tragedy of kids on both sides of Israel-Hamas war
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Burned cribs. Bloody baby strollers. Weeping children.
The savage assault by Hamas terrorists on Israel that began last week and the Israeli retaliatory bombing of Gaza has slaughtered innocents — hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian children.
Harrowing images showing photos of Israeli babies burned to death by the terrorists and a haunting image of a bloodied crib released by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are visible online all over the world alongside photos of dead and wounded Palestinian children, some being carried in the arms of grieving relatives.
It’s estimated that more than 700 children have been killed in Gaza and another 2,450 have been injured since the war began Oct. 7, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said Saturday that the Israeli airstrikes had killed at least 724 children.
Exact figures for the number of children killed or injured in Israel when Hamas launched its surprise slaughter of civilians Oct. 7 were not immediately available but dozens of Israeli children are known to have been killed.
Documents reportedly retrieved off dead Hamas terrorists by Israeli Defense Forces indicated that Hamas specifically planned to target elementary schools and a youth center in the Israeli kibbutz of Kfar Sa’ad, to “kill as many people as possible,” seize hostages and quickly move them into the Gaza Strip, NBC News reported Friday.
“Most Israeli kids were either murdered or abducted,” a New York-based Jewish activist with knowledge of the situation told The Post. “I don’t remember seeing anything even anecdotal about Israeli children being taken to the hospital. They were basically killed or kidnapped or abandoned.”
One dual Israeli-American citizen, 32-year-old gardener and peace activist Hayim Katsman, was murdered by Hamas terrorists at Kibbutz Holit where he lived – but in doing so managed to save three lives, including two children, CNN reported.
Katsman shielded a neighbor, Avital Alajem, from bullets with his body — and that neighbor was later marched by the terrorists one mile away to Gaza, abducting another family’s 4-month-old baby and 4-year-old boy.
When they got to Gaza, the terrorists abandoned the three for some reason – and Alajem had the presence of mind to escape and make her way back to the kibbutz with the two little children.
“I just think it’s chilling,” his mother, Hannah Wacholder Katsman, told The Forward. “My father grew up in Poland. He survived the Holocaust with false papers. My mother was a refugee from Germany who left after Hitler came to power. It’s chilling to me that my son died hiding in a closet.”
In Gaza, where Netanyahu and President Joe Biden have warned there will be continuing reprisals Palestinian activists say their children are bearing the brunt of the tragedy.
A Palestinian mother’s wail as she gave a final kiss to her dead baby, swaddled in white after being killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza Thursday, was just one of many videos almost too painful to watch.
“My four children are eating one meal a day: sandwiches. There is no water, no electricity, no internet, no fuel in all of Gaza,” the Gaza-based Mohammad Abu Rukbeh of the Defense for Children Palestine said.
“I am carrying my children on foot because they are too paralyzed in fear to walk as we search for somewhere safe. There is no safe place in Gaza as Israeli forces rain down bombs in every direction, every hour of the day. We are isolated people facing the fiercest war machines.”
With wires
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