No, Israel doesn’t enjoy killing children — and you should be ashamed for saying it.
Israel is not the side that made child death a war strategy. We are the ones trying to stop it, while the world ties our hands and lectures us on the perversion of “morality.”
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On Monday, Far-Left politician Yair Golan — a new entrant into Israeli politics, perhaps desperate for political points from his miniscule, deranged, extremist base — accused Israel of killing babies in Gaza “as a hobby.”
Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (who was convicted in 2014 for bribery, obstruction of justice, and breach of trust, and served nearly 17 months in prison) then claimed that what Israel “is doing now in Gaza is very close to a war crime.”
And United Nations humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher told the BBC this week that “14,000 babies in Gaza could die within the next two days unless aid can reach them.”1 (The UN since walked back this assessment.)
These are three of the out-of-touch, extreme Left-wing individuals feeding antisemites across the world their favorite meal: the grotesque lie that Israelis pride themselves in killing Palestinian children.
I faced a similar sentiment from a childhood American friend, who, just days after the October 7th massacres, wrote to me in response to Israel’s military response: “No one likes seeing dead Palestinian children.”
No sh*t, Sherlock. You’ll find very few Israelis, Zionists, or Jews anywhere cheering such images.
But if you want to talk honestly about suffering, war, and morality, then we’re going to need more than platitudes and crocodile tears.
Take it from Gadi Ezra, an IDF reservist. He said it better than I could:
“None of us consider killing a hobby. This is a factual statement. Not just moral, not just legal, not just informative. This is the simple truth. Civilians who are killed on the battlefield. This is part of the terrible phenomenon called war.”
“The permission for this, by the way, was not determined in Jerusalem. It was defined in the Geneva Conventions. In the polished legal language, it is called 'incidental damage.' And when it happens in front of you, it is tragic. It is difficult. It is horrifying. But it certainly does not provide pleasure.”2
Let that sink in.
The war in Gaza is not a video game. It’s not a Netflix drama where the characters respawn next season. It’s a brutal, urban counterinsurgency operation against a terrorist army embedded in homes, schools, hospitals, mosques, and “humanitarian organization” infrastructure — by design. Hamas has openly declared that their strategy depends on civilians dying to turn world opinion against Israel.
And it’s working. Not because it’s true, but because much of the world, including some Israelis desperate for applause from Western “progressive” salons, is eager to believe it.
Let’s be clear: No country in the history of warfare has done more than Israel to avoid civilian casualties while fighting an enemy so committed to maximizing them.
Precision airstrikes. Warning leaflets. Roof-knocking (which the Israelis invented out of extraordinary empathy). Humanitarian corridors. Evacuation maps. Phone calls. Text messages. Drone surveillance. These are not the tactics of a bloodthirsty regime. They are the painful protocols of a democratic army trying to protect its citizens and its conscience.
And guess what? The data proves it. According to open-source intelligence and analysis by military experts, the ratio of combatants to civilians killed in this war is among the lowest in any modern conflict. That’s not in spite of the difficulty of fighting Hamas in dense urban terrain; it’s because of the IDF’s moral code, its training, and the ethos of a nation that does not want war, but refuses to live at the mercy of genocidal neighbors.
This is not to diminish the pain of Palestinian parents who have lost children. Their grief is real. But grief and guilt are not the same thing. And emotional pornography — photos of bloody toddlers weaponized for propaganda — does not constitute proof of Israeli war crimes. It constitutes proof of Hamas’ war strategy.
There is only one party in this war that glories in child death: Hamas. They strap bombs to 15-year-olds. They teach preschoolers that martyrdom is glorious. They built a vast military tunnel network — not to shield civilians, but instead of shielding civilians. The tunnels protect their fighters. The civilians are there to die, on camera, preferably with an Israeli tank in the background.
This is not a moral equivalence. It’s moral inversion. And when so-called “human rights” advocates blame the democracy rather than the death cult, they abandon any serious commitment to human rights.
You don’t fight genocidal jihadists by handing out snacks, giving TED Talks, or pleading for peace while they reload. You fight them with force. Reluctant, precise, painful, and sometimes tragic force.
The line that “Israel targets children” is not just a lie; it’s an old one. It has been repeated in every war Israel has fought since its founding. It was said in Jenin. In Lebanon. In Operation Cast Lead. In Operation Protective Edge. In Operation Guardian of the Walls. In Operation Iron Swords. Now, again, in Operation Gideon’s Chariots.
And every time, the facts catch up to the libel. But by then, the damage is done. Jews are attacked in London, Sydney, and New York. Israel is cast as a god-awful pariah state. Synagogues are targeted. People die.
