Israel’s ‘Ceasefire’ Just Killed a Four-Year-Old in Gaza

So let me get this straight. There’s a “ceasefire” in Gaza. Has been since October. And since that ceasefire started, 1,286 people have been killed. That’s not my math. That’s the number coming out of Gaza itself, carried by the same wire services that usually bend over backwards to soften the language.

A ceasefire where people keep dying. They ought to look that word up in a dictionary sometime.

Sunday, Israeli aircraft hit the town of az-Zawayda in central Gaza. Killed two people. One of them was four years old. His name was Muhammad Abdel Salam Taha. Four years old. You want to tell me what a four-year-old does that makes him a “terrorist”? Because the Israeli military put that word out there, said they targeted a terrorist in one of the strikes, and promised “further details later.” Sure they will. They always say that. And then the details never quite arrive, do they?

Hosny salah / Pexels

Another strike hit the Nuseirat refugee camp. One more dead. Several wounded across both attacks. The survivors got hauled to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah, which is where Gaza’s wounded keep ending up because there’s nowhere else left to take them.

A man named Abu Ahmed was sheltering near the building that got hit. The strike turned it into what reporters called “a pile of mangled steel and concrete.” He said, “There is no ceasefire, there is nothing.” And: “We want solutions; we want to live in peace.”

You won’t hear Abu Ahmed on any of your major networks. You won’t see Muhammad Taha’s face on the evening news. A four-year-old gets blown apart and the story gets buried on page 14, if it runs at all. But you better believe if the roles were reversed, if a four-year-old on the other side was killed, every anchor in America would be choking back tears on live television. They’d run the story for a week. They’d pass a resolution. They’d light up landmarks in the kid’s favorite color.

And while this was happening in Gaza, Israeli forces shot a 14-year-old Palestinian boy in the chest during a raid on the Askar refugee camp near Nablus in the occupied West Bank. Shot in the chest. A kid. During a “raid.” What was the threat? What was the danger that required putting a bullet through a teenager’s ribcage? Don’t worry, they’ll tell us later. They always tell us later.

Ashraf Amra (CC BY-SA 3.0 igo) via Wikimedia Commons

You notice the pattern yet? Every single time, the official line is the same. “Targeted a terrorist.” “Responded to a threat.” “Investigating.” And every time, the dead are children, the wounded are civilians, and the details that were coming “later” never show up. The experts in their think tanks nod along. The politicians who write the checks look the other way. The media that’s supposed to be holding all of them accountable runs a 30-second clip and moves on to the weather.

A ceasefire that kills 1,286 people isn’t a ceasefire. It’s a pause between rounds. And the people running this operation know exactly what they’re doing. They just don’t think you’re paying attention.

They might be right about that. But they shouldn’t count on it lasting.