Israel is deliberately killing Palestinian children

The evidence is absolutely overwhelming and incontrovertible

The conclusion is unavoidable

Israel is deliberately killing Palestinian children.

That’s the conclusion of a new detailed report published by a United Nations independent international Commission of Inquiry.

It builds on an overwhelming body of evidence that the Israeli army is deliberately killing children.

Israel’s atrocity deniers claim that stating the truth constitutes a “blood libel”. We’ll come on to a statistic which explains the intentional killing of children by Israeli soldiers.

As the report notes, at least 20,179 children have been killed by Israeli forces, and another 44,143 injured. Children made up 30% of those killed and 26% of those injured since the genocide began.

The report says the children killed represent around 2% of Gaza’s child population

Of those killed, 5,031 were under five, 1,029 were under one, and around 420 were newborns.

Note these figures are underestimates.Save the Children estimate that another 5,160 children were buried under the rubble.

The Commission further documents “the use of torture, inhumane and degrading treatment, including sexual and gender-based violence, against Palestinian children.”

A baby shot while breastfeeding

In one example, on 12th April 2024, a 10-year-old baby was shot by a quadcopter while being breastfed by his mother. He survived but with brain damage. As the Commission noted:

Considering that the shooting occurred in broad daylight, the Commission concludes that the quadcopter controller would have been able to see inside the tent and assesses that the target was a mother and a baby.

In another case, in the Al-Faraa refugee camp in Tubas, the Israeli army shot a 14-year-old Palestinian boy, and when his mother rushed to his help, they shot at her, and then they put a red laser on the head of the paramedics who tried to save his life. He bled to death in front of his mother, surrounded by Israeli soldiers who did nothing to help him and showed no concern about a boy they had shot bleeding to death in front of them.

In Khan Younis, a 15-year-old boy stepped out of his family home holding a white cloth during evacuation. He was shot in the foot, then shot again in the back and neck. His 20-year-old brother ran to him and was shot dead too. His mother tried to signal for an ambulance and was shot in the hand. The Commission says the 15-year-old was likely shot by a sniper rifle from around 200 metres away, and that the shooter should have been able to see he was a child holding a white flag.

A four-year-old girl in Khan Younis was shot in the head while eating with her family in their tent. No one else in the family was injured. She survived but the left side of her body was paralysed. The Commission concluded she was targeted by a quadcopter mounted with an assault rifle.

Not tragic mistakes - targeted killings

In Sheikh Radwan, the report says Israeli soldiers threw four grenades into a house with 30 family members, badly injuring a five-year-old boy. Israeli forces then entered, shot dead eight family members including his parents, and did not provide medical assistance. A doctor at a school reinserted the child’s exposed intestines using diapers and tape. He later needed multiple surgeries and was left with permanent disability. His six-year-old brother also survived; both had witnessed their parents’ killing, including their pregnant mother being shot.

The report describes the decomposing bodies of four babies found in Al-Nasr Paediatric Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit after staff were forced to evacuate and could not safely move the most vulnerable infants. The babies were reportedly still attached to life-support equipment rendered useless by the electricity outage and attacks. The Commission says the video was digitally verified and notes that Israel did not claim Al-Nasr Paediatric Hospital was used by Hamas.

After the October 2025 so-called ceasefire, two brothers aged 10 and nine were killed by an Israeli drone strike near Khan Younis while gathering firewood for their wheelchair-bound father. Israeli forces said they were “suspects” and an “immediate threat”. The Commission rejected this, noting they were more than 300 metres from Israeli soldiers, were visibly children, and were collecting firewood.

Note that none of these children are named. Chris Sidoti, an Australian human rights lawyer and one of the UN Commissioners, explained why.

In other words, the UN fears that if they name the children, their families are risk of reprisals from the Israeli army.

Killing in the West Bank

This reports builds on the overwhelming evidence of Palestinian children being deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli army.

In 2024, the NGO Defence for Children International published a report documenting 141 Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, between 7 October 2023 and 31 July 2024.

116 of the 141 children were shot dead with live ammunition or by snipers. DCIP says nearly all were shot in the head or torso, and 18 were shot in the back, which it describes as “a crystal clear indicator” that the child posed no threat.

Most were killed with a single bullet either to the head or the torso., which DCIP says indicates shooters targeted them “with intent to kill.” They described how Israeli forces “order Palestinian paramedics and ambulance drivers to leave the scene at gunpoint”, as well as firing at people trying to offer aid to injured children, as well as blocking roads and detaining ambulance crews.

