Maeve Higgins: Our Government must do all it can to stop Israel's baby killers in Gaza

At least 17,954 children have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza, including 274 newborn babies and 876 infants. Thousands more have been orphaned, injured and starved, writes Maeve Higgins

Palestinians collect belongings from a school used as a shelter by displaced residents that was hit twice by Israeli army strikes on Tuesday, killing more than 25 people, in Bureij, central Gaza Strip. Photo: AP/Abdel Kareem Hana

In the skies above London in the early hours of September 3, 1916, a young English pilot shot down a 'Baby Killer' — the name Britons gave to German airships that bombed civilians in their homes. 

The airships killed hundreds of people including, most famously, a three-year-old girl named Elsie Lefferts asleep in her bed. 

The pilot, William Leefe Robinson, was an instant hero, later writing to his parents: "When I reached the ground once more I was greeted with 'was it you Robin?' 'Yes I've strafed the beggar this time', I said, whereupon the whole flight set up a yell and carried me out of my machine to the office.” 

The children of London were safe in their beds once more.

Today’s baby killers roam the skies over Gaza, and they are far more deadly; Israeli quadcopters, jets and suicide drones bring death from above. 

There are baby killers on the ground too, in the form of tanks shelling tents and Israeli snipers shooting children in the head. 

At least 17,954 children have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza, including 274 newborn babies and 876 infants below the age of one year. Thousands of babies and children have been orphaned, thousands more have been injured, many with one or more limbs amputated, often without anesthesia. 

Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip last Sunday. Today’s Baby Killers roam the skies over Gaza, and they are far more deadly. Photo: AP/Ariel Schalit

Now, after more than 60 days of an Israeli blockade on food and medicine, hundreds of thousands of children are starving.

It’s vital to understand that when it comes to the Israeli state killing Palestinian children, this is an escalation and not an aberration. it has been happening long before October 2023, and not just in Gaza, but the occupied West Bank too. 

In this newspaper in 2022, I wrote about a 16-year-old named Jana Zakaran who had stepped out to get her cat as IDF soldiers raided her hometown of Jenin. 

I quoted her uncle Majed Zakaran then and his words bear repeating here: "She was killed in cold blood by the Israelis — she was alone on the roof," he told The Guardian newspaper. 

She was just a child, and they shot her four times in the head and chest. 

Who will stop the baby killers of today?

The US-backed Israeli war machine will not stop itself, that’s for sure. This week the Israeli cabinet approved plans for an expanded offensive to force the displacement of most Palestinian people in Gaza and cement the occupation of the territory indefinitely. 

Time and again, Israeli politicians and generals reveal genocidal intent, along with systematic policies causing exceptionally high numbers of civilian casualties. Without any military justification, Israeli forces deliberately target plastic tents with obscenely heavy bombs. 

This also serves to inflict terror and psychological damage on trapped, besieged Palestinians — including children. 

"We are breaking the bodies and the minds of the children of Gaza,” Michael Ryan of the World Health Organization said on Sunday. 

“We are starving the children of Gaza, because if we don’t do something about it, we are complicit in what is happening before our very eyes. 

We are complicit. We are causing this, you, us and everyone who does nothing about it, it’s horrific. 

Returning now to that other early morning aerial bombardment of civilians in the London skies of 1916 and the young English pilot who shot down the airship. Thousands of people on the ground witnessed that particular baby killer go up in flames and plummet to the ground, with their cheering reportedly heard for miles outside the city. 

Relief is too small a word for how they must have felt — their children were safe in their beds once more, their family’s future was possible. We owe the same safety and the same possibility of a future to the people of Gaza now.

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On Tuesday, Micheál Martin and Simon Harris finally recognized that Israel is committing war crimes. So, what now? Ireland must sanction Israel, boycott Israeli goods and services and immediately stop the facilitation of Israeli war bonds. 

We cannot allow any more weapons or munitions through Shannon Airport and across our air space. We must seek justice for the victims of this genocide and in time, we must beg forgiveness from the surviving children of Gaza.