important than their lives," Israel Defense Forces soldiers have widely used Palestinians including civilians as booby trap detectors in Gaza, according to a new Haaretz investigation, the latest of numerous reports detailing IDF use of kidnapped Gazans as human shields.
The report, published Tuesday, features testimonies of IDF soldiers, who said commanders are fully aware of the practice of using captured Palestinians as human shields. One soldier said "there is pride in it," referring to acts considered war crimes under Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law.
"When I saw the report from Al Jazeera, I said, 'Ah, yes, it's true.'"
The IDF's use of human shields in the current Gaza war first drew widespread international attention following a May report from Defense for Children International-Palestine detailing how minors are forced to walk ahead of Israeli soldiers during dangerous raids.
Subsequent Al Jazeera reports of a Palestinian strapped to the hood of an Israeli combat vehicle to deter attack and Gazans being sent into buildings and tunnels to ensure the locations weren't rigged with explosives sparked international outrage and initial IDF denials.
"When I saw the report from Al Jazeera, I said, 'Ah, yes, it's true,'" one IDF conscript who helped use Gazans as human shields told Haaretz. "And then I saw the IDF's response, which totally doesn't reflect reality. It's done with the knowledge of the brigade commander, at the least."
The soldier added that IDF commanders "know that it's not a one-time incident of a young and stupid company commander who decides on his own to take somebody."
Another IDF soldier said that "there were times when really old people were made to go into houses."
Yet another soldier said that Palestinian captives are told that if they do one tunnel mission, they'll be set free.
"People began to ask questions, very quickly a mess began about this procedure," one soldier recalled. "Some argued that they weren't willing to carry out operations if it included a Gazan who was forced to sacrifice himself."
"Of course, there were those who supported it, but at least with us there were just a few of them, mostly the commanders who were afraid to deal with the more senior commanders," they added.
Responding to the new report, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit said that "IDF instructions and orders prohibit the use of Gazan civilians caught in the field for military missions that pose a deliberate risk to their lives."
"The IDF's instructions and orders on the subject have been made clear to the forces," the unit's statement added. "Upon receipt of the request, the allegations were forwarded to the relevant authorities for review."
Israel has been accused of using human shields in wars going back to the founding of the nation in 1948.
In 2002, the Israeli High Court of Justice issued a temporary injunction prohibiting the use of human shields in operations to quash the Second Intifada, or general uprising. Some IDF soldiers ignored the injunction,
according to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem.
In 2010, two staff sergeants in the Givati Brigade were convicted of forcing a 9-year-old Palestinian boy to open bags they thought might contain explosives during the 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead invasion of Gaza. The staff sergeants were slapped on the wrists with suspended sentences and demotions. Neither went to prison.
Numerous subsequent instances of IDF soldiers' use of human shields have gone unpunished.
Palestinian militants including members of Hamas have also been accused of using Palestinians as human shields.
As is the case with the IDF reservists currently accused of gang-raping a Palestinian detainee at the notorious Sde Teiman torture prison, many Israeli government and military officials, as well as journalists and others, have defended the "right" of IDF soldiers to do what they want to Palestinians.
Haaretz explained that "the thinking is that it's better for the Israeli soldiers to remain alive and for the [Palestinians] to be the ones blown up by an explosive device."
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Federal Court Hears Appeal in Case Accusing Biden of Complicity in Gaza Genocide
"Genocide can never be a legitimate foreign policy choice," argued one plaintiffs' attorney.
Jun 10, 2024
Following the dismissal earlier this year of a federal lawsuit accusing senior Biden administration officials of failing to prevent Israel's U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Monday began hearing an expedited appeal by Palestinian plaintiffs in the case.
Arguing that U.S. leaders "have a legal duty to prevent, and not further," genocide, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) first filed a lawsuit last November in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in Oakland on behalf of the rights groups Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P) and al-Haq, as well as a group of individual Palestinians in Gaza and the United States.