In some of the cases, Israeli soldiers surrounded children they had shot as they bled out, “alone and in pain, with the intent to ensure death”.

It says there is no evidence warnings were issued by Israeli forces in advance, and that the evidence “indicates that Israeli forces in practice have a policy in place that amounts to wilful killing.”

A report just published by Israeli human rights’ organisation B’Tselem finds that 235 Palestinian children and teenagers were killed in the West Bank since October 2023, with another 5 killed by settlers.

In nearly a quarter of the cases they examined, Israel delayed or completely prevented medics or residents from reached wounded children to offer help.

Nine minors, including two girls, were killed during military raids where no arrests were made.

What the doctors saw

There are the testimonies of doctors. A New York Times piece in October 2024 carried the testimonies of dozens of US-based medical staff who served in Gaza. 44 of them testified that they saw “multiple cases of preteen children who had been shot in the head or chest in Gaza”.”

, too. I interviewed Dr. Nick Maynard, for example, a leading consultant surgeon from Oxford who served in Gaza three times during the genocide.

He described treating “very young teenage boys, sometimes as young as 11 or 12,” shot by Israeli soldiers and quadcopters while trying to get food for their starving families at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites. What horrified him most was the pattern: one day boys arrived with gunshot wounds “to the head,” another “to the neck,” another “to the chest or the abdomen,” and on one day four young teenage boys arrived together with gunshot wounds “to the testicles.” The “clustering” was so striking, he said, that it was “inconceivable that it was coincidence”: it looked like “some sort of obscene target practice,” with Israeli soldiers “playing a game.” Maynard added: “I would not have thought it possible if I had not seen this with my own eyes.”

Meanwhile, Jewish-American surgeon Mark Perlmutter - who also served in Gaza - testified that Israeli snipers are deliberately targeting children in Gaza. Recalling witnessing children shot twice, he said: “No child gets shot twice by mistake.”

And even despite the BBC’s dire failures, the World Service year examined 160 cases of children being shot in Gaza. They found that in 95 cases, the child was shot int he head or the chest, and in most cases, they were under 12 years old.

The society that justifies killing children

We could go on. The evidence is overwhelming and incontrovertible.

We are told that it is a “blood libel” to state this obvious fact.

So consider this. According to a poll last year, 76% of Jewish Israelis believe there are no innocents in Gaza.

Process that again: no innocents in Gaza. That, of course, includes children and babies.

In another poll, 47% of Jewish Israelis answered yes to the question:

Do you support the claim that the [Israeli army] in conquering an enemy city, should act in a manner similar to the way the Israelites did when they conquered Jericho under the leadership of Joshua, ie to kill all its inhabitants?

In other words, half of Jewish Israelis support killing all Palestinians in Gaza. That includes those, of course, who are actually serving in the military.

But what makes this even worse is that polling consistently shows that Israeli soldiers are more extreme than the average Israeli citizens.

The polling shows that soldiers skew right. That is partly because - unlike in many societies - younger Israelis tend to be more extreme than older generations.

Every child becomes the enemy

Furthermore, Israeli television frequently features guests who make clear their murderous intentions towards children, partly on the basis they claim they will one day become “terrorists”. (This is exactly the same logic the Nazis used during the Holocaust).

In one interview, the Israeli politician Amit Halevi - a member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, said:

In the Al-Shifa Hospital, they caught 150 terrorists and killed them. At the same time, 300 terrorists were born in the maternity ward.

On Israel’s Channel 14, while commenting on footage of devastation in Gaza, Israeli journalist Yaki Adamker said:

I do not think anyone in the State of Israel, in the Land of Israel should feel sorry for these Gazans, not for the adults, not for the elderly, not for the young, and not for the children (...) The Gazans? For all I care, let them starve to death. What do I care about them?

Another Channel 14 journalist, Yehuda Schlesinger said:

There are no innocents in Gaza. There are no ordinary citizens in Gaza. Every adult was trained to kill. Every woman is a monster. Every boy aspires to be a martyr Every baby will grow up to be a terrorist. wipe out, kill, destroy, annihilate.

In another example, Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin went on Channel 14 to say: “Every child in Gaza is the enemy.” He added: “Every child you are now giving milk to will, in 15 years, rape your daughters and slaughter your children,” as well as calling to conquer and settle Gaza so “not one Gazan child remains there”.

This is the genocidal hothouse of Israeli society - where politicians and journalists openly describe their murderous intent towards children.

There is no doubt. Israel is deliberately killing Palestinian children on a mass scale - and the atrocity deniers who claim otherwise must be disgraced.