If we can't see Gaza's dead children's eyes, can we see children at all?

Gideon Levy, Haaretz, Nov. 5, 2023

Is there a difference between children and children? Are the photos of children killed in Jabalya supposed to shock us less than those of children killed in Be’eri? Are photos of dead children in Jabalya even supposed to shock us, and is it legitimate to be shocked by them?

Our own children are dearer to our heart than anything in the world, and the heart of every Israeli is more shocked by Israeli children who have been killed than by any other dead child. That’s human and understandable. But we cannot refrain from leaving room for shock at the mass slaughter of children in Gaza, only because our children were also killed.

The killing in Gaza should weigh particularly heavily if we recall who these children are and who brought their disaster upon them? (answer: Israel and Hamas.) What did their lives and deaths look like? (Answer: Children who lived in poverty, misery, under siege, seeking refuge with no present and no future, overwhelmingly due to Israel.)

A good friend, a famous lefty, wrote over the weekend: “At war I can’t pity both sides equally. Maybe in Ukraine, but not here. Gideon Levy describes a burned baby, and I see the baby from Nir Oz.”

The baby in Nir Oz was murdered by Hamas scum with indescribable cruelty. The Israel Defense Forces kills the babies in Jabalya coolly, without any particular malice, but in gruesome numbers. Seeing only the baby in Nir Oz and not the one in Jabalya? That veers into twisted morality, especially as the number of dead children in Gaza reaches an unprecedented toll – 3,900 children as of Saturday, according to the Hamas health ministry.

The weekend in Gaza was blood-soaked, and the videos emerging from there were among the most shocking we’ve seen in this horrible war. The torn bodies of eight infants embracing one another put into two white plastic bags, four infants per bag, zippers close the bags forever, en route to a mass grave. They were Gazan babies. Someone killed them. This is war, but even in war, limits need to be set.

In another video, screams were heard next to ruins strewn with dozens of bodies, mostly of children. The areas around Gaza’s hospitals are bombed incessantly. On Saturday it was the al-Nasser children’s hospital, where children with cancer are treated and five people were killed. It’s not hard to imagine the terror of the hospitalized children. This hospital was also required to evacuate, as though there was where to, or how.

An ambulance with wounded people en route to the Rafah Crossing was bombed by the air force. Israel claims there were terrorists in it. The coastal road on which the displaced are trying to flee south, at Israel’s command, was strewn with bodies, including many children. Each bombing in Gaza kills children.

All this is not supposed to shock any Israeli, for Israel is mourning its dead. Not only should it not shock – shock has been banned and criminalized. Those expressing shock are arrested, particularly if they are Arab citizens. You must not be shocked at the carnage in Gaza, not even of children about whose innocence and lack of guilt there can be no debate; protesting their killing is full-on treason. They are Gazan children, and in Israel they are un-children, just like their parents are un-human; Our children were killed more cruelly.

“How can we not?” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken asked on Friday, in response to the bodies of Gazan children pulled from the rubble. Blinken expressed how shocked he was by images of Israeli children whose father was murdered and his murderers opened the fridge and ate indifferently in front of the two crying orphans. Then he spoke of the dead children of Gaza: When I look in their eyes, I see my own children – How can we not?” he said.

And when we look at the eyes of the dead children of Gaza, we don’t see our own children. It is doubtful whether we see children at all. How can we not?