"Genocide can never be a legitimate foreign policy choice," CCR senior staff attorney Katie Gallagher argued during Monday's proceedings.
The suit—which names President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin as defendants—seeks to force the U.S. administration to stop "providing further arms, money, and diplomatic support to Israel" as it wages a war of annihilation in which more than 132,000 Palestinians have been killed, maimed, or left missing; nearly 90% of Gaza's population has been forcibly displaced; and at least hundreds of thousands of people are starving.
Palestinian American writer Laila al-Haddad, a plaintiff in the case, lost her aunt and three of her cousins to a November Israeli airstrike on a United Nations school in the Jabalia refugee camp that killed more than 30 people.
"I promised my surviving family members in Gaza that I would do everything in my power to advocate on their behalf," al-Haddad wrote in an article published Monday by The Nation.
"Although I knew the case would be an uphill battle, I testified to make a record of Israel's horrific slaughter of my family, the displacement and dispossession and starvation of the surviving members, the deliberate destruction of my hometown and everything that sustains life there, and ethnic cleansing of my people," she continued.
"As a Palestinian, I struggle to balance the disgust and impotence I feel knowing that my tax dollars are being used to kill my family members in Gaza with an urgency to do everything in my power to demand an end to this administration's complicity in genocide," al-Haddad added.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White ruled on January 31 that the case fell "outside the court's limited jurisdiction" and rejected the suit on technical grounds—even as he wrote that "the current treatment of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military may plausibly constitute a genocide in violation of international law."
On February 27, the 9th Circuit Court granted a motion by CCR and co-counsel at Van Der Hout LLP to expedite plaintiffs' appeal amid soaring Palestinian civilian casualties and destruction wrought by Israel's assault on Gaza.
Last week, 9th Circuit Judge Ryan Nelson
recused himself from the new case following pressure from plaintiffs who questioned his impartiality after he visited Israel in March with 13 other federal judges on a trip sponsored by the World Jewish Congress meant to convince U.S. jurists of the legality of Israel's Gaza onslaught.
Genocide is defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention as killing or causing serious physical or psychological harm to members of a group, "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group," or "forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
At least hundreds of jurists and genocide experts around the world concur that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The International Court of Justice is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel brought by South Africa and backed by more than 30 nations and regional blocs. Last month, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan said he is seeking to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders for alleged crimes including extermination.
As CCR noted:
Numerous Israeli government leaders have expressed clear genocidal intentions and deployed dehumanizing characterizations of Palestinians, including "human animals." At the same time, the Israeli military has bombed civilian areas and infrastructure, including by using chemical weapons, and deprived Palestinians of everything necessary for human life, including water, food, electricity, fuel, and medicine. Those statements of intent—when combined with mass killing, causing serious bodily and mental harm, and the total siege and closure creating conditions of life to bring about the physical destruction of the group—reveal evidence of an unfolding crime of genocide.
The Biden administration has provided Israel with billions of dollars in military aid and arms and ammunition sales, as well as diplomatic cover in the form of United Nations Security Council vetoes and genocide denial, as its forces continue to obliterate Gaza 248 days after the Hamas-led attacks on October 7 that left more than 1,100 Israelis and foreign nationals dead—at least some of whom were killed by so-called "friendly fire"—and over 240 others taken hostage.
"The U.S. courts have an opportunity in front of them: Judges can choose to take a minimal step towards allowing DCI-P and the other plaintiffs to have a chance at holding the Biden administration accountable for its role in the genocide of Palestinians, or they can sit back and refuse to carry out checks on the executive branch," DCI-P advocacy officer Miranda Cleland wrote in an opinion piece published Friday by Middle East Eye. "It is a choice, quite literally, between life and death."
"Israeli forces, emboldened by the so-called ironclad support of the Biden administration, have killed on average more than 60 Palestinian children every day since October 7," she continued. "That's more than 15,000 children who won't go back to school, or play with their friends, or hug their parents ever again. Those 15,000 children will not grow up and live in a free Palestine."
