‘The essence of childhood has been destroyed’: How Israel deliberately targeted Palestinian children

Here’s what the UN report says.

There is now a UN imprimatur on a truth that has been witnessed non-stop over the past 32 months: the Israelis have deliberately targeted children as a central part of their ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip.

“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,” the 94-page report by the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, concluded.

“The killings continued even after the October 2025 ceasefire,” the report, titled “The essence of childhood has been destroyed”: Israel’s deliberate targeting of Palestinian children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 7 October 2023, added. “After October 2025, children continued being killed and injured in various circumstances, including when approaching the so-called ‘yellow line’, indicating Israel’s flagrant disregard of the terms of the ceasefire.”

20,179 children killed

According to the report, over a period of two years, from the start of the genocide on October 7, 2023, until October 7, 2025, “at least 20,179 children were killed and 44,143 children were injured as a direct result of the hostilities in Gaza, constituting 30 percent of those killed and 26 percent of those injured during this period.”

Of these, “At least 5,031 children under [the age of] five years were killed during this period, of whom 1,029 children were under the age of one, and some 420 were newborns.”

Furthermore, according to an estimate by Save the Children, around 5,160 children are believed to be buried under the rubble.

The report highlighted that the Israelis kept targeting Palestinian children during brief lulls in the fighting in the Gaza Strip. “In one example, on 18 March 2025, the pause was ended by Israel by launching waves of airstrikes across Gaza without prior warning, killing at least 170 children by mid-day,” it said.

“Between 18 and 31 March 2025, airstrikes, bombardments and ground operations by the Israeli security forces killed at least 322 children and injured 609 children, amounting to killing or injuring at least 100 Palestinian children per day in a span of two weeks alone.” [Emphasis added.]

Children with ‘polytrauma’ and disabilities

The report discusses Palestinian children suffering from “polytrauma” — which it describes as “multiple traumas impacting multiple body parts at once, such as bone fractures, significant soft tissue damage, brain and spine injuries, nerve and organ damage and perforating wounds” — as a result of Israeli savagery.

It details the story of a family in Sheikh Radwan where a family of 30 was brutally attacked, killing the parents in front of the children and severely harming the children.

One five-year-old survivor had had his intestines reinserted using diapers and tape:

Moreover, there are children whose internal injuries are not visible from the outside, making it extremely difficult to understand the true extent of their suffering:

[C]hildren have suffered internal damage, including organ rupture, contusions and internal bleeding, but without any external sign on the bodies, which made it harder for medical personnel to recognise the cause of injury or death and the true extent of the harm.

Children have been losing their eyesight as a result of Israeli barbarism:

48 percent of vision impairment cases were caused by traumatic injuries that were undiagnosed, untreated and irreversible.

And the constant bombings have been shattering their eardrums:

Children have been experiencing sensorineural hearing loss due to constant exposure to “ear-shattering sounds” from explosions and shelling as well as direct injuries. As of June 2025, an estimated 10,000 children in Gaza have hearing loss, with 5,000 experiencing severe hearing loss, primarily due to injuries, making them unable to hear evacuation orders or warnings about attacks.

Limb amputations have become extremely common:

Within the first three months of the Israeli attacks (October-December 2023), UNICEF reported that over 1,000 children had one or more of their limbs amputated. In December 2024, the UN Secretary General declared that Gaza had “the highest number of children amputees per capita anywhere in the world — many losing limbs and undergoing surgeries without even anaesthesia.”

And there has been a disproportionate rise in the number of children with disabilities:

[B]etween 7 October 2023 and 3 September 2025, at least 21,000 children were made newly disabled in Gaza and approximately 40,500 children suffered “war-related injuries.”

Deliberate targeting of children

The report asserts that the Israelis have consistently targeted Palestinian children during their genocidal assault in the Gaza Strip:

The Commission has investigated and documented cases demonstrating a consistent pattern of children being deliberately targeted by the Israeli security forces in Gaza. These include cases of children being shot while trying to evacuate with their families and in places of refuge such as displacement camps, food distribution sites or other locations across Gaza.

The report highlights the widely reported case of 5-year-old Hind Rajab, who was brutally murdered with six family members, including four other children. Two paramedics sent to rescue Hind were also murdered by the Israelis.

