Children of Gaza - ילדי עזה

"Bnei Yisrael" is one of the most recurring names in the Torah and Tanakh. Literally, it means the descendants of Jacob, who is Israel; yet the Torah itself grants this name a deeper and more demanding meaning:

"You are children to the LORD your God" (Deuteronomy 14:1).

Not a nation. Not an ethnicity. Not a religion- children!

A child, in the poetic sense, is one who walks in innocence, with a sincere heart and clean hands. This is his right, this is his essence in the early years of life on earth: to come into the world with a heart that has not yet learned deceit, with a soul unaccustomed to power, revenge, calculations, and the idealizations of adults.

The term "Bnei Yisrael" appears countless times in the Scriptures until it becomes one of the main names of the people of Israel. And not without reason. It does not only remind us where we come from, but also how we must walk before the God of the land: in innocence, truth, and the fear of God.

The name "children" also teaches how precious children are in the eyes of God. The God of Israel is not indifferent to the calamity that befalls them. He does not tolerate their sacrifice to Molech nor their becoming tools in the hands of adults. His prophets repeatedly opposed the horrific practice of child sacrifice:

"To pass their sons and their daughters through the fire to Molech, which I did not command, nor did it come into My heart to do this abomination" (Jeremiah 32:35).

The prophet does not allow the sacrifice of children to hide behind ritual, faith, security, public needs, or emergency decrees. Child sacrifice is an abomination—even when adults give it a holy name; even when they call the altar "war," "deterrence," "security," or "victory."

Children sacrificed on the altar of war

The war in Gaza has been ongoing since October 2023—nearly three continuous years. The children are the first to bear its burden.

They are sacrificed on the altar of war as they are killed, wounded, starved, and uprooted; and they carry the living memory of destruction and annihilation when they survive. They grow up among corpses, ruins, and families erased; between hunger and thirst, between the death of the father and the loss of the mother, their brothers and sisters, between the cries of the wounded and the noise of planes and drones.

Their suffering is real.
Their suffering is sincere.
Their suffering is just.
Their suffering cries out to the heavens!

And who more than Bnei Yisrael should know this?

Who more than the people of Israel should know what their God says and repeats: The voice of the child does not disappear. The cry of the weak is not lost. The tears of the orphan are not swallowed by the earth.

The Torah presents us with another child in the wilderness: Ishmael, son of Abraham. He is thirsty for water and is cast under one of the bushes. Hagar, his mother, raises her voice and weeps; yet the text emphasizes that divine hearing is given precisely to the voice of the child:

"And God heard the voice of the boy... for God heard the voice of the boy where he was" (Genesis 21:17).

Because he was there.

Not according to his nationality.
Not according to his religion.
Not according to his father's deeds.
Not according to the deeds of his leaders.
Not according to what he might do when he grows up.

God hears the voice of the boybecause he was there: thirsty, afraid, abandoned, and helpless.

When a child lies under a tent in Gaza, hungry and thirsty, God does not ask him for whom his father voted, what Hamas did, what the charter of any organization says, or what the child will become in adulthood.

He hears the voice of the boy because he was there.

The expected punishment

The Torah does not suffice with the promise that God will hear the cry of the orphan. It also warns the oppressor and details the expected punishment:

"You shall not afflict any widow or orphan. If you do afflict them, and they cry out to Me, I will surely hear their cry; and My anger will burn, and I will kill you with the sword; and your wives shall be widows, and your children orphans." (Exodus 22:21-23).

This is a law of measure for measure. Whoever creates orphans—the orphanhood will return to his house. Whoever lifts a sword against the helpless—the sword does not promise to spare him. Whoever thinks the cry of the weak child is unheard because he has no army, government, or media—is warned that his cry has a hearer and a judge.

This is not my curse nor my wish. This is the warning written in the Torah that we ourselves bear, read, and learn from.

Therefore, no believer has the right to take half the verse that suits him and ignore the punishment that follows immediately after. The cry of the orphan provokes wrath. The shedding of the blood of the weak also places the shedder in danger of the sword.

Punishments are not absent from the Torah.
Justice is not absent from it.
Only the fear of God is absent from us.

"And they did not fear God"

Amalek also receives a special condemnation. Not only because he fought Israel, but because he chose to harm the weak and the stragglers who went at the end of the camp:

"Who met you on the way and struck down all the stragglers at your rear, when you were faint and weary; and he did not fear God." (Deuteronomy 25:18).

And did not fear God!

Who does not fear God?—Amalek.

And why? Because he attacks the straggler, strikes the faint and weary, harms those left behind who cannot fight back. He does not fear divine judgment while exploiting his power against the weak and helpless.