"If the U.S. courts continue to green-light Biden's impunity, more Palestinian children and their families will pay the price," Cleland added. "It is a price that I, alongside many other voters in the U.S., are not willing to accept."
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'A War Crime': Rights Group Details Israel's Use of Children as Human Shields
"Israeli treatment of Palestinian children, the way they see them as well as how they abuse their bodies, is genocidal," said one journalist.
May 14, 2024
Israeli and U.S. claims that civilian casualties in Gaza are the result of Hamas' use of "human shields" have figured prominently in Israel's defense of the skyrocketing death toll in the enclave, but a report by a local independent human rights group details the recent experiences of three boys in the West Bank, who say they were used to shield Israeli forces from potential harm during their raid on a refugee camp.
Defense for Children International - Palestine (DCIP) on Monday released its interviews with three boys in Tulkarem refugee camp, which was attacked by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on May 6.
The three boys—Karam, 13; Mohammad, 12; and Ibrahim, 14—gave nearly identical accounts of being forced to walk ahead of the IDF soldiers as they raided residential buildings, ensuring they would be attacked by any armed people instead of the Israeli forces.
The soldiers also positioned their guns on the shoulders of two of the boys before firing the weapons, and subjected all of them to beatings.
Karam told DCIP that about 30 IDF soldiers entered his family's apartment with a "huge military dog" during the Tulkarem attack and isolated his family in one room, selecting Karam to come with them as they raided the rest of the building.
The "forced Karam to walk in front of them, open the doors to each room, and enter it before them," DCIP reported. "While they were walking, one soldier placed his rifle on Karam's right shoulder and fired two shots toward an apartment in the building."
Mohammad told the group the IDF soldiers ignored his mother's pleas as they ordered his family to leave his apartment, keeping Mohammad with them.
"I was left alone with the soldiers after they ordered my mother and siblings to go up to the fourth floor of the building. I started crying and shaking in fear because I did not know what they would do to me. They were armed, masked, and had frightening appearances. They had a huge military dog that made terrifying sounds," Mohammad told DCIP.
"After that, the soldiers told me to knock on the doors of the apartments in the building, while they were standing behind me at a fairly short distance, and to ask the residents to come out, and this is what I did," he said. "When we reached the door of one of the apartments, there was no one inside, so the soldiers blew up the door and forced me to go inside alone and check and search it. After I told them that it was empty, they entered it, while I remained held by one of the soldiers at the door."
Ibrahim was forced to walk in front of the soldiers after they interrogated him about "the whereabouts of wanted men," slapped and kicked him, and cuffed his hands behind his back with a plastic tie.
"At first, I thought they wanted to arrest me, but they told me to walk in front of them in the alleys of the Sawalma neighborhood in the camp," said Ibrahim. "They would hide in the alleys and tell me to see if there was anyone around. After that, they untied my hands, and whenever we passed a house or building, they would instruct me to enter and ask the residents to come out. Then they would raid those houses and tell me to open the doors into different rooms."
DCIP's report, said Al Jazeera journalist Sana Saeed, indicates how "every Palestinian child is seen as a threat, as disposable," by the IDF and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.
"Israeli treatment of Palestinian children, the way they see them as well as how they abuse their bodies, is genocidal," said Saeed.
As Ben Burgis wrote at Jacobin in November, "accusations that [Hamas fighters] 'use civilians as human shields' rarely seem to be meant quite so literally" as reports of the IDF's practices. "More often, what the accusation amounts to is simply that Hamas fighters and military equipment—or sometimes even just people linked to Hamas' political wing—tend to be located in areas with lots of civilians."
But as in the cases of the three boys at Tulkarem, "there is extensive evidence of the IDF quite literally engaging in human shielding—forcing Palestinian civilians to approach houses for them because they'll be less likely to be shot at than Israeli soldiers, for example," wrote Burgis.
"Israel's High Court banned the practice in 2005, but Israeli human rights group B'Tselem reports that 'soldiers continue to occasionally use Palestinians as human shields even after the court ruling, especially during military operations,'" he added.
