Defacing the Image of God

The Children of Occupation

Last week witnessed the first tragic murder in 2022 of a Palestinian child, when Israeli occupation forces shot and killed 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Salah in the village of Silat al-Harithiya. Reports indicate that he posed no direct threat to the soldiers. On Tuesday this week, Israeli forces shot and killed 13-year-old Mohammad Rezq Salah in the town of al-Khader near Bethlehem. After he had been shot, local media report, "Israeli forces prevented Palestinian ambulances from arriving to the scene."

Such incidents follow immediately in the wake of what is described “as the deadliest year [2021] for Palestinian children since 2014.” According evidence collected by Defense for Children International—Palestine:

• 86 Palestinian children have been killed in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since January 2021.
• Israeli forces killed 76 Palestinian children, including 61 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip and 15 Palestinian children in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
• Armed Israeli civilians killed two Palestinian children in the West Bank.
• Seven Palestinian children were killed by rockets misfired by Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip.
• One Palestinian child was killed by an unexploded ordinance, the origins of which could not be determined.
• One Israeli child was killed by shrapnel from a rocket fired by Palestinian militants in the Gaza strip.

As a reminder, “Israel as the occupying power in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including the Gaza Strip, is required to protect the Palestinian civilian population from violence.” Sadly, this is most definitely not the case, for “since [the year] 2000, 2,198 Palestinian children have been killed as a result of Israeli military and settler presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

In addition, Mondoweiss published this week the heartbreaking story of 14-year-old Osama Sarsak, found suffocated beneath a rubbish heap in the Gaza Strip after searching morning to night for scrap-metal to sell in exchange for anything that might help his family survive. This is the cost of apartheid, yet another tragic example encapsulating the human impact of Israel (and Egypt)'s totalitarian blockade.

One must consider, too, the trauma of forced homelessness and displacement resulting from expulsions and home demolitions, as well as the astronomical statistic that “each year the Israeli military detains and prosecutes around 700 Palestinian children” in military courts. These children are subjected to nighttime raids, wherein they are woken up, bound, blindfolded, and forcibly separated from their parents, physical violence after arrest, documented cases of sexual assault and intimidation, verbal threats, and psychological abuse without the presence of family or legal counsel. “Since 2000,” according to DCIP’s No Way to Treat a Child Campaign, “an estimated 10,000 Palestinian children have been detained by Israeli forces from the occupied West Bank and held in the Israeli military detention system.”

I can only imagine the terror of being a child in such circumstances. And, as I write this, I can’t help but break down in tears imagining my own young children in their place, themselves Palestinian and privileged only by accident of history and circumstance. Of course, it must be stated clearly that such horrors exist everywhere one finds vulnerable populations, within North America as much as the Middle East and beyond. And in the face of such evil, one couldn’t care less whether one’s munitions are branded with American, Russian, or Iranian flags. When children are concerned, there can never be such a thing as "collateral damage."

Kids and the Kingdom of God

The greatest irony to all of these so-called “holy wars” waged in the name of God (read: real-estate disputes) is that it is God himself whom we betray. For as we observe throughout scripture, children exist as the very sign of God’s continued presence in our midst, “the tangible manifestation of God’s blessing upon his creation.” In the Bible we find repeated instructions to “be fruitful and multiply,” a multiplicity of genealogical lists, and messianic prophecies that “unto us a child is born.” We are reminded that God’s blessing—his continued care for his fallen creation—has always gone hand-in-hand with the continued presence and promise of children in our collective midst.

The messiah himself, we read, arrives as a child. Conceived under socially precarious circumstances and born in a less than ideal setting, he would soon be forced to flee his homeland under the cover of night to escape the genocidal designs of a murderous pretender. Eventually, we come to learn from Jesus the crucial significance children play in the economy of salvation. Jesus declares: “Whoever welcomes one of these children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me isn’t actually welcoming me but rather the one who sent me” (Mark 9:37).

Immediately following, Jesus castigated his disciples for trying to prevent the children from receiving his blessing, declaring that “God’s Kingdom belongs to such as these” (Mark 10:14). Though the disciples viewed children as little more than a peripheral distraction, in actuality they were the central intent. God’s in-breaking kingdom belongs not to the prophets, priests, and kings of whichever era one belongs but to children. For as with Christ himself, they represent the very sign of God’s presence among us!

I think it is fair to say, therefore, that the status of children in our respective societies is emblematic of the status we attribute to God Himself. And, the presence and condition of our children reveals to us the extent to which God’s kingdom has been made manifest in our midst. To honor a child is to honor the presence of God in that child. Conversely, to harm a child is to deface the very image of God.