Killing of a 15-year-old boy holding white flag

It tells the story of a family that was evacuating their home in Khan Yunis at around 8:30 am on January 24, 2024 after being ordered by the Israelis to do so. A 15-year-old boy stepped out of the house with a white flag, but he was immediately killed by the Israelis. As his 20-year-old brother went out to check on him, the Israelis killed him too.

His 15-year-old son stepped out of the house holding a white cloth, when the father, who was inside the house, heard a gunshot from the eastern side where Israeli soldiers were located. The boy was hit in the left foot, and he fell on his face. As he attempted to stand, two more gunshots were fired within seconds from the same direction. One shot hit the boy on his back and another on the left side of his neck. Seeing this, the boy’s 20-year-old brother ran towards him and was also shot on the left side of his chest. He collapsed on top of his younger brother.

The Israelis then shot at the boys’ parents when they tried to rescue the corpses, forcing them to leave their neighbourhood without their sons’ bodies. The father later found out about the eventual fate of his sons:

In early March 2024, he learned that two days after the incident, an ambulance arrived to retrieve his sons’ bodies. To date, the family is unaware where the bodies are buried.

Shooting of a 10-day-old baby

The report documents the deliberate shooting of a 10-day-old boy while he was being breastfed by his mother inside a tent. The baby survived but suffers from seizures.

On 12 April 2024 at 13:00, a 10-day-old baby boy was shot by a quadcopter while being breastfed by his mother inside their tent in Nuseirat camp. The mother was alone in the tent, breastfeeding her baby, when a single bullet from a quadcopter hit the baby in the head and exited through the back of his head, hitting the pillow behind her. The baby survived but sustained brain injuries and now suffers from seizures.

Testimonies from medical professionals

Citing testimonies from 17 medical practitioners, the commission recorded “a consistent pattern of receiving children with single gunshot wounds either by quadcopters or snipers.”

It suggests precise targeting of children:

The killing of a child from a single gunshot wound indicates a high degree of precision in the use of force, suggesting that the shot was carefully aimed rather than incidental or the result of indiscriminate fire. In such cases, this pattern is indicative of the deliberate targeting of the child victim, particularly where the circumstances do not point to crossfire or other conditions of hostilities.

The report lists several examples of children being shot directly in the head and in their private parts:

In one example, two 16-years-old female cousins were brought to a hospital, each with a single shot fired to their heads. An accompanying family member told the treating doctor that the girls were shot by a quadcopter while they were attending a wedding ceremony in a tent in Khan Younis in August 2024. The girls died shortly after arriving at the hospital.

[A] 14-year-old boy arrived dead at the Nasser Medical Complex in August 2024, with small pellets lodged in his chest and pelvis. According to the doctor, the small, cube-shaped pellets created a tunneling-like effect impacting multiple internal organs and causing a ‘cardiac tamponade’ and a ‘spraying out’ effect, which penetrated deep into the body and caused haemorrhage to the boy’s internal organs … They concluded that the boy likely died because of hypovolemic shock, haemorrhage, and pulmonary and vascular injuries owing to the pellets hitting major arteries in the body.

The Commission documented another case where an eight-year-old boy arrived at the Al-Aqsa Hospital with a single gunshot wound to his buttock.

Furthermore:

The Commission also received reports of an additional 168 children (98 boys, 53 girls and 17 unknown, age ranging from 10 weeks to 16 years) who suffered gunshot wounds between 9 November 2023 and 16 July 2025. Of the 168 children, at least 88 children were killed as a result of gunshots.

Designating Palestinian children as ‘terrorists’

The Israeli leadership — and the general Israeli population — has repeatedly emphasised that it sees no difference between Palestinian resistance fighters and the children of Gaza. The report notes that “Palestinian children in Gaza have been explicitly depicted as ‘terrorists’ by Israeli officials in their speeches, statements and rhetoric in the Israeli Knesset, media and social media.”

Nissim Vaturi, deputy speaker of the Knesset, was categorical about the targeting of Palestinian children, when he declared: “Gaza is full of terrorists and every child born there is already a terrorist, from the moment of his birth.”

The report cites several such statements from Israeli leaders that, according to the report, paved the way for their genocidal army to wreak havoc since October 7.

