Both Palestinian children in Gaza, as shown on left, and Israeli children, as seen on the right, have been hurt, killed and kidnapped in the Israel-Hamas war.
In 1903, a local mob killed 49 Jews, including several children, and raped and wounded 600 others, in the city of Kishinev, then part of the Russian Empire. These three days of violence later became known as the Kishinev pogrom.
A few days later, the Jewish-Russian poet Hayim Nahman Bialik published a Hebrew poem that every Israeli school child still knows today.
I am a scholar of the Holocaust and genocide. When thinking about the unfolding Israel-Hamas war, I am reminded of this Bialik poem, “On the Slaughter.” It laments Jewish helplessness and victimhood – and condemns apathy to violence, including the murder of children.
Bialik writes:
“And damned be he who says: Avenge!
Such vengeance, for the blood of a small child,
Satan has yet to devise.”
Hamas militants killed approximately 30 Israeli children when they attacked civilians on Oct. 7, 2023, killing more than 1,400 people altogether. At least 20 Israeli children remain hostage in Gaza.
Both sides in this war have focused on the deaths and kidnapping of children, sharing images and videos of the children as a testament to the other side’s cruelty.
Particularly, Hamas’ slaughter of Israeli children evokes collective Jewish memories of pogroms and the Holocaust – and the attempt to annihilate the Jewish people.
For Palestinians, too, the killing of their children represents both the injustice of Israeli rule and occupation, and the perceived attempt to stop Palestinians from having their own country. The collective Palestinian memory of the Nakba in 1948, when Israeli forces killed thousands of Palestinians and pushed out 750,000 people from their homes, is replete with tales of children who lost both their homeland and their parents.
In 1903, a local mob killed 49 Jews, including several children, and raped and wounded 600 others, in the city of Kishinev, then part of the Russian Empire. These three days of violence later became known as the Kishinev pogrom.
A few days later, the Jewish-Russian poet Hayim Nahman Bialik published a Hebrew poem that every Israeli school child still knows today.
I am a scholar of the Holocaust and genocide. When thinking about the unfolding Israel-Hamas war, I am reminded of this Bialik poem, “On the Slaughter.” It laments Jewish helplessness and victimhood – and condemns apathy to violence, including the murder of children.
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