Friday, 14 November 2025

Al Jazeera, Stop Using Children as Weapons!

 

Al Jazeera, Stop Using Children as Weapons!

 Shrikant G Talageri 

 

When talking about Israelis in the Israel-Palestine conflict, or indeed, in talking about any non-Muslim side in any Muslim-vs.-non-Muslim conflict in the world, the main stock-in-trade talking-point, or rather the main psychological weapon against the non-Muslim side that Islamic, or on a broader landscape their woke leftist, propagandists make use of is the issue of Muslim “children” being “killed” by non-Muslims.

Take the following few exemplary Al-Jazeera headlines in the case of Israel (moving backwards in date):


https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2025/11/13/live-israel-attacks-gazas-south-north-during-repeatedly-violated-truce

Updates: 2 Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces in West Bank raid

13 November 2025

 

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2025/11/10/live-israeli-air-raids-hit-gaza-city-southern-lebanon

10 November 2025

Updates: Child among two killed as Israeli air raids, drones target Gaza

 


https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2025/10/7/the-young-children-killed-by-israeli-fire-this-year-in-occupied-west-bank

7 October 2025

 

https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2025/9/3/100-killed-in-one-day-including-children-queuing-for-water-in-gaza

3 September 2025

 

https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2025/4/7/israeli-attacks-in-gaza-killing-or-injuring-100-children-a

7 April 2025

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-0zrQZWwDE

Kids Under Fire: An investigation into Israeli soldiers shooting children | Fault Lines Documentary

27 March 2025

 

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2025/3/26/gazas-stolen-childhood-the-thousands-of-children-israel-killed

26 March 2025

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlCzT9_YE9Y

“Palestinian children killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza | Al Jazeera Newsfeed: Here is a list of the names we know, from more than 11,500 children killed during Israel’s war on Gaza. Even this is less than half of those killed.

2 February 2024

 

This is just a sample collection of such reports in Al-Jazeera, obtained by just a casual three minute search in google, where the subject of “children” killed by the Israeli forces features in the headlines. Needless to say, there must be countless more headlines (not detected in this casual search) where this same theme is repeated by Al-Jazeera alone, countless times more cases where the theme is reported by Al-Jazeera not in the headlines but within the reports, and multiple countless times more cases where the same theme is repeated with admirable passion and pathos by countless other (than Al-Jazeera) pro-Islamic and woke and leftist reporters, journalists, media agencies and personnel, and political activists, in every corner of every country in the world. Just one example:

 

https://www.facebook.com/thewire.in/videos/kochi-activists-read-out-names-of-1500gaza-children-killed-in-israeli-strikessim/1358347769410749/

Kochi Activists Read Out Names of 1,500 Gaza Children Killed in Israeli Strikes Similar readings will be held across Kerala, aiming to speak aloud names of 18,000 children killed in Gaza — a call for collective grief and resolution. #watchcommunity

14 October 2025

 

 

No, this is not something incidental in news reporting. This is a very major and fundamental psychological weapon in the armory of Islamic and pro-Islamic (woke leftist and anti-Semitic) propaganda, used against non-Muslim adversaries.

 

To put things in their perspective, here are three examples of Al-Jazeera headlines about Kashmiri Muslim “children” killed by Indian forces:

 

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/21/heart-bleeds-kashmiris-grieve-children-killed-on-india-pakistan-frontier

21 May 2025

 

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/7/2/photo-of-toddler-sitting-on-his-grandfathers-body-angers-kashmir

2 July 2020

 

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/11/19/pakistan-india-shells-kill-three-children-in-kashmir

19 November 2016

 

Again, as I said above, this is just a sample collection of such reports in Al-Jazeera, obtained by just a casual three minute search in google, where the subject of “children” killed by Indian forces features in the headlines. Needless to say, there must be countless more headlines where this same theme is repeated by Al-Jazeera alone, countless times more cases where the theme is reported by Al-Jazeera not in the headlines but within the reports, and multiple countless times more cases where the same theme is repeated with admirable passion and pathos by countless other (than Al-Jazeera) pro-Islamic and woke and leftist reporters, journalists, media agencies and personnel, and political activists, in every corner of every country in the world.

 


And it is very effective, as I have seen many times. The moment − however fishily, incongruously, insincerely, falsely, artificially or hypocritically − the “children are being killed” arrow is shot against non-Muslims in any discussion or report of any Muslim-vs.-non-Muslim conflict situation, countless otherwise sane and even pro-Hindu people seem to lose all sense of proportion, balance, common sense and even honesty, and get so overwhelmed by the “I must show how much I care for children” obsession or syndrome, that they steadfastly refuse to see reason. On a Hindu and Hindutvavadi online discussion site of which I was a member, an otherwise sane and rational (and very much Hindu-minded) lady member seemed to go berserk in attacking Israel for the Palestinian “children” she insisted they were deliberately, calculatedly and cold-bloodedly slaughtering in the “Palestinian” areas, however much attempts were made to make her see reason. I finally gave up, realizing the overpowering power of psychological warfare in brainwashing minds and numbing reason, but also deciding that this powerful psychological weapon must one day be made a subject of an article.

 

As I pointed out in my recent article, “Israel, Palestinians, and India”: “Eerily, increasing numbers of non-leftist Hindus (including even Hindus who are avowedly “Hindutva”-minded) also shed crocodile-tears for Palestinians and talk of the rights of Palestinians, in line with the guidelines of woke-dictated political-“correctness”-dogma. And the strange part of it is that these Hindus, without exhibiting even the slightest blush of shame, quote the woke spokespersons of the west as authorities on the Israel-Palestine issue – spokespersons who have never seen fit to comment on the ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Kashmir, Pakistan or Bangladesh, but who allege instead that Muslims are being targeted in India!

