“Looking at children’s teeth, in every circumstance, they all had blackened teeth at the roots that were decaying. It was not because of poor dental care. It was because of the lack of essential nutrients that children should have, like calcium.”
Israel had one day where it faced consequences for its occupation and crimes against the Palestinians, one day when it was treated as it treats Palestinians every day, and they never shut up about it.
I read the new Btselem report on Israel killing children and teens in the West Bank. The pattern is clear. The IDF and settlers murder them. They are denied care as they die. The perpetrators are not held accountable. These are the worst cases:
1) Rida Bisharat, 8, and Hamza Bisharat, 10. Tammun, January 8, 2025. Playing in a small yard between their family homes when an Israeli aircraft fired a missile that killed them and a third cousin, Adam, 23. The mother reached her son as he lay bleeding from the head and groaning. Soldiers said in Arabic they would give first aid, then made the family back away, covered the three bodies in blankets, and took them without checking them. The military later claimed the three were identified as IED-planters; no IEDs were found. No charges against the perpetrators.
2) Layla al-Khatib, 2. Muthalath a-Shuhada, January 25, 2025. She was sitting in her mother's lap at the dinner table when soldiers fired into the second-floor apartment, striking the back of her head. Her grandfather carried her bleeding into the street, where an officer said in English, "I'm sorry, she was hit by mistake." With no ambulance present, the family carried her 100 meters to a civilian car. The army told Haaretz a "wanted terrorist" was barricaded inside and that it summoned medics; B'Tselem found no one was barricaded, no loudspeaker calls were made, and the mother was not pregnant as claimed. The army was investigating, no charges.
3) Hamed Nazzal, 16. Qalqiliyah, February 26, 2025. He was shot while throwing stones at Eyal Checkpoint with other teens, none of which caused any reported injury. After he was hit, the soldiers provided him no medical treatment of any kind. Paramedics were unable to reach him and only recovered his body roughly 15 minutes after the shooting. The delay in access falls within the pattern B'Tselem documents across nearly a quarter of the cases. The case drew an internal military review at most, no charges.
4) Omar Zyud. Silat al-Harithiya, April 2, 2025. He was hit in the back by fire from a machine gun mounted on an armored vehicle while among boys throwing stones and IEDs at the vehicles. The rounds killed him and wounded two other boys. The soldiers left the scene a few minutes later without providing medical treatment to any of the casualties. Israel was among those still withholding bodies in this period. No soldier was charged.
5) Ayman al-Haymuni, 12. Hebron, February 21, 2025. He and his 10-year-old brother had just left their grandfather's house to walk to their uncle's next door. After noticing soldiers who had raided the neighborhood, the two boys tried to return to the grandfather's house, and as Ayman turned back he was shot in the back and fell. B'Tselem's investigation found no clash underway that would account for the fire. The case produced no indictment.
7) Rimas Amuri, 13. Jenin, February 21, 2025. She had asked her mother for permission to visit her cousins next door. No clashes were taking place in the neighborhood, and traffic was moving normally. She was shot just as she turned onto the path to her uncle's house. The army described her to Haaretz as a "suspicious figure" who ignored warnings; B'Tselem found she was shot in the back, with no warning heard by witnesses. No charges followed.
8) Malek Hattab, 17. al-Jalazun Refugee Camp, April 14, 2025. He was shot in the abdomen from a second-floor balcony as a group of youths fled from two military jeeps. B'Tselem could not establish that Hattab took part in any clash. A woman who lived nearby tried to reach him to help but was driven back into her home by soldiers' fire, an obstruction of care of the kind documented across the report. No soldier was charged.
In 13 of the 54 cases, nearly a quarter, the military delayed or entirely blocked medics or residents from reaching the wounded, and in at least nine cases soldiers fired in the air or at rescuers to keep them away. And as of mid-April 2026, Israel was still holding 18 of the 54 bodies, denying the families burial. In none of the cases was anyone prosecuted for killing these children. That says it all.
NEW: The Board of Directors at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) will formally change its definition of who qualifies as a journalist, to broadly exclude slain Palestinian and Lebanese journalists who worked for government-funded media outlets. Israeli, American, and Ukrainian journalists who work for state-funded outlets or are embedded with the military will remain recognized as journalists, of course.
