The Systematic Murder of Palestinian Childhood
Israel's targeting of Palestinian children, evidenced by their recent murder of Palestinian-American child, Omar Rabea
Omar Mohammed Rabea was a 14 years old U.S. citizen. On April 7, 2025, he was shot and killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank city of Turmus Ayya. There was no warning. No investigation. Just a bullet, a body, and a silence so deep it threatens to swallow justice whole.
The killing of a child should rupture the world. Instead, Omar's death joined a growing ledger of erased Palestinian lives, tallied but never mourned by those in power. There was no State Department briefing. No congressional statement. No public grieving for a child born under two flags, killed under a third. Even in death, Omar was made stateless.
Since October 2023, at least 17,000 Palestinian children have been killed in Gaza. The UN now confirms that at least 100 children have been killed or injured every single day since Israel resumed its offensive in March 2025. In 36 verified airstrikes, only women and children were found beneath the rubble. Not fighters. Not military targets. Just families.
But this war is not just about death. It is about the systematic erasure of Palestinian life: its rhythms, its generations, its futures. It is, as one UN official warned, the creation of “conditions of life incompatible with the continued existence of Palestinians as a group”.
According to UNICEF, eight infants died of hypothermia in January. Medical personnel report a 300% spike in miscarriages. Children are born premature, malnourished, and die in the first weeks of life. According to Doctors Without Borders, children arrive at hospitals with rotting wounds, dehydrated, skeletal. Aid has been blocked. Water tanks have been bombed. Birth, in Gaza, is a threat Israel answers with airstrikes.
Israel has turned two-thirds of Gaza into a no-go zone. There is no electricity. No medicine. No clean water. The siege does not just kill. It prevents life from beginning.
And yet, those who survive the bombs are hunted by other means.
But Israel’s violence against children is not new. In the West Bank, the violence is personal, intimate. Children are executed at checkpoints. Raids enter homes at night. Human Rights Watch has documented numerous killings of Palestinian children who posed no threat, shot in the back, in the chest, while running, while walking to school in their 2023 report.
Seventeen-year-old Mahmoud al-Sadi was gunned down on his way to class in Jenin. He was unarmed. A military vehicle 100 meters away fired a single shot. There were no clashes nearby. No justification. Just another morning turned into a funeral.
Wadea Abu Ramuz, 17, was shot in the back during a protest in East Jerusalem. After being taken to a hospital in critical condition, he was shackled to the bed, denied family visits, and later buried at night under police supervision, with mourners limited and phones confiscated.
Fifteen-year-old Adam Ayyad, from Deheisheh refugee camp, was killed by a sniper while throwing stones. No warning shots. No effort at de-escalation. Just live fire into a crowd of boys.
What unites Gaza and the West Bank is the intent: to punish Palestinians for existing. To eliminate not only those who resist but those who could one day resist. In this logic, every child is a potential threat. And so, Israel’s campaign includes the detention of over 1,200 Palestinian children since October 2023, children who are tortured, starved, and held without charges. One of them, 17-year-old Walid Ahmad, who recently died in Israeli custody. His crime? Being Palestinian in a land where that alone warrants execution.
International law is unambiguous: civilians must be protected. Children, especially. The Geneva Conventions prohibit attacks on schools and hospitals. The Convention on the Rights of the Child guarantees life and dignity. But law means little when it is not enforced, when the violator is armed with impunity and backed by billions.
The U.S. funds Israel’s military to the tune of $3.8 billion a year. The bombs that collapse Gaza’s homes are American. The bullets that pierced Omar Rabea’s chest are American. And still, there is no accountability. No consequence. Only more weapons, more blank checks, more diplomatic cover.
To kill a child is to erase a future. When a child dies, a world ends. This is not just about bodies. It is about memory. About denying Palestinians the right to imagine tomorrow. What is left of a people who cannot bury their dead, teach their children, or name their grief?
Israel knows this. It bombs archives and universities. It targets schools and hospitals not just because they house people, but because they carry meaning. A population deprived of memory and future is easier to govern. Easier to erase.
But Omar Rabea did not move on. He died in the place his parents had hoped he would come to know as home. He died a child of war and empire, killed for no reason other than being Palestinian. If even American citizenship cannot protect a 14-year-old boy, what protection exists for anyone?
This is not about Hamas. This is not about security. This is about annihilation. A future where Palestinian children are denied the most basic right: to live. We must reject the narrative that flattens this genocide into “conflict.” We must say plainly that what is happening is the deliberate destruction of a people - and it begins with their children.
Omar had a name. He had a smile. He was loved. He was real. And now, he is gone. We owe him more than silence.
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