The Guardian view on the children of Gaza: when 17,000 die, it’s more than a mistake

[Right_in_Virginia]

The Guardian view on the children of Gaza: when 17,000 die, it’s more than a mistake
Israel’s military blamed the deaths of six Palestinian children on Sunday on a technical error. But a staggering toll continues to mount
The Guardian/UK, Jul 15, 2025

Sunday, an Israeli strike killed six Palestinian children – and four adults – as they queued for water in a refugee camp. The deaths of children may be the most terrible part of any war. ...

As shocking as Sunday’s deaths were, they are commonplace in Gaza: a classroom-worth of children have been killed each day since the war began. What marked them out was that so many deaths happened at once and publicly; and that Israel’s military felt obliged to acknowledge its responsibility – though without any great contrition. It claimed that a “technical error with the munition” caused it to miss its intended target and added that it “regrets any harm to uninvolved civilians”.

What does this bloodless, bureaucratic language have to do with the bloody deaths of six already traumatised children? These deaths were not a mistake. They were a tragedy – like those of the 10 children killed days before, as they queued outside a clinic. The Israeli military said, again, that it regretted any harm to civilians. And yet the bodies of children pile up. Children killed as they sheltered in former schools; children killed as they fled Israeli forces; children killed as they slept at home.

Gaza’s ministry of health says that more than 17,000 of the 58,000 Palestinians killed are children. Israel says that it seeks to minimise harm to civilians. The death toll belies that and Israeli intelligence sources told reporters last year that at times they were permitted to kill up to 20 civilians to take out even junior militants – with the preference being to attack targets when they were at home, because it was easier.


More:  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/15/the-guardian-view-on-the-children-of-gaza-when-17000-die-its-more-than-a-mistake

[Right_in_Virginia]

This is a snippet of the news not covered in the US press, but routinely carried in the press around the world.

[DefiantMassRINO]

This could end now if Hamas surrenders and returns the hostages, but they won't.

The children of Gaza are collateral damage and human shields for Hamas and the Iranian Mullahs that fund them.

Time and again, Hamas and its Gazan collaborators choose death to Israel over the lives of Gazans.

The only reason this is happening is because Hamas chose to attack Israeli's, including babies, on October 7, 2023.

I shed no tears for the homeless arsonist that set his own house on fire.

[libertybele]

This could end now if Hamas surrenders and returns the hostages, but they won't.

The children of Gaza are collateral damage and human shields for Hamas and the Iranian Mullahs that fund them.

Time and again, Hamas and its Gazan collaborators choose death to Israel over the lives of Gazans.

The only reason this is happening is because Hamas chose to attack Israeli's, including babies, on October 7, 2023.

I shed no tears for the homeless arsonist that set his own house on fire.

I feel for the 'innocents' on both sides. 

[berdie]

1. I don't have any faith in Hamas reports.

2. Israeli children have died as well.

3. If anyone believes that a war can be fought without civilian casualties, both children and adult, they are smoking wacky-tobaky.

[roamer_1]

I cry bullcrap. I would like to see how that number was derived.

[DB]

Palestinians have a long history of their "dead" dying over and over again...

[Sighlass]

Palestinians have a long history of their "dead" dying over and over again...

Yep, Palivision/Pallywood... like the fake deaths they claimed earlier at the food distribution center... All fake lies. When you take the minister of lies news at face value, you are being played.

Do some kids die, yes, when an enemy surrounds itself with kids, they knowingly put them in the line of fire.... and some of those kids are not kids, but young soldiers being the enemy at a young age.

[MeganC]

The Gaza scum effed around and now they're finding out.

A ghetto trusim: Don't start nothing and nothing will start.

[Wingnut]

This is a snippet of the news not covered in the US press, but routinely carried in the press around the world.

Show me the coffins.  Bring out your dead children and baby's.   

On the plus side, less future Jew killers if true.

[libertybele]

Palestinians have a long history of their "dead" dying over and over again...

 

[The_Reader_David]

In view of the content of the Hamas charter, which calls not for a judenrein Palestine, but for a judenrein planet Earth, and the fact that the Gazans elected Hamas to govern them in an election no one has ever claimed was not free and fair (rather than getting stuck with a fanatically Jew-hating government in a parliamentary backroom deal like the Germans did), any sorrow we feel for dead Palestinian children should be of the same sort we feel for German children who died in the Allied bombing of Nazi Germany or the Red Army's push to depopulate East Prussia of its German inhabitants, but perhaps with a little more blame leveled at their parents than in the older historical case.

[Smokin Joe]

Palestinians have a long history of their "dead" dying over and over again...

IIRC, 'Green helmet guy' kept showing up at the site of artillery impacts in Lebanon with a refrigerated truckload of corpses to plant in the debris before the Press got there, to be 'dug out' and paraded in international Media.
Propaganda is a nasty business.

[roamer_1]

IIRC, 'Green helmet guy' kept showing up at the site of artillery impacts in Lebanon with a refrigerated truckload of corpses to plant in the debris before the Press got there, to be 'dug out' and paraded in international Media.
Propaganda is a nasty business.

