{"id":199076,"date":"2026-07-09T22:47:37","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T22:47:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/199076\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T22:47:37","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T22:47:37","slug":"israel-targeting-babies-and-children-as-part-of-genocide-on-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/199076\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel targeting babies and children as part of genocide on Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"

Real journalists wrote and edited this (not AI)\u2014independent, community-driven journalism survives because you back it.\u00a0Donate<\/a>\u00a0to sustain Prism\u2019s mission and the humans behind it.<\/p>\n

Soha Al Shrafi, a mother of six, was supposed to welcome her seventh child, a baby boy her family named Zaid Abushawish, in January. Instead, she left the delivery room mourning his death.<\/p>\n

Al Shrafi is my mother, and Zaid was my brother. The tragedy of his loss was set in motion during the early stages of Al Shrafi\u2019s pregnancy. Doctors warned her that her developing baby was at severe risk of congenital deformities due to her constant, forced exposure to toxic fires and dense smoke from cooking over open plastics and wood, alongside a severe shortage of basic maternal nutrition due to Israel\u2019s blockade on fuel and other necessities. Yet, she refused to give up on my brother.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t care what deformities or medical challenges my baby would face,\u201d Al Shrafi recalled, her voice breaking. \u201cHe was my son, my gift, and I was entirely ready to welcome him, hold him, and love him no matter what condition he was born in. I just wanted him to live.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the broken healthcare system failed her. Despite Al Shrafi being deeply conscious of the risks and meticulously seeking periodic checks at local clinics, no doctor could offer a real solution. The deliberate blockade on medical imports has stripped Gaza\u2019s remaining hospitals and pharmacies of vital equipment, such as incubators<\/a>. When it was time for Zaid\u2019s arrival, all that remained was primitive, outdated gadgets and scarce, expired medications. Zaid did not survive the delivery, becoming one more casualty of an infrastructure systematically ground to dust.<\/p>\n

My family\u2019s story is a devastatingly common reality across Gaza. Cases similar to ours were featured in a landmark report<\/a> released on June 23 by the United Nations\u2019 Human Rights Council\u2019s commission on Palestine and Israel, which concluded that a primary mechanism through which Israel is committing genocide in Gaza is the intentional, systematic targeting of children and future generations. Part of the report focused on how Israel\u2019s attacks on hospitals and other healthcare facilities as well as its blockade led to premature births, congenital defects, and other medical conditions.<\/p>\n

At least 21,289<\/a> Palestinian children have been killed by direct military action since October 2023, according to UNICEF figures from February. At least 44,500 others have been physically wounded, with more than 11,000 of them sustaining permanent, life-altering physical trauma such as traumatic limb amputations; severe, blast-induced brain injuries; and debilitating nerve damage.<\/p>\n

Even after the U.S.-brokered ceasefire took effect on Oct. 10, 2025, the quiet remained an illusion. The violence merely transformed; at least 265 children<\/a> have been killed by continued localized bombardments and targeted military actions since the inception of the fragile truce.<\/p>\n

The June U.N. report quotes Moshe Feiglin, a far-right politician and former member of the Israeli Knesset, who laid bare the ideological driving force behind this destruction in a May 2025 interview with Israel\u2019s Channel 14. \u201cEvery child, every baby in Gaza is an enemy. The enemy is not Hamas, and it is not Hamas\u2019 military wing,\u201d Feiglin said. \u201cEvery child in Gaza is the enemy. We need to conquer Gaza and colonise it, and not leave a single Gazan child there. There is no other victory.\u201d<\/p>\n

This genocidal rhetoric was included in the report among a list of other examples of military and government figures explicitly stating their intent to target Palestinian children, whom they painted as terrorists.<\/p>\n

One demographic Israel is targeting is Gaza\u2019s newborns. The vast majority of these infants are born into hypercrowded hospital corridors that entirely lack the basic necessities required to sustain early life. Deprived of sterile environments, regular electricity, or working incubators, many of these fragile newborns simply cannot endure the harsh conditions, ending up dead just like baby Zaid.<\/p>\n

According to data<\/a> compiled by the Palestinian Ministry of Health and neonatal care registries, thousands of children have died either in utero or in the fragile minutes when they are about to be born, turning the very act of childbirth into a fatal gamble.<\/p>\n