Ayed Abu Eqtaish, the accountability program director at DCIP, condemned the IDF practices described by Karam, Mohammad, and Ibrahim.
" International law is explicit and absolutely prohibits the use of children as human shields by armed forces or armed groups," said Abu Eqtaish. "Israeli forces intentionally putting a child in grave danger in order to shield themselves constitutes a war crime."
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'Complete Madness': Israel Blocks Food Aid as More Gaza Children Starve to Death
"The starvation of children is a hallmark of genocide and a deliberate political choice by Israel, backed by the Biden administration," said one humanitarian coordinator.
Mar 07, 2024
Gaza health officials said Thursday that the number of Palestinian children who have died from extreme malnutrition and dehydration amid Israel's U.S.-backed genocide on the besieged strip has risen to at least 17, while one humanitarian group condemned the Israeli government for blocking lifesaving food and other aid from reaching starving people.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, 21 people in Gaza ranging from 1 day to 72 years old have died from malnutrition and dehydration. However, the humanitarian group Defense for Children International - Palestine (DCIP) warned that "the true death toll due to starvation is feared to be much higher as many Palestinians, particularly in northern Gaza, face famine and are almost entirely cut off from the limited humanitarian aid entering Gaza through the southern Rafah crossing."
"It is unthinkable that in 2024, in a world that produces more than enough food for all people, that Palestinian children are starving to death."
That's because Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops and civilians are blocking or severely restricting the flow of aid into Gaza. Soldiers stand by while extremist Israeli civilians set up roadblocks and encampments—one replete with a children's bouncy castle—at border crossings. Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire on aid convoys and crowds of people waiting for food deliveries, including in the February 29 Flour Massacre, in which more than 800 people were killed or wounded. Israeli civilians attempting to deliver aid to Gaza—including members of the Jewish-Arab solidarity group Standing Together—have been blocked by IDF troops.
"It is unthinkable that in 2024, in a world that produces more than enough food for all people, that Palestinian children are starving to death," said DCIP accountability program director Ayed Abu Eqtaish. "The starvation of children is a hallmark of genocide and a deliberate political choice by Israel, backed by the Biden administration."
"It is complete madness that Israeli authorities continue to prohibit and restrict food and other lifesaving supplies to a starving population while the international community stands by," Abu Eqtaish added.
DCIP noted that "Yazan Kafarneh, a 10-year-old Palestinian boy with cerebral palsy, died on March 4 of malnutrition and lack of healthcare."
"Young children, people with disabilities, pregnant women, and the elderly are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of malnutrition and dehydration," DCIP warned.
Gaza Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra said Thursday that around 60,000 pregnant women in Gaza are suffering from dehydration, malnutrition, and lack of adequate medical care. Malnourished pregnant mothers can't feed their fetuses; Gaza's youngest starvation fatality was reportedly just 1 day old.
United Nations, Palestinian, and humanitarian officials have called Israel's deliberate starvation of Palestinians a key component of the genocide in Gaza, while limited aid airdrops by Jordan and the United States have been described as woefully inadequate and a "theater of cruelty."
More than 13,400 children and nearly 9,000 women are among the more than 30,800 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since the October 7 attacks, according to Palestinian and U.N. officials.
In January, the International Court of Justice in The Hague found that Israel is "plausibly" committing genocide in Gaza and ordered the country's government to prevent genocidal acts. South Africa, which is leading the ICJ case, says Israel is violating the court's order, and on Wednesday asked the tribunal to order additional emergency measures to protect Gazans.
In its plea, South Africa noted that when the ICJ declined to order requested emergency measures during the 1990s Balkan wars, "approximately 7,336 Bosnians in the so-called 'safe area' of Srebrenica had been slaughtered in what this court retrospectively determined to have been a genocide."
No famine has yet been declared in Gaza. However, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification initiative has launched a review of the Gaza crisis. ICP said in December that more than 90% of Gaza's population was experiencing severe food insecurity or worse. That was before children started dying of starvation.