I remember that!

[jmyrlefuller]

When Palestinians outbreed their Western counterparts by more than double, it's more than a fluke, it's a breeding program.

[Right_in_Virginia]

...and the fact that the Gazans elected Hamas to govern them in an election no one has ever claimed was not free and fair

A little more information on that election ---

It was in January 2006 that Gaza held what turned out to be their last parliamentary elections. Hamas won a bare plurality of votes (44 percent to the more moderate Fatah party’s 41 percent) but, given the electoral system, a strong majority of seats (74 to 45).

Fighting broke out between the two political parties. When a unity government was finally formed in June 2007, Hamas broke the deal, started murdering Fatah members, and, in the end, took total control of the Gaza Strip. Those who weren’t killed fled to the West Bank, and the territories have remained split ever since.

This split is Netanyahu's dream come true and for the next 17 years he did everything in and around his power to make sure Hamas survived.

Hamas’ absolute rule of Gaza is not what the Palestinians voted for back in 2006.  And, since the current median age of Gazans is 18, half of Hamas’ subjects weren’t even born when the election took place.

As the Gazans have known no alternative, have absorbed little information but Hamas propaganda, and have witnessed periodic outbursts of violent conflict with Israel throughout their lives, it really is impossible to know what they actually think about Hamas.

[jafo2010]

DefiantMassRINO...

The children of Gaza are collateral damage

Poppycock!  It's a war, a war launched by a brutal surprise attack upon Israel  by the Palestinians.  The Palestinians voted for Hamas to run their pathetic patch of ground.  The Palestinians have not had an election since, which was roughly 2007.  So, the Palestinians are at fault for having Hamas as their leadership, which won by 70% if I recall. 

So, subsequent to the attack on October 7th by the Palestinians, Israel had the right to kill every last one of them, every man, woman and child.  You think the USA would have done differently had such an attack been transacted upon the USA?  Hell no.  We would have killed every person in our path for revenge.

And the term collateral damage, I do not know what idiot created that term, but it does not apply to what is happening in Gaza right now.  Every person there is an enemy combatant.  When they start teaching their children from the age of 3 how to hold and use an AK-47, there are no innocents.  Again, the Palestinian people voted by an overwhelming margin for Hamas.

Israel has used great restraint, and the Palestinians are still holding Israeli hostages from October 7th.  Israel has every right to kill any and all Palestinians in Gaza.  EVERY RIGHT!!!

[Right_in_Virginia]

Poppycock!  It's a war, a war launched by a brutal surprise attack upon Israel  by the Palestinians.  The Palestinians voted for Hamas to run their pathetic patch of ground.  The Palestinians have not had an election since, which was roughly 2007.  So, the Palestinians are at fault for having Hamas as their leadership, which won by 70% if I recall. 

@jafo2010

A liittle more information on that election ---

It was in January 2006 that Gaza held what turned out to be their last parliamentary elections. Hamas won a bare plurality of votes (44 percent to the more moderate Fatah party’s 41 percent) but, given the electoral system, a strong majority of seats (74 to 45).

Fighting broke out between the two political parties. When a unity government was finally formed in June 2007, Hamas broke the deal, started murdering Fatah members, and, in the end, took total control of the Gaza Strip. Those who weren’t killed fled to the West Bank, and the territories have remained split ever since.

This split is Netanyahu's dream come true and for the next 17 years he did everything in and around his power to make sure Hamas survived.

Hamas’ absolute rule of Gaza is not what the Palestinians voted for back in 2006.  And, since the current median age of Gazans is 18, half of Hamas’ subjects weren’t even born when the election took place.

As the Gazans have known no alternative, have absorbed little information but Hamas propaganda, and have witnessed periodic outbursts of violent conflict with Israel throughout their lives, it really is impossible to know what they actually think about Hamas.

[jafo2010]

So what!  It was not Israel that prevented the Palestinians from having further elections.  And exactly like Adolph Hitler, Hamas killing off their opposition was not Israel's fault either.  So why place so much emphasis on anything Netanyahu did?

Having seen the speech made by Admiral Halsey in 1943 in San Francisco, I like to think of myself as a Halseyite.  He said, and I paraphrase, 'in a country like Japan, where the civilian population support the military as they do, the only good Jap civilian, is a Jap civilian that has been dead for six months or more.'

One could readily plug the word Palestinian in place of Jap, and the sentiment would be very pertinent today in the Middle East.  Only difference is that the severity of the culture in Gaza is about 10 times worse.  A culture that has in their constitution the elimination of a nation state bordering their land, they mean business.  Such a culture deserves the exact sentiment levelled in their direction.  And when that society launches a surprise genocidal attack on the neighbor state, why that neighbor state would gives two sh*ts about preventing civilian death is a mystery to me.  It is outside the bounds of self preservation.

