29 Children Killed Daily: What Gaza’s Numbers Reveal

29 Children Killed Daily: What Gaza’s Numbers Reveal 2025-03-26T09:22:26-04:00

Children of Gaza
Children represent 31 percent of the martyrs in the Gaza Strip, which total 50,082, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. | Photo by Mohammed Ibrahim on Unsplash

Suffer the little children

The children are our future…except when they’re not.

A few recent news items for your consideration.

15,613 children have been confirmed killed during Israel’s genocidal war

These are named children. That is, these are the children whose corpses could be identified.

Children whose parents named them, whose mothers called them by name to come to dinner. Children whose fathers tucked them in at night. Whose grandma and grandpa spoiled them.

Thousands more children are still missing beneath the rubble of destroyed buildings – schools, hospitals, homes. Others’ bodies will never be found, apparently because they were vaporized by the intensity of Israel’s bombs. Each of them also had a name and a family. They will never know the dignity of being counted; their parents will never know the closure of burial.

Children represent 31 percent of the martyrs in the Gaza Strip, which total 50,082, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. That comes to more than 29 children killed a day. Every day. For five hundred thirty-five days. Paid for with American tax dollars.

Let that keep you up at night.

Israel confirms firing at Red Cross building in Gaza

Israel has confirmed its military accidentally fired at a Red Cross building in southern Gaza, according to a military statement.

“No injuries were reported, but the building was slightly damaged,” the statement said.

“After an investigation, it emerged that the identification was incorrect and that the building belonged to the Red Cross,” the army said. 

Hey, Israeli military: was this an oopsie-daisy? One mistake in seventeen months of war, and you got caught? Or have you been bombing and shelling buildings full of innocents all along, but this time a high-profile occupant survived and tattled on you? How many of the 50,082 people you killed, how many of the 15,613 children you killed, were just oopsie-daisy mistakes?

If Israel truly cared about the lives of innocent Palestinians, it would have stopped this madness months ago (years ago, decades ago), and found a different way to handle the situation, instead of killing 29 Palestinian children a day. Every day. For five hundred thirty-five days.

How is anyone in the world – especially people of faith – sleeping at night while a genocide is going on?


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FEATURED IMAGE: Mohammed Ibrahim via Unsplash

About Kathryn Shihadah
I was raised as a conservative Christian, and was perfectly content to stay that way – until the day my stable, predictable world was rocked. A curtain was pulled back on conservative Christianity, and instead of ignoring the ugliness I saw, I confronted it. I began to ask questions I never thought I'd ask, and found answers I'd never expected. Old things began to fall away, and – behold! – the new me has come. What a gift to be a new, still-evolving creation. I found out that it's better to look at the world through Progressive Lenses, with Grace-Colored Glasses. A little more about me: I've been happily married to my husband for 35 years, and we have 4 grown children. My husband, a Palestinian born in Gaza, has taught me a great deal about the world outside the little white, middle class bubble in which I grew up. I was privileged to live in the Middle East for ten years, where I learned even more about the world, thanks to diverse friendships and extensive travel. For years, I've worked in advocacy for Palestinian justice. The more I learn, the more I see that the Palestinian issue is much like that of other oppressed and demonized groups, both in the past and today. I blog about Palestine at PalestineHome.org. You can read more about the author here.

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