Therefore it is written:

"For I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven" .. "The LORD will have war with Amalek from generation to generation" (Exodus 17:14-16).

Amalek is not only the name of an ancient people that can be cast upon our enemies. Amalek is an act. It is a way. It is the choice to harm the weak knowing they cannot fight back.

Before we ask who Amalek is today, we must ask:

Where are the acts of Amalek taking place today?

Is it in breaking the breadbasket of Gaza’s residents?

Is it in preventing food from a population that includes hundreds of thousands of children?

Is it in destroying water pumps and turning thirst into a weapon?

Is it in destroying hospitals, harming medical teams, and leaving injured children untreated?

Is it in bombing displaced persons camps, schools, and family homes?

Is it in indiscriminate destruction, turning entire neighborhoods into ruins and taking the mother from the children?

The Torah commands even regarding a bird’s nest:

"You shall not take the mother with the young" (Deuteronomy 22:6),

And what shall we say when the mother and the children are buried together under their home?

Who is the destroyer and the indiscriminate ruin?
Who takes the mother with the children?
And who, after all this, still dares to sacrifice himself and present himself as the sole victim?

The question is not which people is Amalek by blood and lineage. The question is who commitsthe act of Amalek: who strikes the straggler, who hits the faint and weary, who harms the hungry and thirsty—and who does all this without fearing God.

Children of Gaza are the oppressed

Children of Gaza are the oppressed, thirsty, and hungry of our time.

According to UNICEF, more than 56,000 children in Gaza have lost one or both parents—orphans! Tens of thousands of children therefore carry orphanhood in their bodies and souls, alongside tens of thousands more who were wounded, separated from their families, or left without home and security.

Their hearts are broken because of the murder, destruction, and annihilation taking place under the cover of war. They will carry these sights all their lives: the father who did not return, the mother who was buried, the brother pulled from the ruins, the hunger, the thirst, and the world that looked at them and moved on.

And the State of Israel, acting in the name of Bnei Yisrael, continues in sin day after day, hour after hour. It continues attacks and killings; and many among Bnei Yisrael continue to justify, remain silent, or avert their gaze.

The bloodshed in the land is terrible.

There is no criticism of it.
There is no justice.
There is no wisdom.
There is no restraint.

This bloodshed cries out from the earth and rises to the heavens—and there is no fear of God in the land.

The spiritual danger is no less than the political danger. A people can win a battle and lose its soul. It can hold tanks, planes, and bombs—but lose the fear of God, its ability to hear a cry, and the moral right to bear its name.

From the mouths of infants and sucklings

Amid this abyssal blindness, people even put on their lips the verse:

"From the mouth of babes and sucklings You have established strength, to silence Your enemy and avenger." (Psalms 8:3).

But the verse does not declare that the infants and sucklings are the enemy. On the contrary: divine strength is establishedfrom their mouth.

Whoever turns the infant itself into "enemy and avenger" turns the verse upside down. Whoever sees a hungry child as a future terrorist, whoever sees a baby as a demographic threat, does not hear the voice of the infants but silences it.

And in abyssal blindness, the people dwelling in Zion lack the fear of God and the contemplation of the laws and judgments God left to do righteousness in the land. They speak much in the name of the Tanakh but refuse to hear its rebuke. They mention Israel’s election but forget Israel’s obligation. They demand the land but ignore the blood spilled upon it. They bear the name of the sons—and continue to maim the children of Gaza.

It is not enough to call:

"You are children to the LORD your God."

The name "Bnei Yisrael" is not a certificate of immunity from judgment.
It is not a license for bloodshed.
It does not turn every act of Israel into an act of God.
It does not protect us from the punishments written in the Torah itself.

Whoever does not hear the voice of the boy, whoever oppresses the orphan, whoever strikes the straggler, whoever sacrifices children on the altar of war, whoever turns hunger and thirst into weapons, and whoever feeds his household from the act and creation of the destroyer—empties the name "Bnei Yisrael" of its content.

Therefore, we must no longer wrap ourselves in the name "Bnei Yisrael" as if merely saying it turns us into children of God.

At this hour, we must raise another name:

Children Of Gaza - ילדי עזה

Not to erase Bnei Yisrael—but to remind them what it means to be children.

Children of Gaza are the cry.
Children of Gaza are the testimony.
Children of Gaza are the indictment.
Children of Gaza are the voice of the boy because he was there.

And until we hear their voice;
And until we cease oppressing the orphan;
And until we stop striking the stragglers;
And until we stop the bloodshed;
And until we return to justice, righteousness, and the fear of God—

We have no right to wrap ourselves in the name "Bnei Yisrael" and pretend that the name itself cleanses our hands of blood.