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Israeli Bombing Took 12-Year-Old's Leg, Her Family, and Finally Her Life
"Dunia's story is the distillation of the Palestinian child's experience in Gaza," said one campaigner. "Displaced, bombed, orphaned, maimed, and finally killed by the Israeli military."
Dec 18, 2023
Among the more than 19,450 people killed in Israel's war on the Gaza Strip this year is Dunia Abu Mohsen, a 12-year-old who previously lost a leg in an Israeli airstrike and shared the experience in an interview published Monday.
Abu Mohsen was killed on Sunday by an Israeli tank-fired shell that hit al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, according to Defense for Children International - Palestine (DCIP), which spoke with the child on-camera last month.
She began the interview—filmed on November 25, during a seven-day truce between Israeli forces and Hamas, the Palestinian group that controls Gaza—by recalling the attack that took not only her leg but also the lives of her parents, a brother, and a sister.
The girl spoke of her dreams for the future: "I want someone to take me abroad, to any country, to install a prosthetic leg, to be able to walk like other people. So that I can move and go out and play with my siblings."
"I want to become a doctor, like those who treat us, so that I can treat other children," she added. "I only want one thing: for the war to end."
The war—launched after a Hamas-led attack on Israel that killed over 1,100 people on October 7—continues, extending decades of Palestinian suffering at the hands of Israeli forces and the country's right-wing government.
"Dunia's story is the distillation of the Palestinian child's experience in Gaza," DCIP's Miranda Cleland said on social media Monday. "Displaced, bombed, orphaned, maimed, and finally killed by the Israeli military."
DCIP released a year-in-review report on Friday. It begins: "This year has no comparison in the history of Israeli forces' efforts to exert total control over the Palestinian people and violate children's rights. Throughout the occupied Palestinian territory, including the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Israeli forces killed Palestinian children at an unfathomable, unprecedented rate."
Since the war began over two months ago, Israeli forces have killed over 7,870 Palestinian children in Gaza, according to local officials. Thousands more remain missing under the rubble.
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Israeli Occupation Forces Kill 2 Children in Refugee Camp Raid
"Unarmed and running away," said Palestine's envoy to the U.K. "But Israeli soldiers still killed this child in Jenin today in the same indiscriminate manner that they have been killing thousands of children in Gaza."
Nov 29, 2023
Israeli troops shot and killed two Palestinian children during a Wednesday morning raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the illegally occupied West Bank, where more than 240 people have been killed by occupation soldiers and Jewish settler-colonists since early October.
Fifteen-year-old Basil Suleiman Abu al-Wafa and Adam Samer al-Ghoul, who was either 8 or 9, were shot dead by Israel Defense Force (IDF) troops during the raid, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
According to Al Jazeera, al-Wafa was shot in the chest and died in a hospital, while al-Ghoul was shot in the head. Graphic CCTV footage posted on social media shows al-Ghoul trying to run away as he is gunned down. Another boy is seen dragging him away, with blood trailing behind the victim's body.
"Palestinian children in Jenin have been a routine target for the Israeli military."
The children were shot as IDF troops forced residents of the ad-Damj neighborhood from their homes at gunpoint before destroying streets there and bombing at least one home with an armed drone.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said Israeli forces subsequently prevented paramedics from reaching Palestinians wounded during the raid.
"Unarmed and running away," Husam Zumlot, Palestine's ambassador to the United Kingdom, wrote on social media. "But Israeli soldiers still killed this child in Jenin today in the same indiscriminate manner that they have been killing thousands of children in Gaza."
Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at the advocacy group Defense of Children International-Palestine (DCIP), noted in a statement that "Palestinian children in Jenin have been a routine target for the Israeli military."
"It is shocking that Israeli forces, sitting in an armored vehicle, can fatally shoot two children in broad daylight and the international community will refuse to hold them accountable," Abu Eqtaish added.