The move was catalyzed to appease the right-wing Zionist rag The Free Beacon, which has repeatedly accused Palestinian and Lebanese journalists of being undercover militants or used their political opinions or affiliations as justification for their killing by the IOF.
This is a racist scandal of massive proportions for everyone involved, and it makes a mockery of the purported mission of the organization. It is absolutely abhorrent that the organization’s resources are wasted on this cowardly witch-hunt, at a moment in history that is the deadliest for journalists, especially in Palestine and Lebanon.
Today, I witnessed something that reminded me how quietly a human heart can break.
Not in a hospital. Not beneath the rubble.
But inside a crowded trailer on the journey home.
On my way back from the clinic, I climbed into one of Gaza’s new “buses,” a trailer pulled behind an aging car.
More than ten people were crammed onto narrow wooden benches. Others stood in the aisle, swaying helplessly as the trailer lurched over roads carved open by craters and strewn with rubble.
By the time you reached your destination, every bone in your body ached.
So did your dignity.
But there was no other way.
There is something peculiar about these journeys.
Privacy does not exist.
One conversation quickly becomes everyone’s conversation.
If you want to understand Gaza today, sit quietly in one of these trailers.
You will hear people’s fears before you ever learn their names.
Two men happened to recognize one another. They spoke like old colleagues meeting for the first time since before the war.
One began asking about the people they had once worked alongside.
“This one managed to leave Gaza.” “That one is displaced in the south.” “Another is living in a tent.”
One by one, the familiar faces from their former workplace had disappeared, scattered across camps, borders, and foreign countries.
It was as though they had never shared the same mornings.
Then came the final question.
“So… where are you and your family living now?”
The man lowered his eyes.
Then, in a voice so quiet it seemed to still the air itself, he answered.
“Our house was bombed.” “May God have mercy on my wife and children.”
“Only my little boy and I survived.”
No one spoke after that.
Not because there was nothing to say.
But because there are moments before which language simply surrenders.
I kept thinking about the way he had spoken.
Not with tears. Not with anger.
Only with quiet acceptance.
“May God have mercy on them.”
As though an entire lifetime of love, laughter, birthdays, arguments, dreams, and ordinary evenings could somehow be gathered into a single prayer.
People often ask when this war will end.
But how does it end for a father like him? What ceasefire gives a man back his wife? What agreement returns his children? What victory could ever warm a heart buried beneath the ruins of its own home?
Some wars end with signatures. Others continue for the rest of a person’s life.
I think every passenger in that trailer understood, in that long silence, that the heaviest ruins in Gaza are no longer the ones made of concrete.
They are the ones people carry home within their hearts.
#WoundedGaza
Since Israel invaded southern Syria following Assad's fall, its forces routinely entered the village of Abedin in Daraa, searched houses and interrogated locals. Sources in southern Syria tell me that last week, the Israeli Army established a permanent position close to Abedin (pictured), and prevented locals from approaching their fields and collecting their harvest, which they toiled to grow all year long. 90% of Syrians are below the poverty line, Quneitra was the most impoverished governorate of Syria even before the Syrian uprising and civil war. People in Quneitra are not eating enough, yet Israeli forces are preventing these impoverished farmers from accessing their lands.
Today, the children of Abedin laid rocks on the road to prevent the Israeli Army patrols to enter their village. The Israeli soldiers shot in the air to scatter the children.
According to Israeli security sources speaking to Israeli media at the time of the invasion, there was no concrete information whatsoever about any Syrian plans to carry out attacks against the Golan or Israel. Still, Israel invaded Syria, justifying it by fearing a repeat of Oct 7th. Since then Israeli forces have destroyed homes, fields, beehives, arrested dozens of locals and searched multiple homes in the middle of the night. Today, the children of Abedin resisted peacefully. It is only a matter of time until this changes. Then Israel will justify its occupation by saying the area is swarming with "terrorists."
A U.S. official told me that the agreement between Israel and Syria is pretty much done. Yet, Israel keeps trying to place obstacles. I believe Netanyahu doesn not want to reach this deal because it'll cost him domestically to withdraw from Syria. High-level US engagement is needed to seal this deal.