This Was the Year We Learned What a Child Looks Like Without Half His Head
Fatima Bhutto writes that in its genocidal war in Gaza, Israel has – with dangerous consequences – changed the protocols of war.
This essay is part of Zeteo’s special content marking one year since the attacks on Oct. 7 and the genocidal war in Gaza that has followed.
One evening in August, I was in the kitchen looking at my phone when on X, in a blur of scrolling, I thought I saw a child with half his head blown off on my feed. In a panic, I scrolled past the image, my heart pounding. What had I just seen? There had been another massacre in Gaza, another slaughter by the Israeli military. It was 10 months into the genocide.
I didn’t want to see the image, but I moved through my feed to try to understand what had just happened when I saw it again. A boy, half his head a tumble of light brown curls; the other half of his head decimated, missing, gone. He was being carried by his father; his father who thought he could still save his boy, his son, his darling child. Though over these interminably cruel months, I have seen premature babies gasping for oxygen in incubators that are about to be powered off, a beheaded baby held in the air by his howling father, and women weeping into the shrouds of their children, I burst into tears. It was the most terrifying thing I have ever seen.
It has been one year of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and the old world order is gone, obliterated by Israel, which has ushered us into something nightmarish and unimaginable. Before this year, I could never have imagined that I would know what a toddler looks like without half his head. But Israel and its backers, who have empowered it to act with total impunity, have changed more than just our nightmares – they have changed with dire and dangerous consequences the protocols of war. You may not care about Palestinians, but tomorrow these tactics may be visited on your city, on your people, with you as the victims.
Israel is replicating its playbook in Lebanon as we speak – assassinating journalists in their homes, reportedly bombing ambulances, and killing children. When it remotely detonated 3,000 pagers in an act of mass terrorism, Israel reportedly sent messages so that their victims would hold them close to their faces when they exploded, ensuring death or severe injuries. Western papers like the New York Times could barely contain their teenage-like glee over Israel’s murderous technology, praising its innovation and daring as though this were an action movie where the serial killer gets craftier with every kill. Lincoln Jopp, a Conservative MP in the UK, insisted we “look on in awe” at Israel’s “phenomenal” attack. No matter that the pagers exploded in grocery stores, in people's homes, and even in a pediatrician's office as the doctor was examining a 10-day-old baby. Dozens of people, including two children, were killed when Israel detonated the pagers and other devices over two days. The maiming and murdering of newborns and children – this is Israel’s specialty.
Not Ordinary Acts of War
In Gaza, Israel has killed more UN workers since Oct. 7 of last year than have been targeted at any point in their entire history. An unprecedented number of aid workers have been hunted down and murdered.