Twenty-five years ago, the world was shaken by the harrowing image of Palestinian child Mohammed al-Durrah sheltering behind his father beside a concrete barrel in a narrow Gaza Street. A television camera captured his desperate pleas under a hail of bullets before he was killed in his father’s arms on September 30, 2000. His image became a global symbol of the crimes of the usurping entity and an icon of the suffering of Palestinian children, despite its attempts to deny responsibility.
Today, a quarter of a century later, the scene is repeating itself in even more brutal ways. Since October 7, 2023, the Gaza Strip has endured a war internationally described as genocide. Relentless bombing by the usurping entity has reduced residential neighborhoods to rubble and left tens of thousands dead, including more than 20,000 children, according to human rights organizations. Save the Children reports that at least one child is killed every hour in Gaza, while UNICEF has called the enclave “a graveyard for children.” These staggering figures reveal a systematic policy against civilians and recall the moment of Mohammed al-Durrah, as if his image lives on in every Palestinian child killed under the bombardment.
The assault is not limited to bombs; it extends to starvation and siege. Since the start of the war, more than two million people have been deprived of food, water, and medicine. United Nations agencies warn of imminent famine affecting hundreds of thousands, with children facing death from hunger and disease. Systematic attacks on hospitals and medical teams have pushed Gaza’s health system to the brink of total collapse, with most facilities destroyed or barely functioning.
Meanwhile, in the West Bank, settler violence and military raids intensify in parallel with the war on Gaza. Human rights reports document hundreds of attacks that have killed and injured scores of Palestinians and forced entire communities into displacement, amid mass arrests of thousands, including women and children—a policy of collective punishment.
These ongoing crimes bring back the image of Mohammed al-Durrah as a mirror of today’s bloody reality. The blood of children in Gaza and the West Bank cries out to the world to break the wall of silence and end the aggression and genocide. Mohammed al-Durrah—and every child who has died under bombardment—remains a witness to an unending tragedy and a symbol of a promise that will not fade: justice will come, no matter how long it takes.
