The Electronic Intifada 19 May 2025
Israel is deliberately killing children in Gaza.
APA imagesOn 6 April, Israeli soldiers killed Amer Rabee, 14, and injured two other Palestinian children, Ayub Jabar and Abdulrahman Shihada, both 15. The boys were collecting green almonds in the occupied West Bank town of Turmusaya.
Israeli soldiers fired 47 bullets at the children.
Amer was shot 11 times, including twice in the head. Ayub was shot in the abdomen and Abdulrahman in the thigh.
Israel posted a statement accompanied by a grainy video in which it claimed that its forces engaged in a counterterrorism operation that prevented “terrorists” from throwing rocks on a highway below and endangering civilians.
Amer was a Palestinian American – as are the other two boys – and the US State Department issued a statement that acknowledged Israel’s claims. Although it offered condolences to the Rabee family, it did not condemn or even criticize Israel for killing and wounding unarmed American citizens or ask why lethal force was deployed against children.
Neither the State Department nor The New York Times acknowledged that even after the boys were shot, Israel delayed an ambulance.
This fits into a pattern of Israeli actions.
Between October 2023 and September 2024, the Palestine Red Crescent Society documented 160 cases of ambulances being prevented from reaching patients in the West Bank, 132 delays and 129 attacks on ambulances.
Amer Rabee’s killing was not an isolated incident.
From October 2023 to April 2025, Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least 180 Palestinian boys in the West Bank. In the vast majority of cases, those boys were targeted with live ammunition.
Data from various human rights organizations highlight the risks faced by Palestinian children in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
According to UNICEF, the number of Palestinian children killed in the months following October 2023 in the West Bank alone increased by 200 percent per month. Since it launched its latest major operation in the West Bank on 21 January, Israel has killed more than 15 boys.
Israel has killed a far greater number of children in Gaza. During the first 17 months of Israel’s genocide, the majority of the 17,400 Palestinian children that have been killed were boys.
This is even more pronounced for Palestinian teens.
Of the Palestinian children killed between the ages of 11-14, roughly 59 percent were boys. It was significantly higher for the 15-17 age group, where boys accounted for 67 percent of the children killed.
Treated as subhuman
The tragic stories behind these figures continued throughout April.
Almost three weeks after Amer Rabee was killed in Turmusaya, 12-year-old Mahmoud Methqal Ali Abu al-Haija was shot and killed by Israeli troops near Jenin.
In Gaza, 11-month old Odeh Ahmad of Nuseirat refugee camp died from malnutrition.
Ahmad Abu al-Rous, a 12-year old child who used a wheelchair, was incinerated by an Israeli missile in April.
Hamza Issa Abu Issa, a 4-year old boy from Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, was decapitated during an Israeli attack that month.
International law provides special protection for children in armed conflict. Children have the recognized right to protection under international humanitarian law and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The convention clearly defines a child as “every human being below the age” of 18 and obligates states to take all feasible measures to protect and care for children. Conflict or the presence of armed groups does not negate the responsibility to protect civilians, including children.
In December 2024, Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, stated that “month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them.”
Callamard added, “Israel has repeatedly argued that its actions in Gaza are lawful and can be justified by its military goal to eradicate Hamas. But genocidal intent can coexist alongside military goals and does not need to be Israel’s sole intent.”
A report by the Israeli group Breaking the Silence reveals that the targeting of Palestinian boys is one aspect of the broader dehumanization of Palestinian lives. Israeli soldiers who invaded Gaza in 2014 reported that soldiers were not issued with rules of engagement.
“They told us they have intelligence that there are practically no civilians remaining in the area, and so if someone comes towards us, that person is a terrorist,” one soldier said.
Another soldier said that “after three weeks in Gaza, during which you’re shooting at anything that moves – and also at what isn’t moving, crazy amounts.”
Shielded by America
Israel has continued this policy of “shooting at anything that moves” over the past 19 months. The policy has been accompanied by Israel’s indiscriminate bombing campaign, which has destroyed or damaged 70 percent of all buildings in Gaza.
Meanwhile, surgeons in Gaza have stated that a large number of children have been killed by Israeli snipers.
The Biden and Trump administrations have shielded Israel from the consequences of its actions.
When he was president, Joe Biden alleged that data on civilian casualties could be false and blocked ceasefire resolutions at the UN Security Council.
Biden rejected the warrants issued by the International Criminal Court for the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Yoav Gallant, formerly the defense minister.
Biden’s successor Donald Trump has continued Washington’s eager support, especially after Israel unilaterally ended the ceasefire that his administration helped broker in March.
The US media have also helped to downplay Israel’s targeting of children. News outlets have often failed to state explicitly that children were killed or jailed by Israel.
Over the past year, the Associated Press has published posts and headlines that refer to dead children as “Palestinian minors” or a “detainee under 18.”
The broadcaster NPR has attempted to defend its use of the term “minors” in reference to children released from Israeli prisons, by claiming “it was the best option available at the time of the reporting.” Greg Myre, NPR’s national security correspondent, has explained, “The Palestinian activists want us to say ‘children’ all the time. The Israelis want us to say ‘terrorists’ all the time. And neither of those words would have been accurate in this case.”
Equating Palestinian children with terrorists is a long-standing Israeli practice. As Achiya Schatz, then a Breaking the Silence representative, explained in 2019, since Palestinians live under Israeli military law a Palestinian child accused of stone throwing will be sent to Israeli military court, where “he is going to be judged by a military court having minimum rights, because we don’t treat him as a person, but as a potential threat as an occupied population.”
Israel is now detaining approximately 400 Palestinian children.
According to Defense for Children International (DCI), Israel systematically arrests children on mere suspicion. DCI reports that Israel is holding more than 110 children in administrative detention without trial or charge in prisons where their rights are violated on a daily basis.
They are subjected to various forms of physical and psychological torture that violate international law.
One of the most prominent cases is Ahmad Manasra. In 2015, Ahmad was arrested at the age of 13 for alleged involvement in stabbing Israelis in occupied East Jerusalem.
Video leaked of Ahmad’s interrogation without a lawyer or parent present. Ahmad was injured and Israeli security officials insulted and intimidated him in an effort to force a confession.
Ahmad was held in solitary confinement for extended periods and now has schizophrenia. No evidence has been provided that he stabbed anyone.
After nearly 10 years in prison, Ahmad was recently released but he was placed under house arrest.
Now aged 23, Ahmad’s home has become a prison. His story embodies those of other Palestinian boys whose childhoods were stolen by the Israeli occupation or were abruptly ended.
Nearly 11 years ago, Israel killed four Palestinian boys running on a beach in Gaza.
But the final tragic image of the Baker boys was only a prelude. It has been replaced by an endless stream of horrific images of grieving parents holding the lifeless bodies of boys that Israel deemed a potential threat.
Dalal Yassine is a non-resident fellow with the Jerusalem Fund/Palestine Center in Washington, DC. The views in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund and Palestine Center.