Even the babies who survive enter a world where they face a prolonged, inescapable vulnerability to dangerous and chronic diseases. This structural erosion of health begins long before a child takes their first breath.<\/p>\n

For Hendi, a Palestinian woman in Gaza, the nine months carrying her daughter, Ella, were defined by last year\u2019s severe famine<\/a>. With barely enough food for Hendi to survive, her developing baby was denied basic maternal nutrition and vitamins, stripped of a foundational immune system in the womb.<\/p>\n

When Hendi gave birth at Al-Helou International Hospital, Israel\u2019s medical blockade had eliminated basic painkillers and IV fluids. After her blood pressure plummeted to a near-fatal 50\/40, she told Prism, and her husband had to search empty local markets just to find a single carton of juice to stabilize her.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the very beginning, the child\u2019s suffering begins with a severe lack of immunity,\u201d Hendi said. \u201cWe are hypervigilant about cleanliness at home, but the air outside is toxic, filled with bombing dust and accumulated waste that trigger severe viral infections.\u201d<\/p>\n

When a severe viral infection recently sent Ella\u2019s fever spiking to a critical 104 degrees, she was admitted to Al-Aqsa Hospital, where the structural collapse of the healthcare system became terrifyingly clear. In a small room crowded with five beds and an endless influx of sick patients, medical staff were forced to place a newly admitted, highly contagious child in the same bed as Ella.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe staff told me bluntly: \u2018These are our capabilities. We have no other beds. You have to endure it,\u2019\u201d Hendi recalled. \u201cThe doctors and nurses are doing everything humanly possible, but the lack of infrastructure is catastrophic. Going to the hospital now means exposing your child to 10 times the risk of catching a deadlier virus than the one they arrived with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inside the overflowing corridors of Al-Aqsa Hospital, the clinical reality<\/a> proves that the destruction of medical infrastructure is a weapon of attrition. A doctor working on the front lines with children told Prism that the blockade has paralyzed even the most basic diagnostics, forcing staff to heavily ration a simple complete blood count test, withholding the last kits from regular emergency admissions for those on the absolute brink of death. Without proper sterilization protocols, physicians are forced daily to rely on primitive cleaning methods and perform sutures on both superficial and deep wounds using unsterile scissors, clamps, and gauze.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis plunges us into a horrific, vicious cycle,\u201d said the doctor, who did not want to be identified due to fear of military retaliation. \u201cUsing unsterile tools inevitably leads to severe wound infections. To treat those infections, we are forced to prescribe larger amounts of scarce antibiotics, which rapidly depletes our blockaded pharmacy reserves and routinely turns minor, treatable injuries into fatal complications.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The systematic slaughter of children should be a self-evident emergency; having to plead for it to stop is a humiliation in itself.<\/p>\n

Doctor in Gaza<\/p>\n

Reflecting on the international community\u2019s silence, he added, \u201cI feel deeply ashamed to even have to articulate a message to the world about this. The systematic slaughter of children should be a self-evident emergency; having to plead for it to stop is a humiliation in itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

The situation here goes much deeper than the immediate danger of bombs. The tight restrictions on aid and the destruction of clinics mean that children are not just facing a temporary shortage of food and medicine. They are experiencing a permanent breakdown of their physical and mental growth, and a deliberate erasure of their existence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By cutting off basic nutrition, clean water, and simple medical care during the most important years of a child\u2019s development, the blockade leaves an invisible, permanent scar, weakening the minds and bodies of the survivors and harming a whole generation before it even has a chance to grow.<\/p>\n

Editorial Team:
Sahar Fatima, Lead Editor
Lara Witt, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Real journalists wrote and edited this (not AI)\u2014independent, community-driven journalism survives because you back it.\u00a0Donate\u00a0to sustain Prism\u2019s mission…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[27804,5574,18211,24923,496,9285,58785,7889,6318,37,649,498,7888,58786,29737,58787],"class_list":["post-199076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-babies","tag-children","tag-dispatches-from-palestine","tag-families","tag-gaza","tag-gaza-genocide","tag-gaza-hospitals","tag-genocide","tag-healthcare","tag-israel","tag-opinion","tag-palestine","tag-palestinian","tag-palestinian-families","tag-pregnant","tag-pregnant-people"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116892456795037013","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}