Yossi Schwartz ISL ( RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine), 18.06.2024
This article is based on an article by Intercept, a very good investigative journalism newspaper. While most of the time we have written about the war on Gaza, it is essential to deal also with the killing of children in the West Bank by the Zionist air force that began in June 2023.
With 37 bombings, helicopter gunship attacks, or drone strikes, the military’s air can’t do that in the West Bank; the Palestinian resistance is using the civilians as living shields. Here, they justify the murder of children by claiming that the children are terrorists.
“An open-source Intercept investigation documented at least 37 Israeli airstrikes, drone strikes, and attacks by helicopter gunships in the West Bank since June 2023. Most attacks struck densely populated urban areas and refugee camps in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nablus, all in the northern part of the West Bank, the part Israel intends to annex.
Some of the children killed were throwing homemade explosives at Israeli troops or were close to armed men when they were killed. Many were unarmed and uninvolved in any confrontations. Their ages ranged from 11 to 17.
The determination of whether children were killed in the attacks is based on publicly available information and documentation gathered by Defense for Children International-Palestine. The Israeli military did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the findings of this investigation.
Many of these strikes are part of a broader Israeli campaign of targeted killings: assassinations of individuals by Israeli forces that, despite the name, often kill people who happen to be near the target at the time of the strike. Targeted killings and these aerial attacks are violations of international law.
Ashraf Morad Mahmoud Al-Sa’di, 15, was killed by a drone strike — the first fatal strike documented in the West Bank since the Second Intifada.
After October 7, however, the pace of the airstrikes accelerated. Eight children, ages 11 to 17, were among over a dozen people killed in a series of drone, helicopter, and plane attacks on Jenin and the Nur Shams refugee camp late that October. In November, four children, ages 12 to 16, were killed over the course of seven drone strikes across the West Bank. On December 12, a strike killed a 17-year-old who was standing near three armed men.
Some of the children killed in the first months of airstrikes were described as armed or throwing homemade explosives at Israeli soldiers carrying out raids into the West Bank, according to DCI-P documentation. In other cases, what the children were doing in the moments before their death is unclear and could not be confirmed by DCI-P. But in the last days of 2023, two children — unarmed, uninvolved — were also targeted and killed by an Israeli drone strike. Thus, some of the children were armed with Molotov cocktails used in defense of their neighborhood. Some stood close to armed men, and many were killed simply because they were Palestinians.”
Why are the Zionists killing so many children? In Gaza, they killed around 15000 children. It is part of the Nakba II. In every war against the Palestinians, Israel is committing ethnic cleansing or at least an attempt at ethnic cleansing. As long as Israel exists, it will continue to kill and force out Palestinians from their country. That is why, for the Palestinians to live, the Zionist state must die.
The Zionist monster must be destroyed!
For Palestine red and free from the river to the sea!
Endnotes:
[1] https://theintercept.com/2024/06/12/israel-west-bank-airstrikes-drones-palestinians-killed-children/