 

It is a well-known and universally observed fact that, in every Muslim-vs.-non-Muslim conflict in the world, children are the biggest weapon used by Islamic fundamentalists and extremists in propaganda wars − and before that in actual conflicts with their non-Muslim adversaries, beginning with the stone throwing Islamic mobs which attack the security forces trying to keep order in non-Muslim countries always keeping crowds of children (and women) in the vanguard of the mobs (besides using children as spies, messengers, conduits for drugs and weapons, and even as actual shooters and bombers). This is the case not only in matters pertaining to Israel, but also in matters pertaining to Kashmir:

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/madhya-pradesh/15-year-old-boys-among-the-attackers-says-pahalgam-victims-son/article69487247.ece

24 April, 2025.

 

Apart from the fact that the “outrage” is always selective and biased, against Jews and Hindus, and in support of Muslims, the fact that children are expressly used as shields and weapons by Islamic “movements” is usually ignored by the anti-Hindu and “anti-Semitic” (i.e. anti-Jew) media.

 

In fact, see the way, even as it is forced to acknowledge this fact, the “google overview” reply to a question “reports about children used as shooters in Kashmir” twists the issue round to claim that Muslim children are targeted while these same children, when (one supposes) therefore forced to take up arms, spare Hindu children!

 

Reports indicate that militant groups in Kashmir have recruited and used minors as combatants. Eyewitnesses in recent terror attacks have also described some of the assailants as appearing to be teenagers, although the primary victims of violence in the region are often children and civilians. 


Recruitment of Children by Militant Groups

Human rights reports and news articles have highlighted the use of children by militant outfits in Jammu and Kashmir.

·         A 2019 report noted a rise in the number of local recruits, including minors, with some joining groups like Hizbul Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-Taiba.

·         In some cases, minors as young as 14 and 17 were killed in encounters with security forces.

·         Reports suggest that factors such as alleged police harassment, exposure to violence, and social media influence played a role in pushing some minors towards militancy.

·         Authorities have also intercepted and counselled minor boys attempting to cross the Line of Control for training. 

 

Children as Victims of Violence

Children in Kashmir are significantly impacted by the conflict, often as victims rather than perpetrators.

·         A report by the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) documented that over 300 children were killed between 2003 and 2017, many of whom were shot dead by security forces or died due to pellet gun injuries.

·         The UN Secretary-General has urged India to end the use of pellet guns against children.

·         Children have also been killed in blasts and crossfire during counter-insurgency operations.

·         In the April 2025 Pahalgam terror attack, eyewitnesses described some of the attackers as approximately 15-year-old boys who separated men from women and children before shooting the men. The victims in this incident were primarily adult male tourists and one local pony operator.

[A grotesque example of this kind of fake propaganda is the viciously anti-Hindu leftist serial on the then leftist-controlled Doordarshan, “Tamas”, which, even as it actively portrayed Muslims as the victims rather than the perpetrators of riots, and Hindus and Sikhs as politically-instigated rioters against Muslims, actually in the partition-era riots before 1947, showed a fictitious scene where a Hindu boy is taken to an Arya Samaj office and, in the backdrop of a photograph of Swami Vivekananda, taught to strangle a puppy as training for strangling and killing Muslims!]   

 

Are there no “children” in any other community in the world other than in Muslim communities in conflict situations? Do Palestinian, Arab and other Muslim (or non-Muslim) attacks against Israelis and Hindus, to be specific, mysteriously spare Jewish and Hindu “children”. Will Durant described the Muslim conquest of India as “probably the bloodiest story in history”. How many countless millions and millions of people, very much including “children”, must have been killed during the conquest (a process which spread itself out over several centuries) and have been taken captive to be sold as slaves in the Muslim world (and face a fate worse than death)? How many Hindu “children” must have been among the Hindus killed in Bangladesh over the years as the Hindu percentage of its population was brought down from 22% in 1951 to around 8.5% now?

 

 

But wait a minute, let us not even make this issue of “children” a “Muslim-vs.-non-Muslim conflict” issue. In any conflict, regardless of the identities of the two opposing sides, do the bombings (and even atom-bombings), missile-attacks, air-raid attacks, killings and shootings, slaughters and massacres etc. all over the world in the whole of history in the course of invasions, conquests, wars, ethnic cleansings, etc. by various people against various other people, spare the “children”?

 

Why cannot the discussion take place, in discussing any conflict, on the basis of plain facts honestly examined or reported (taking whichever side), and with the aim of preventing or stopping the conflicts, without using this “children” motif as a psychological weapon in order to paint one side as a satanic villain and the other side as the hapless victims?

 

An honest look at the subject will show that children are rarely, if ever, targeted in conflict situations: or rather, few people in conflict situations specifically target children. In fact, it is usually only terrorists (or criminal-minded rioters of a low level) who target children in conflict situations. Otherwise children are automatic (“collateral”?) victims, in proportionate numbers as part of larger numbers of people who get killed in conflicts. It is only in true criminal situations that children get targeted: by kidnappers, child-traffickers, slave-traders, pornography-makers, abusive adults, sexual offenders, etc., and even other children (i.e. boycott, bullying and ragging). To talk of “children” in conflict situations except in extremely exceptional circumstances is a despicable tactic, amounting in itself to a form of child abuse.    

 

Let us be very clear, it is particularly the side which is in the wrong which feels the need to consistently take recourse to such very cheap, fake, low-down, despicable and degraded pieces of propaganda, which treat children as weapons. The people who employ this propaganda weapon deserve no respect at all, but the intelligence of those who genuinely and naively fall for the propaganda also comes into question.


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