Let's get serious, unless Israel kills every last one of them, the stinking genocidal maniacs that reside in Gaza will provide a repeat performance, even if all of Hamas is eliminated.  The population of Gaza will harvest a new crop of genocidal maniacs to unleash rampant murder upon the people of Israel.  I say, why let it happen again, do the world a great justice by eliminating every last rat b*****d in Gaza.

The use of the words collateral damage and Gazans in the same sentence is sort of like an oxymoron.

[Right_in_Virginia]

So what!  It was not Israel that prevented the Palestinians from having further elections.  And exactly like Adolph Hitler, Hamas killing off their opposition was not Israel's fault either.  So why place so much emphasis on anything Netanyahu did?

@jafo2010

Netanyahu became the puppet master between the West Bank and Gaza.  Preventing the unification of the two territories prevented a viable two state solution to the decades old war, a solution Netanyahu vehemently opposed.  Hamas took violent control of Gaza in 2007 and Netanyahu has helped them stay in power --- sending them tons of money with one hand and "mowing the grass" with the other ---- until Oct 7 when his strategy blew up in his face.

[jafo2010]

Two Palestinian lands separated by Israel and you want to blame Netanyahu for their inability to unify?  Yeah, that makes sense!

I think a more likely explanation is that these Palestinians are genocidal maniacs and cannot get along with one another, and one side is lucky they are dived by a few miles of Israel!  Otherwise, Hamas or whatever nut jobs are running the West Bank would have tried to eliminate one another.  Right?  Because murdering people is what they do!

From the moment of the Balfour Agreement, the Palestinians have only wanted one thing, the death of every Jew.  So, frankly, all your condemnation of Netanyahu when all he is trying to do is keep the people of Israel alive makes no sense whatsoever.

My father fought in the Pacific, drove a landing craft, and he never had one kind word to say about the Japanese.  Since the murderous muslims were founded, all they cared about was killing all who did not share their view, or at best, enslave them.

So, I will embrace the Halsey mindset regarding most muslims, the same he had in 1943 regarding the Japanese people in total.  And if I had been Netanyahu, there would not be a blade of grass in Gaza.   And the whole of the muslim world with few exceptions would dance, for they perceive the Palestinians as nothing but an albatross.

[jafo2010]

Right_in_Virginia...

Netanyahu became the puppet master between the West Bank and Gaza.  Preventing the unification of the two territories prevented a viable two state solution to the decades old war,

Pure poppycock!  At no time did the Palestinians want a two state solution.  At no time.  Their mantra has been all along the death of every Jew and the end of Israel.  PERIOD!!!!

The Palestinians have been vehement on the subject.  Death to Israel, Death to the Jews.  What are you, a Nazi, muslim, or Democommie?  Have to be one of them.

[cato potatoe]

Pure poppycock!  At no time did the Palestinians want a two state solution.  At no time.  Their mantra has been all along the death of every Jew and the end of Israel.  PERIOD!!!!

The Palestinians have been vehement on the subject.  Death to Israel, Death to the Jews.  What are you, a Nazi, muslim, or Democommie?  Have to be one of them.

Well the thing is, the Israelis have the same mindset among the settlers and their ideological leaders Ben-Gvir and Smotrich.  Israel is becoming a fanatical state as the demographics shift toward far-right factions who have more children.  All of them wanting to push arabs out.  The arabs cannot trust the Israeli government to follow through on any two-state solution, even if they were willing to give an inch, so what you see is what you get.

[jafo2010]

The two state solution is fantasy, like unicorns!  Will never exist, was never considered by the Palestinians, who would benefit with a two state solution.  But you just cannot expect deranged genocidal maniacs to think logically or in their best interest.

They have but one goal, destroy Israel and kill all the Jews.  And they have not been receptive to any other notion.

It is only meddling westerns that consider the two state solution an option.  Total waste of time.  Pure idiocy.

[GtHawk]

The two state solution is fantasy, like unicorns!  Will never exist, was never considered by the Palestinians, who would benefit with a two state solution.  But you just cannot expect deranged genocidal maniacs to think logically or in their best interest.

They have but one goal, destroy Israel and kill all the Jews.  And they have not been receptive to any other notion.

It is only meddling westerns that consider the two state solution an option.  Total waste of time.  Pure idiocy.

Ever since the much beloved by Carter and Clinton, tablecloth wearing Yasser Arafat, thePalis have refused peace, and despite their denials there is really only one reason they refuse to acknowledge Israels right to exist and only wish to see them exterminated…..everywhere.

[Cyber Liberty]

And nobody questions the 17,000 number?   

[roamer_1]

Pure poppycock!  At no time did the Palestinians want a two state solution.  At no time.  Their mantra has been all along the death of every Jew and the end of Israel.  PERIOD!!!!

The Palestinians have been vehement on the subject.  Death to Israel, Death to the Jews.  What are you, a Nazi, muslim, or Democommie?  Have to be one of them.

*FACTS* The only thing lacking is the fact that 'palestinians' are largely an invented group - Most of which are not native on the land. 'Palestinians' suddenly appeared when Israel became a state.