Posted by: John Phoenix
Gaza’s Innocent Martyrs ([graphic])
Hind pleaded for help for hours. Youssef was killed while watching cartoons. Yaqeen wanted to be a YouTube star – and died in a bombing.
Behind the staggering death toll of 17,000 children in Gaza are faces, names, and dreams that will never be realized.
By Sheren Falah Saab, Reposted from Haaretz, June 26, 2025
“Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres as early as November 6, 2023. His statement was harshly criticized by Israel and dismissed as exaggerated by much of the Israeli public and media. In the 21 months since, the number of casualties in Gaza has largely remained on the margins of Israeli media coverage, including the children killed in the war.
In the weeks before the outbreak of war between Israel and Iran, Israel’s media had begun to briefly mention these figures, influenced in part by growing global media attention, which has made the issue harder to ignore. But the Iran war pushed any deeper engagement with the deaths in Gaza far to the margins, worldwide and in Israel.
According to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, 17,121 children were killed in Gaza from the start of the war through to June 15. Of these, 937 were infants under the age of 1. Another 4,517 were between the ages of 1 and 5, 6,325 were aged 6 to 12, and the rest – 5,342 – were minors aged between 13 and 17.
This death toll is almost without precedent, particularly given the population size and the war’s duration. The IDF’s standard response is that it operates in accordance with international law and makes significant efforts to avoid civilian harm.
These are the stories of 28 of the thousands of children who have been killed. They include brothers, sisters, and twins. Seeing their faces and the violently truncated span of their lives, one cannot help but recall Guterres’ remark, made more than 600 days ago.
Father Mohammed had just registered their birth when the twins were killed
