Tim Lawrence

 Netanyahu threatens Palestinian kids who fly kites

All hope must be extinguished, kites must not fly

24 August 2026

During Israel’s genocide, Palestinian kids have been making paper kites as a cheap way of playing and forgetting about the slaughter of 21,000 of their friends.

The tradition of kite-making is decades-old in Palestine. It received global recognition fifteen years ago when 13,000 Palestinian kids set a world record for kite-flying during a summer camp organised UNRWA (subsequently all but destroyed by Israel and the US).

For Palestinian kids, kites represent expression, freedom and hope. The tradition has resonated with particular force ever since Israel turned Gaza into the largest open-air concentration camp on the planet.

After 7/10 Palestinians became nostalgic for concentration camp conditions while entertaining kite-style dreams of the future. Among them, poet Refaat Alareer wrote “If I Must Die” in November 2023:

If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love

If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale

On 6 December the IDF killed Refaat Alareer. Solidarity protestors carried kites at demos held on 9 December.

Last weekend Palestinian children launched four kites into the air. According to the Times of Israel they were directed towards Israel—quite how is hard to imagine. We’re not talking helium balloons, we’re talking kites.

Netanyahu and Israel defence minister Katz discussed the threat and announced: “If the launches toward Israel do not stop immediately, the IDF will act to intensify strikes against those responsible for the launches and evacuate populations from areas from which kites, drones and balloons are launched.”

The IDF confirmed that there was nothing suspicious about the kites—as if that even needed to be said.

The targeting of children has been pivotal to Israel’s genocide, which doubles as an infanticide. The stories come through daily.

Back on 23 June 2026 the UN captured the scale of the brutality in a report titled: “Israel continues to commit genocide and other atrocity crimes by deliberately targeting Palestinian children”—which just so happened to be the day my youngest daughter turned twenty-one.

https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session62/a-hrc-62-crp-2.pdf

The report notes how “the intense scale and systematic nature of the Israeli military operations” have resulted “in unprecedented death, injury and trauma of Palestinian children.” It reiterates that “the deliberate targeting of children is one of the key elements establishing genocidal intent of the Israeli authorities and security forces to destroy the Palestinian group, in whole or in part, in Gaza.”

It continues: “Palestinian children have been arrested and subjected to torture and other severe forms of mistreatment in Israeli prisons and detention facilities, with no information on their whereabouts. Israeli security forces have also used sexual violence against children as part of the collective shaming and oppression, entrenched within a prolonged, ethnic, gendered, and intergenerational pattern of Israeli occupation and hostilities.”

The report details how Israel’s targeting of neonatal and maternity care centres have harmed the survival of newborns the collective reproductive future of the Palestinians. There have been rises in miscarriages, birth defects and lasting vulnerabilities among newborns. The aim and effect has been to destroy newborn life and population continuity. The imposed starvation of Palestinians via the blockade caused the death of children and impact the health of those who survived.

The report noted what is self-evidently true: “By targeting children, Israel is eroding the foundational structure of Palestinian society, weakening the demographic vitality, and overall capacity of the Palestinian people to sustain and exercise its right to determine its future as a people.”

Yet if the scale of the attempt to ethnically cleanse and genocide the Palestinians of Gaza via the targeting of the future of that population, the children, is unprecedented, it’s not new.

Yesterday I came across a report on the IDF murder of a 13-year-old Palestinian girl, Imam Darweesh Al Hams. On 5 October 2004 she walked to school along the Philadelphi Route. Along the route stood an IDF watchtower. Soldiers fired on her, suspecting that she might be carrying explosive in her rucksack. In fact it contained only books.

An audio recording of Israeli radio confirmed that an IDF soldier commented before the shooting began that she was a little girl who was “scared to death”. After a soldier shot her an Israeli army captain walked up to her as she lay on the ground. He fired two more rounds into her head at close range. He stepped away, then came back, switched to an automatic rifle and fired the rest of his magazine into her. There were multiple shots to her head.

A CCTV camera recorded the sequence. An autopsy retrieved 17-20 bullets from Imam’s body. The soldiers claimed they had opened fire because they suspected she was planting an explosive, but he radio recording showed that story was untrue. The captain was temporarily suspended in a court marshal. He showed no remorse. Instead he told the court he would have done the same thing, even if she’d been three years old.

Maybe if she was flying a kite, too.

All of this can be filed under Israel's devotion to collective punishment. Even a kid who flies a kite, has fun and hopes for a freer future is a potential Hamas freedom fighter, sorry, terrorist. All hope must be extinguished, kites must not fly.

Israel has killed 73,000 Palestinians since 7/10, including 265 children following October’s “ceasefire”. May all of their souls fly high in the sky.

Free Palestine!

🇵🇸 🇵🇸 🇵🇸