An IDF spokesperson said Israeli troops opened fire with live rounds after "explosives" were thrown at them. Al-Ghoul can be seen in CCTV footage holding a very small object, which he drops after being shot.
Two Palestinian men—Muhammad Jamal Zubaidi and Wissam Ziad Hanoun—were also killed during the Jenin raid. Palestine's WAFA News Agency reported that occupation forces took their bodies.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said at least 242 Palestinians, including more than 50 children, have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since October 7, when Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel left approximately 1,200 Israeli civilians and soldiers dead and around 240 others kidnapped. Over 2,750 other Palestinians have been injured.
Israeli forces have killed more than 100 Palestinian children in the West Bank and East Jerusalem so far this year, according to DCIP, making 2023 the deadliest year ever recorded.
Occupation forces have also arrested more than 3,300 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including 35 people—one of them a 12-year-old child—since Tuesday. Israeli authorities have arrested nearly as many Palestinians during the six-day cease-fire with Hamas as they have freed during the concurrent prisoner exchanges.
Meanwhile in Gaza, officials reported that 160 Palestinian bodies were recovered from the rubble on Tuesday and Wednesday during the relative calm of the cease-fire. Gaza civil defense officials said at least 7,000 bodies remain buried under the bombed-out buildings.
More than 15,000 Palestinians—including over 4,000 women and 6,100 children—have been killed by Israeli bombs and bullets since October 7.
Gaza and United Nations officials also said Wednesday that more than 80% of Gazans—or around 1.8 million people—have been forcibly displaced by the Israeli onslaught, which has destroyed or damaged more than 300,000 homes.
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Slaughter in Gaza Continues on World Children's Day
"Israeli forces have killed more than 5,000 Palestinian children in Gaza. That's around 9 to 10 classrooms of students being obliterated from the Earth every day by the Israeli military's relentless offensive on Gaza."
Nov 20, 2023
As of Monday, World Children's Day, Israel's six-week war on the Gaza Strip has killed at least 5,500 Palestinian children and threatens the lives of about a million more who are enduring the Israeli bombardment and raids of homes, schools, and hospitals.
Since Israel declared war after an October 7 Hamas-led attack, United Nations officials, humanitarian groups, cease-fire supporters around the world, and Gaza residents themselves have warned that the besieged enclave is becoming a "graveyard" for children.
Putting the child death toll into context on Monday, Al Jazeera reported, "That is one Palestinian child killed every 10 minutes, or about one out of every 200 children in the Gaza Strip."
"An additional 1,800 children are missing under the rubble, most of them presumed dead," the outlet noted. "A further 9,000 children have been injured, many with life-changing consequences. Many of these children have lived through the trauma of multiple wars."
Brad Parker, an attorney and senior policy adviser at Defense for Children International - Palestine, stressed in a Sunday opinion piece for Al Jazeera that "as in previous Israeli military offensives on Gaza, Israeli attacks the DCIP has investigated have been overwhelmingly indiscriminate and disproportionate. The Israeli army has targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure in densely populated civilian areas with wide-area-effect explosive weapons. In other words, every bomb the Israeli army drops on Gaza potentially constitutes a war crime."
As Common Dreams reported last week, Airwars found a single Israeli bombing in the Jabalia refugee camp on October 31, purportedly intended to "assassinate a senior Hamas commander and destroy his base," killed 126-136 civilians, including 69 children.
Citing United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres' "graveyard" warning from earlier this month, Parker wrote that he "was sounding the alarm because he knows that Palestinian children are living and dying in an unrivaled moment. Israeli forces killed more children in the first month of the war than state and nonstate actors did in other armed conflicts over the past two years combined, according to the U.N. chief's own annual reports."
"Nearly 50% of the 2.3 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip are children. This incredibly youthful population has experienced 16 years of Israeli siege, which amounts to collective punishment," he pointed out. "Guterres knows the death toll is expected to rise dramatically as Israeli authorities have cut off Palestinians in Gaza from food, water, electricity, medical supplies, and fuel, catapulting a captive civilian population into what he described as a 'nightmare' that 'is a crisis of humanity.'"