Those who peddle this lie — whether with slogans, tweets, or disingenuous condemnations from political perches — are complicit in that violence. Because if you convince the world that the Jewish state delights in murder, then all bets are off.
That’s not criticism. That’s demonization. And it has an all-too-familiar name: antisemitism.
I’m not suggesting that Israel’s wartime strategy and execution have been pristinely perfect. (Has any country’s, ever?) War is messy, complicated, and deeply political. But Israel didn’t start this war; Hamas and its patrons did.
So, let’s say it plainly, without apology: No one is happy about Palestinian children (and Palestinians in general) suffering. But we are not the ones who made child death a war strategy. We are the ones trying to stop it, while the world ties our hands and lectures us on the perversion of “morality.”
And, let’s ask ourselves a serious question: Why is there a tendency in Western discourse to infantilize Palestinian society, as if its people, especially its parents, are mere victims of circumstance with no agency, no accountability, and no role in shaping the next generation.
Here’s a radical idea: Palestinian parents are like parents everywhere. They ought to love their children. They want them to grow up healthy, happy, and safe. And they also have agency. They make choices. They raise their children with certain values. They pass down narratives, foster expectations, and enforce norms.
So it matters, deeply, when a society normalizes antisemitism, glorifies martyrdom, and turns kindergartens into boot camps for jihad. It matters when kids are taught to aspire not to life, but to “death for Allah.” It matters when cartoons, schoolbooks, and summer camps dehumanize Jews and sanctify violence. Because children don’t radicalize themselves.
This doesn’t mean that every Palestinian parent supports Hamas. Many don’t. But enough do (or at least tolerate a society that enables it) that it becomes impossible to separate private sorrow from public responsibility.
And here’s another painful truth: Israel is not responsible for how Palestinian parents raise their children. Israel did not write the textbooks that glorify suicide bombers. Israel did not train children to crawl through tunnels with toy rifles. Israel did not create a culture that uses children as human shields, photo ops, and propaganda tools. That culture was created in Ramallah, Gaza, and Doha — not in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.
It is not Israel’s job to raise the children of Gaza. That responsibility lies with their parents, their communities, and the leaders they elect or submit to. The idea that Israelis must somehow fight a terrorist organization while also parenting the children of their enemies is not only absurd; it’s inhumane.
And maybe, just maybe, it’s time we say out loud what many are afraid to admit: not all cultures want the same things for their children.
Western liberals cling to the fantasy that every parent, everywhere, dreams of sending their kids to college, buying them a house, and watching them grow old. But that’s not universally true. There are cultures, like the one Hamas cultivates, where the highest aspiration for a child is not life, but death in service of “the cause.” Where martyrdom posters hang in classrooms. Where playgrounds are named after mass murderers. Where children are taught to hate before they can read.
Pretending that “everyone just wants the same thing” may make us feel good, but it’s not a all-inclusive statement; it’s a denial of reality. If we actually care about Palestinian children, then we must stop romanticizing a society that offers them up to die and start demanding better from the adults who are raising them to do just that.
Palestinian children deserve better. But that better future won’t come from blaming Israel. It will come from Palestinian adults making different choices — for peace, for dignity, and for life. Until then, the moral burden lies where it belongs: not with Israel, but with those who have turned children into weapons, and grief into strategy.
You cannot cry over dead children while allowing your leaders to sacrifice them for political theater. You cannot claim innocence while cheering massacres. You cannot glorify the murder of Israeli babies on October 7th, remove posters of kidnapped Israeli children on Western streets, and then demand tears for Palestinian children when Israel responds.
Palestinian children deserve better. But that future depends not just on Israel laying down its arms. It depends on Palestinian society laying down its hate.
Until that happens, no amount of ceasefires or condemnations will change the fundamental truth: Peace begins at home, with what children are taught to love, and what they’re taught to hate.
To those who genuinely care about children — Israeli, Palestinian, or otherwise — the answer is simple: Help defeat Hamas. Help dismantle the machinery of jihadist death. Help build a future where children are taught to live, not to die.
Until then, spare us the sanctimony. We cry for their dead, but we fight for our living.
“UN humanitarian chief warns of baby deaths in Gaza.” BBC.
“אני במילואים בזמן מלחמה. תחביב זה לא.” Ynet News.
It shocks me that there are Jews--Israeli Jews!--who would say such lies. I can't think of why they want to hurt themselves and Israel in the process. Why, oh, why?
People who speak about Israeli atrocities are either ignorant or malicious or both.