Ten Palestinian Children Israel Doesn't Want You to See
“Control begins with awareness,” the hypnotist says, and my eyes widen. I’m not asleep yet. It takes three or four episodes before anything clicks, but I want you to understand that awareness becomes control, collective control of our lives.
I go in phases with my insomnia. Sometimes I write, clean, and cook at night like an owl, carried by the silence of the house. Other times I pray and meditate, unsure if anyone is listening, unsure if my mind can be rewired while this genocide continues. It’s the loneliest feeling, though maybe now it has become the least lonely, because Israel has caused this pain to the world collectively. We are all awake in the dark, mourning.
I’m back to sleep hypnosis again. it’s meditation wrapped in a podcast, where the hypnotist finds ways to leave me smirking or rolling my eyes. He talks about recording in Dubai, a white man with a British accent describes Dubai, but never Palestine. They like that contained, gift-wrapped part of the Arab world. Anything rawer, anything closer to the wound, they cannot tolerate mentioning. They live in a bubble. How nice.
They want to believe this Zionist savagery is contained in Gaza. But it is not. It is genocide against Palestinian children. We see it, 24/7 in HD.
Three years later, the UN finally caught up and issued reports admitting that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinian children. A 250% escalation in the West Bank, with one child murdered every two days. One classroom of children slaughtered daily in Gaza. I stopped counting after the second year. You did too, didn’t you?
The report documents the systematic slaughter. Paragraph 354:
“Israel has targeted Palestinian children in Gaza in two distinct ways, directly by shooting at their vital organs using precision weapons such as quadcopters and snipers; and through use of high impact weapons causing widespread and systematic attacks on residential buildings, schools, and displacement camps crowded with children.”
And for those who survive, the violence is designed to maim. Paragraph 357:
“Israeli attacks in Gaza have created a new generation of Palestinian children who will now face a lifetime of disability. Disability among Palestinian children has ceased to be an individual medical condition and has now become a defining demographic reality, a cohort of Palestinians growing up without one or more limbs, with chronic pain, and visible and invisible scars.”
They are not collateral damage, even though the headlines list them as such. They are being deliberately murdered by the Zionist state. And before I tell you how they were killed, I want you to carry their names long enough to feel what the world refuses to feel. Hold them not as scrolling numbers, but as proof. Pause on the ages stolen, because those ages carry the full weight of what was taken.
Mohammad Ahmad al-Khatib was eight weeks old, nursing in his mother’s arms in a displacement tent in Al-Mawasi, when an airstrike obliterated their shelter. The blast murdered his mother and tore through his body, forcing the amputation of his leg. He is the child the UN describes as a newborn robbed of his mother and his limb, disability is his life sentence before he could walk.
Reem Nabhan was three and her brother Tariq was five when they were killed together in an airstrike. Their grandfather’s grief broke open into a phrase that went viral: “Rouh al Rouh,” soul of my soul. Two souls, deeply loved, erased by the Zionist occupation. He whispered those words over her body, and the world moved on.
Sam Fahd Abu Haikal was seven months old in a car in Hebron when soldiers opened fire, a bullet going through his father’s hand and striking Sam in the face. The Zionist occupation forces claimed the car was a threat. Sam was murdered in the West Bank, and this is why this genocide is not confined to Gaza.
Hind Rajab was six, trapped in a bullet-riddled car after Israeli fire killed her relatives. Terrified, she called the Palestine Red Crescent Society and stayed on the phone as drones and tanks closed in around her. The ambulance was targeted and all six paramedics were killed. When they reached her car, Hind was dead with 335 bullets.
Aser and Aysel Abu Al-Qumsan were three days old when their father stepped out to register their births. While he was gone, an airstrike hit their home, killing his wife, his mother-in-law, and the twins. He returned with their birth certificates to find them annihilated. They were handed death certificates on the same day they were brought into the world.
Amna Ashraf al-Mufti was eleven years old trying to survive with no water and her family trapped near Kamal Adwan Hospital. She fetched water from the courtyard, and leaked video shows her running until a drone missile kills her. She was unarmed and simply trying to survive when she was executed.
Eileen Mohammed Eid had her name written on her cheek, a Palestinian tradition of protecting our children during the genocide. Israeli warplanes bombed her home, and the strike killed her, leaving behind an image of her small face, marked by her name, now lifeless.
Naeem and Wissam Abu Anza were five-month-old twins, a miracle blessing for parents who had spent over a decade trying through IVF to conceive them. They were sleeping in their home in Rafah when an Israeli airstrike hit, killing the twins, their father, and twelve other family members. A mother who waited ten years to hold her babies was left holding their tiny, shrouded bodies.
The nine children of Dr. Alaa and Dr. Hamdi Al-Najjar had a mother who was a pediatrician and a father who was a doctor. While their mother was at work saving lives, an airstrike targeted their home, killing nine of their children: Yahya, Rakan, Ruslan, Gibran, Eve, Rivan, Sedin, Luqman, and Sidra, ranging from six months to twelve years old. The tenth child, Adam, was severely injured, and their father later died from his wounds. A family of healers was decimated.
Saddam Rajab was ten years old and lived in Kafr al-Labad in the occupied West Bank. During an occupation military raid on his town, he stepped outside to make a phone call. CCTV footage captured him being shot in the back by an Israeli soldier. He bled from a stomach wound, fought for his life in a hospital, and then died. A child making a phone call, executed by an occupying army in his own neighborhood.
I could go on. Thousands and thousands more, each murder case documented. A 250 percent increase in the West Bank. A generation of amputees in Gaza. The Lancet estimates over 75,000 Palestinians killed in just the first 16 months. Nearly half of them were children.
The hypnotist tells me to let go, to relax, to drift off. But how do we relax when we are awakened by this genocide, funded and armed by US and EU tax money. Our money.
You just read ten cases of Palestinian children deliberately targeted by the Zionist state. You know there are thousands more.
Control begins with awareness and you have it now. You have read their names, their ages and now the awareness is yours to inform your action, because collective control of our lives starts with refusing to look away.
Devastating 💔 I remember every one of these losses and hold the children and their loved ones in my heart.
It is a beyond imagination brutal Palestinian slaughter holocaust never seen human history! Nuremberg Now!