Highlighting the billions of dollars in U.S. military assistance that the Israeli government gets annually, Parker concluded that "the Biden administration's endorsement of Israel's actions and the genocidal green light it has given must be opposed. World leaders need to heed the U.N. chief's call for an immediate cease-fire and help put an end to the slaughter of Palestinian children."
Marking World Children's Day on social media Monday, Guterres said: "Wars, climate change, economic turmoil. Crisis after crisis, children around the world are being robbed of their lives and their futures. Children need peace, now."
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director Catherine Russell, who has also called for a cease-fire in Gaza, similarly said in a statement Monday that "unfortunately, children today are living in a world that is increasingly hostile to their rights. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the experience of children impacted by conflicts."
First declared Universal Children's Day in 1954, November 20 also marks the anniversaries of the U.N. General Assembly adopting the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959 and the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989. Russell said that "at no time since the CRC was adopted 34 years ago have children's rights been in greater jeopardy. And that is why we must act."
Her statement came a day after UNICEF announced that "31 babies clinging to life were rescued from al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza and relocated to the south of the strip" in a joint operation conducted "during extremely dangerous conditions," following "the tragic death of several other babies, and total collapse of all medical services at al-Shifa."
Al-Shifa is far from the only hospital that has partly or fully ceased services—and as Parker of DCIP noted: "Among Gaza's population are an estimated 50,000 pregnant people. This means there are 160 deliveries on average taking place daily."
As some parents in Gaza struggle to get care while bringing life into the world, others are mourning the loss of children.
Ramez al-Sury's family was sheltering at the Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church compound in Gaza when it was hit in an Israeli airstrike on October 19. He told Amnesty International that "my heart died with my children that evening. All my children were killed: Majid, 11, Julie, 12, and Suhail, 14. I have nothing left. I should have died with my children."
"The church was full of peaceful people, only peaceful people," he added. "There is nowhere safe in Gaza during this war. Bombardments everywhere, day and night. Every day, more and more civilians are killed. We pray for peace, but our hearts are broken."
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‘Human Animals’: The Sordid Language Behind Israel’s Genocide in Gaza
The post-October 7 vocabulary used by Israelis, but also many Americans, created the atmosphere necessary for the savage Israeli response which followed.
Oct 26, 2023
“(Tutsis) are cockroaches. We will kill you.”
Arabs are like “drugged cockroaches in a bottle.”
The first quote was a line repeated frequently by the Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, a Rwandan radio station, which is largely blamed for inciting hatred towards the Tutsi people.
The second is by former Israeli army Chief-of-Staff Gen. Rafael Eitan in 1983, speaking at an Israeli parliament’s committee.
Rwanda’s hate-filled radio station operated for only one year (1993-94), yet the outcome of its incitement resulted in one of the saddest and most tragic episodes in modern human history: the genocide of the Tutsis.
Compare “Radio Genocide” to the massive Israeli-U.S.-Western propaganda, dehumanizing Palestinians almost with identical language to that used by Hutus’ media.
Since Israel’s top political authorities have already declared that all Palestinians are collectively responsible for the October 7 events, this means that all Palestinians are, per Gallant’s assessment, “human animals,” deserving no mercy.
Many seem to forget that, long before the Gaza war on October 7, and even long before the establishment of Israel itself in 1948, the Zionist-Israeli discourse has always been that of racism, dehumanization, erasure and, at times, outright genocide.
If one is to randomly select any period of Israeli history to examine the political discourse emanating from Israeli officials, institutions and even intellectuals, one is to draw the same conclusion: Israel has always built a narrative of incitement and hatred, thus making a constant case for the genocide of Palestinians.
Only recently, this genocidal intent is becoming obvious to many people.
“There is... a risk of genocide against the Palestinian People,” the U.N. experts said in a statement on October 19. But this “risk of genocide” is not born out of recent events.
