On one of the streets of Gaza that Israel’s army left only days ago, eight-year-old Adam was sifting through the rubble of what used to be his home, searching for his old toy.

He didn’t know that among the stones, death was waiting for children like him.

He spotted something that looked like a toy — a small bear, its colour faded as if it had survived a great fire. Adam smiled shyly and reached out his hand.

Then came the explosion.

No one in the neighbourhood understood what had happened at first, until his mother’s screams tore through the silence the tanks had left behind.

‘It’s not a toy…’ said the paramedic who carried what was left of the child to hospital. ‘This was supposed to be a day of life — but the occupation leaves death behind even after it leaves.’

Gaza’s children face “bombs disguised as toys”

At what’s left of Al-Shifa Hospital, Dr Munir Al-Barsh — Director General of Gaza’s Ministry of Health — raised his voice after seeing the children arrive. Some had lost their arms. Others had lost their legs.

Their faces were stripped of their childhood.

Al-Barsh’s words were heavy with horror:

The occupation wasn’t satisfied with destroying homes; it left bombs disguised as toys, boxes, and household items — killing children even as they played.

Among the twisted metal beds, six-year-old Layan clings to her father’s hand. Her other hand is gone.

She points with the one she has left to a small bag beside the bed — filled with new toys donated by volunteers.

Childhood buried under rubble thanks to Israel

The reality is too much for any child to grasp. Here, words like ‘rubble’, ‘danger’, and ‘explosives’ are no longer the vocabulary of soldiers and journalists — they’ve become part of the language of childhood, learned before letters and numbers.

Civil defence workers move through the ruins with trembling hearts — not out of fear for themselves, but for the children who might already be there, driven by dreams rather than survival.

One rescuer, carefully lifting a strange object, said:

The hardest thing we face isn’t the explosives — it’s the children’s questions when they ask, “Can we play here?”

In Gaza, playing has become a risk. A doll can mean death. Curiosity has become a crime whose only punishment is innocence itself.

Here, the world buries children twice — once under the rubble, and once again in its silent memory.

This is a war that kills laughter and turns childhood into a minefield.

A systematic tactic

Field evidence and testimonies from doctors, paramedics, and eyewitnesses suggest this isn’t the random aftermath of indiscriminate warfare. It’s a systematic tactic — Israel designed it to sow fear and inflict the maximum number of casualties among children and civilians.

Leaving explosives disguised as dolls, toys, and household items in civilian areas is a deliberate act. It’s a crime under international humanitarian law — one that demands an immediate global investigation and accountability for those who planned it.

In a world that can see the truth but refuses to act, the crime multiplies.

The pain isn’t just from a small device exploding — it’s from the collapse of the moral order itself, when play becomes a trap, children become targets, and innocence becomes a weapon for sending bloody messages.

30 years later, Israel is still doing it

This horrific tactic isn’t new. Israel used the same terror in South Lebanon in 1990s, scattering cluster bombs disguised as toys across villages — killing and maiming countless children long after its forces withdrew.

Watch, at minute 25:30, as Lebanese journalist Mohamad Kleit recounts the same horror to Democracy Now!

Lebanese musician Marcel Khalife immortalised the trauma of that era in his haunting song Tifl wa Tayara (Child and Aeroplane). It tells the story of a child who saw an airplane dropping toys on his village. He gathers his friends, excited to share the ‘wonderful’ news. The children run towards the toys — and the village lights up light a firework.

Three decades later, the same cruelty has returned — the same toys, the same victims, and the same shameless, heartless criminal.

Israel is a terror state.

Featured image via the Canary

By Alaa Shamali

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