Opposing the mass slaughter of children by Israel is not hateful extremism.
Yet that is what this moral disgrace of an article by Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust argues.
This is a charity supposedly committed to protecting the security of Jewish people in the UK, and it works closely with the British police - including influencing decisions on pro-Palestine protests.
Let’s go through what it argues – and the reality of the crimes committed by the Israeli army against Palestinian kids.
He says:
“We think of democratic protest and terrorism as two opposing categories of behaviour, but the world is not so neat. Political violence always draws sustenance from a hinterland of ideas and rhetoric shared by many more people who would never pick up a knife or a gun, but who articulate the same grievances.
The belief that Israel is engaged in a “war on children” is common across the pro-Palestine movement, promoted by major NGOs and found in a thousand Instagram reels about genocidal Zionist baby-killers. Without doubt, it is deeply upsetting that thousands of Palestinian children have been killed in Gaza, and many feel that Israel could have done more to minimise civilian casualties. But to describe this not as the result of a tragic and unbearable conflict, but as a “war on children”, is to imply that killing children is the whole point: a charge that echoes the medieval blood libel. From that assumption to Jihad al-Shamie yelling: “This is what you get for killing our children” as he tried to batter down the doors of Heaton Park synagogue last Yom Kippur is not as big a leap as some might wish.”
The piece suggests that those who use terms like a “war on children” are inciting antisemitic violence. That anything beyond regarding Israel’s slaughter of at least 21,700 Palestinian children as “the result of a tragic and unbearable conflict” is a dangerous blood libel.
Consider the scale of the slaughter.
In Gaza, children represent about 30% of those killed, at a rate of 27.6 a day. In Bosnia, 3.5% of those killed were children, at a rate of 2.5 a day. In Iraq, 8.54% of civilian victims whose ages were recorded were children, at a rate of 1.2 a day. In Syria, it was 13.1%, at a rate of 6.4 a day.
This year, a UN Commission of Inquiry found that Israel was deliberately targeting and killing Palestinian children in Gaza.
In one case, an Israeli quadcopter shot a 10-day-old baby in the head while it was breastfeeding.
This was in broad daylight.
“The quadcopter controller would have been able to see inside the tent and assess that the target was a mother and a baby,” the Commission concluded.
Consider another case. A 15-year-old Palestinian boy stepped outside holding a white flag. An Israeli sniper shot him.
As he tried to stand, he was shot twice more. His brother rushed to help – and was killed too.
Their mother was shot. Their father was fired on as he tried to retrieve their bodies.
In another case, Israeli soldiers threw four grenades into a home sheltering 30 relatives, then entered and opened fire.
A 5-year-old boy was left with his intestines exposed; his pregnant mum and dad were killed.
A doctor used diapers and tape to hold his abdomen together. He survived, but was left with a permanent disability and now uses a wheelchair.
The Commission also details the use of “explosive weapons with wide-area effects” in civilian areas and how this causes the mass killing of children.
And consider Israel’s grotesquely named “Where’s Daddy?” programme. According to Israeli intelligence officers, it tracked suspected militants and alerted the army when they returned to their family homes – so they could be bombed there, often with their wives and children inside.
The film NAZA features an Israeli intelligence officer who explains how attacks on targets in their homes were intended to maximise death and destruction.
Another Israeli intelligence official also says:
“I hack into the phone of a 12 year old girl. If a girl calls her mom, ‘Mummy,’ she says, ‘when are you returning home? Daddy just came back.’ That’s a message that would alert the system bc it contains the words ‘return’ and ‘daddy.’”
Nor is the Commission alone in documenting these crimes.
The New York Times featured interviews with dozens of US-based medics. They testified that Palestinian children were being shot in the head and chest by snipers.
Prof. Nick Maynard is a British surgeon who served three times in Gaza. He testified that young boys were being shot in different parts of the body each day.
One day, the head or neck.
Another day, the abdomen.
Another day, the testicles.
It was a game, he suggested.
Mark Perlmutter is a Jewish American surgeon who served in Gaza. He testified that Israeli snipers were deliberately targeting children in Gaza.
“No child gets shot twice by mistake,” he said.
We could go on.
There is only one other conflict in the 21st century I can find in which more than 30% of people killed were children.
It was Israel’s war in Lebanon in 2006. In that war, around 400 children were killed.
To repeat, today, we’re talking about at least 21,700 children.
How would Dave Rich respond to these examples?
He cannot publicly wave them away as “war is ugly” without exposing himself.
This is a Western ally, and the Israeli army is not taking action against these crimes.
I doubt he reads these reports. He won’t answer in any case.
Here’s another question for Rich and the like.
You suggest that accusing Israel of something so obscene is a blood libel.
How do you wave this away?
A poll in August 2025 found that 76% of Jewish Israelis believe “there are no innocents in Gaza”.
If an overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis believe “there are no innocents in Gaza”, that includes children, by definition.
So what happens when those are the soldiers directing missiles, bombs and quadcopters, or clutching guns?
I cannot peer into Dave Rich’s mind or soul.
I do not know whether he has simply avoided reading the overwhelming evidence, fearful that it might let a crack of doubt appear.
After all, who, we might ask, knowingly demonises those opposed to heinous crimes against children?
But Rich is demonising those who oppose the mass slaughter of children, whatever his inner motives may be.
That is worse than atrocity denial, which is depraved enough.
And it matters, because demonising opponents of these crimes prevents action being taken to stop these crimes.
This conflation of Israel’s crimes and Jewish people must stop.
Jewish people in the Middle Ages did not sacrifice children in religious rituals.
Israel, a state, has engaged in the mass slaughter of children. That is a simple fact.
Growing numbers of Jewish people oppose Israel’s heinous crimes. In the US, nearly four in ten believe Israel has committed genocide - and more than six in ten believe it has committed war crimes.
Promoting the conflation of Israel – and what it has done to the Palestinian people – with Jewish people is, self-evidently, driving antisemitism.
Deep down, Israel’s cheerleaders know they have lost.
They have lost Western public opinion.
The smears, distortions, lies – and the manufactured climate of fear – have failed.
They will keep doubling down and turning the world upside down.
It will not work.
Zionism is anti-semitism. Palestinians have Semitic heritage, European Zionists living in Israel or any where else do not. Zionists intend to create an atmosphere of anti-Jewishness around the world.
I think when you purposefully omit huge amounts of information, such as mass immigration, or severe incompatibilities with Western civilization, you begin to skew off the deep end, Owen.
This is another problem of creating camps in which nuance isn’t allowed. Can two things be true at once?