Hide behind kids or just hide the kids  

We read and hear incessantly about Hamas human shields or Hamas terrorists hiding behind kids.  I have also suggested an alternative way Hamas could fight without using human shields (see my TOI post:   https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/hamas-human-shields/  )  

But in this post, I want to discuss the other side of this issue:  how some Israeli advocates hide the Gazan kids.  By this I mean that many Israeli discussions of Gazans and the Israeli response, punishment, and retribution avoid any discussion of the kids.  Some Israel supporters and politicians make statements such as “all Gazans are guilty”, “drop an atom bomb on Gaza”, “expel them all to Sinai”, “they are animals”, and “there are no innocents in Gaza”. 

I suggest that all these statements hide the kids (over 800,000 Gazans are under age 15).  These statements envision, imply, state, and even promise a horrific future for Gazan kids.  8,000 kids have been killed already with an average of 100 killed daily.  Many experts on urban warfare consider these numbers an undercount which will increase when bodies buried by rubble are uncovered.  These numbers will be further increased by famine and disease spreading among a wretched, homeless, malnourished population.

Many Israelis know the names of hostages released, killed, or still in captivity.  They know the names of the three escaped Israeli hostages tragically and mistakenly shot by Israeli soldiers (if those three had been Gazans of the same age, no one would have ever heard of the incident).  But how many Israelis can name even one Gazan kid killed in this war?

So to help matters out, I am including a very short extract of dead Gazans (see below) which, by their names, appear to be from one extended family

“The document below is an English-language version of the original Arabic list that the Palestinian Ministry of Health released in Gaza on October 26, 2023.” The second column is a personal ID number; the last column is the person’s age.

I imagine Nada Wissam Amin Hassouna (ID 148), age 7, was a nice girl.  None of us will ever know.