Here are just some of the examples from the report:

In July 2024, Israeli Knesset Member Amit Halevi stated that 300 Palestinian babies in the maternity ward of the besieged Al Shifa Hospital are “all born terrorists”.

Moshe Feiglin, a far-right politician and former Likud member of the Israeli Knesset, in an interview with Israel’s Channel 14 in May 2025, said: “Every child, every baby in Gaza is an enemy. The enemy is not Hamas, and it is not Hamas’ military wing... Every child in Gaza is the enemy. We need to conquer Gaza and colonize it and not leave a single Gazan child there. There is no other victory.”

On 16 October 2023 a member of Knesset, Merav Ben-Ari, contended in the parliament that “There is no equality with Gazan children [compared to Israeli children]. Children in Gaza brought [their own killing] on themselves.”

The report asserts that these statements from the political leadership appear to have directly contributed to the occupation forces’ barbaric behaviour against Palestinian children: “The Israeli security forces appear to have been influenced by rhetoric of Israeli politicians and officials portraying all Palestinians as legitimate targets, a mindset that has filtered through the Israeli army’s ranks.”

The killings of children have also escalated in the West Bank since October 2023. Similar political rhetoric has accompanied the brutal slaughter of Palestinian children in the occupied territory, where the report recorded the killing of 213 children over two years, starting October 7, 2023.

It details the killing of several children, including that of a two-year-old girl who was shot to death on the dinner table:

On 25 January 2025, at around 20:30, in Muthallath Al-Shuhada, south of Jenin, a two-year-old girl was shot in the back of her head while she was having dinner with her family and died immediately.

It tells the story of an occupation soldier shooting a 10-year-old and telling his grief-stricken father:

“I am the one who shot your son. God willing, he will die.”

The boy died on February 7, 2025, ten days after being shot by the Israeli.

Sexual and gender-based violence against children

The Israelis have also subjected Palestinian children to deplorable sexual violence, scarring them for life. “Palestinian boys have been photographed and filmed in humiliating and degrading circumstances while subjected to acts of a sexual nature, including forced public nudity,” the report states.

In this depravity, female Israeli soldiers have also been gleeful participants, forcing Palestinian boys to strip and dance naked for them:

One witness described how a female Israeli soldier in Gaza ordered two teenage boys who had been stripped to their underwear to dance in front of other detainees and recorded a video of them dancing while she was laughing.

Such footage of Palestinian boys stripped naked by the Israelis has been widely shared on Israeli social media channels, much to the delight of their depraved compatriots:

Photos and videos of mass arrests in Gaza appeared on social media, depicting boys detained in their undergarments in large groups in open air. Most of the footage was first published on Israeli text messaging groups and later disseminated on a popular social media platform.

The Israelis did not spare the girls, forcing them to strip in public and sexually harassing them:

In another case investigated by the Commission, girls were subjected to forced public nudity along with other family members while trying to evacuate through Salah al-Din street. A male witness reported that a teenage girl aged around 17-years-old, among several women, was stripped to her underwear and subjected to sexual harassment by the Israeli soldiers.

Such cases of sexual abuse against Palestinian girls have also been recorded in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem:

In a case from East Jerusalem, a 14-year-old girl was reportedly searched and subjected to sexual assault when passing by the Bab Al Zahera Police station, on her way to a school. A soldier ordered her to stop and then threw the content of her bag on the ground and dragged her to a nearby location that did not have surveillance cameras. Two soldiers reportedly touched her on her breasts, neck and waist. When she asked for a female soldier to do the search, she was slapped by one of the soldiers who also made sexual remarks and said, “you are murderers”.

The Israelis have also been raping Palestinian children in their rape and torture dungeons:

One boy reported being raped on more than one occasion by different guards. A 15-year-old boy reported being threatened with rape. The Commission was also informed that sexual threats and gendered insults were frequently used by Israeli guards against detained children.

The report described sexual violence against Palestinian children as “not exceptional but a systematic, state-enabled assault on their bodies and their dignity and deliberately meted out to cause humiliation.”

Attacks on orphanages

Apart from destroying schools and children’s hospitals, the Israelis have also targeted orphanages in the Gaza Strip to deprive the children — whose parents they have killed — of even basic facilities to grow up in. During just the first two years of the Israeli genocide, “an estimated 58,554 children lost one or both parents, and between 17,000 and 18,000 children were unaccompanied or separated from their parents.”