Indeed, effective political or military actions anywhere in the world hardly take place without an edifice of text and language that facilitates, rationalizes, and justifies those actions. Israel’s perception of Palestinians is a perfect illustration of this claim.
Prior to the establishment of Israel, Zionists denied the very existence of the Palestinians. Many still do.
When that is the case, it becomes only logical to draw a conclusion that Israel, in its own collective mind, cannot be morally culpable of killing those who have never existed in the first place.
Even when Palestinians factor into the Israeli political discourse, they become “bloodthirsty animals,” “terrorists,” or “drugged cockroaches in a bottle.”
It would be too convenient to label this as just “racist.” Though racism is at work here, this sense of racial supremacy does not exist to merely maintain a sociopolitical order, in which Israelis are masters and Palestinians are serfs. It is far more complex.
As soon as Palestinian fighters from Gaza crossed into the southern border of Israel, killing hundreds, not a single Israeli politician, analyst, or mainstream intellectual seemed interested in the context of the daring act.
The post-October 7 language used by Israelis, but also many Americans, created the atmosphere necessary for the savage Israeli response which followed.
The number of Palestinians killed in the first eight days of the Israeli war against Gaza has reportedly exceeded the number of casualties who were killed during the longest and most destructive Israeli war on the strip, dubbed “Protective Edge,” in 2014.
According to The Defense for Children International–Palestine, a Palestinian child is killed every 15 minutes, and, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, over 70% of all of Gaza’s casualties are women and children.
For Israel, none of these facts matter. In the mind of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, often perceived as a “moderate,” the “rhetoric about civilians not (being) involved (is) absolutely not true.” They are legitimate targets, simply because they “could’ve risen up, they could have fought against that evil regime,” he said, referring to Hamas.
Therefore, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” according to Herzog, who promised payback.
Ariel Kallner, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, explained Israel’s goal behind the Gaza war. “Right now, one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 1948,” he said.
The same sentiment was conveyed by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the man responsible for translating Israel’s declaration of war into an action plan: “We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly,” he said on October 9. “Accordingly,” here, meant that “there will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed.” And, of course, thousands of dead civilians.
Since Israel’s top political authorities have already declared that all Palestinians are collectively responsible for the October 7 events, this means that all Palestinians are, per Gallant’s assessment, “human animals,” deserving no mercy.
Expectedly, Israel’s supporters in the U.S. and other Western countries joined the chorus, also using the most violent and dehumanizing language, thus cementing mainstream Israeli political discourse among ordinary people.
U.S. presidential hopeful Nikki Haleytold Fox News on October 10 that the Hamas attack was not just on Israel but “is an attack on America.” It was then that she made her sinister declaration, while looking directly at the camera, “Netanyahu, finish them, finish them... finish them!”
Though U.S. President Joe Biden and his Secretary of State Antony Blinken did not use the exact same words, they both made comparisons between the October 7 events and the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The meaning behind this requires no elaboration.
For his part, U.S. Senator Lindsey Grahamrallied American conservative and religious supporters, declaring on October 11, also on Fox News, “We are in a religious war here... Do whatever the hell you have to do... Level the place.”
Much more, equally sinister language was—and continues—to be uttered. The outcome is being broadcast around the clock. Israel is “finishing off” the Gaza civilian population, it is “leveling” thousands of homes, mosques, hospitals, churches, and schools. Indeed, it is producing another painful episode of the Nakba.
From Golda Meir’s “Palestinians did not exist” ( 1969) to Menachem Begin’s Palestinians are “beasts walking on two legs” (1982), to Eli Ben Dahan’s “Palestinians are like animals, they aren’t human” (2013), to numerous other racist and dehumanizing references, the Zionist discourse remains unchanged.
Now, it is all coming together, the language and the action are in perfect alignment. Perhaps, it is time to start paying attention to how Israel’s genocidal language is translated to an actual genocide on the ground. Sadly, for thousands of Palestinian civilians, this awareness is simply too late.
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