Due to the destruction of Biblical proportions wrought by the Israelis, thousands of children in Gaza have been separated from their relatives. “Children in Gaza have found themselves separated from their families, alone and unaccompanied,” the report states. “Some children were separated during attacks and hospitalized alone or were being cared for by strangers.”

The barbaric assault forced Palestinians into writing the children’s names on their bodies for the purpose of identification in case of martyrdom:

Reportedly, in some cases, parents had written children’s names on their bodies so that, if the children died, they would not die nameless and, if the parents died, the children would be identified.

The report cites several attacks on orphanages, housing hundreds of orphans:

• In one case, on 2 October 2024 the Israeli security forces attacked the Al-Amal orphanage in Al-Wehda Street in Gaza City. According to one witness, at the time of the incident the orphanage was housing 143 orphans, including 62 boys and 81 girls, and approximately 3,000 displaced people, including hundreds of displaced children. At around 12:45, the orphanage was bombed, killing nine people, including four children, and injuring 11 adults.

• In another incident, the Commission documented damage sustained to the Mubarrat Al Rehmat orphanage that housed more than 20 orphans, including 12 orphans with disabilities, such as cerebral palsy, blindness or multiple impairments.

Starving children to death

The Israeli campaign to starve all Palestinians in Gaza had a devastating effect on children. July 2025 was the deadliest month in Gaza, as 24 children under five died of malnutrition. By the start of October 2025, UNICEF reported 151 child deaths from malnutrition.

The report states that nearly 95,000 children were identified as having acute malnutrition in 2025. Approximately 320,000 children under five were considered at risk of malnutrition, with roughly 100,000 requiring specialised treatment for wasting, as of December 2025.

Despite the supposed ceasefire of October 2025, the Israelis have prevented the necessary aid from entering Gaza, leading to catastrophic consequences as “nearly the entire Gaza population remains in emergency food insecurity.”

And this will continue to have reverberations:

Projections further indicate that, from December 2025 through mid-October 2026, nearly 101,000 children aged six to 59 months are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition, including over 31,000 severe cases.

This prolonged malnutrition has led to several health complications among Gaza’s children, including diarrhoea, fatigue, severe changes in the skin, hair and teeth, and a weakened immune system.

Mental harm to children

The genocidal Israeli assault on Gaza has meant that nearly all of Gaza’s surviving children are in need of mental health and psychosocial support for depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.

“Multiple sources have reported that children talk about death and dying, with suicidal thoughts being common among children,” the report says. “A nurse told the Commission that in Tal al Sultan clinic she saw a teenage boy who attempted suicide by drinking a chemical agent.”

Children in the besieged enclave are showing all sorts of trauma responses:

Many medical reports have indicated that children in Gaza have been exhibiting acute trauma responses, including pervasive sense of fear, frozenness, mutism, convulsions, confusion, loss of bladder control and fear of various stimuli, such as loud noises.

However, due to the wholesale destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure, there are few options left for these children to access the necessary care they need. As a result, the report estimates that these children “will likely suffer from lasting psychological impact of enduring prolonged traumatic conditions, resulting in psychological and epigenetic transmission of this trauma affecting future generations.”

Legal findings

The commission asserts that the “Israeli security forces have intentionally killed Palestinian children through airstrikes on densely populated residential areas using high payload munitions and weapons with wide-area impact, and through direct targeting of children.” It concludes that the mass killings of “children in such high numbers were intentional.”

The commission found that Israeli security forces had committed war crimes against Palestinian children and war crimes affecting them. It also concluded that the Israelis had committed crimes against humanity, noting “a clear pattern of the Israeli security forces intentionally targeting Palestinian children in Gaza.”

The commission further concluded that the Israeli security forces have been committing an act of genocide in Gaza:

Israeli security forces have committed and are continuing to commit four categories of underlying acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinian group, as such. Three of those four categories are especially relevant to children, namely (i) killing members of the group; (ii) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; and (iii) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

Israel did not respond to any of the commission’s 13 requests for information or access.

---

I’ve never put up a paywall, but this newsletter wouldn’t be possible without your support. If you are able, please consider supporting my work with a paid subscription here, on Ko-fi, or on Patreon. You can also buy me a coffee or two at the link below. Thank you!

---