Time for a harsh truth: even with Netanyahu gone, the killing won’t stop in Gaza

It’s naive to think the Israeli opposition will act very differently. Look at what it has said about even the most vulnerable Palestinians

“Every child, every baby in Gaza is the enemy.” In a normal society, a politician who said something so depraved would face total reputational ruin. Not so in Israel. Meet Moshe Feiglin, previously considered a “far-right outcast”, who has just been elected to Israel’s legislature. He said this last May, but he has also called for more Palestinian babies to die and for Gaza’s entire population, newborns included, to be expelled. In last month’s election, Feiglin formed an alliance with Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right finance minister. Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed this “important union” and praised their “national responsibility”.

Feiglin’s words are not simply the ravings of an extremist politician. Israel has waged what Save the Children describes as a “war on children”. A UN independent commission concluded earlier this year that Israeli forces had deliberately targeted and killed Palestinian children. According to figures from the Palestinian ministry of health – which are likely significant underestimates – nearly 22,000 children in Gaza have been killed since Israel began its assault, including at least 1,100 under the age of one.

Now that Netanyahu and his far-right allies have lost their majority in last month’s election, you may well hope that this horror will finally come to an end.

Think again. Park the fact that Netanyahu’s bloc still won more votes than the Jewish-led opposition, despite his government’s failures over 7 October, his corruption trial, the cost of living crisis, the Iran war debacle, the controversy over exemptions from military service for ultra-Orthodox Jews and his assault on the judiciary.

Leading figures in the opposition are bitterly opposed to cooperating with Palestinian-led parties, hardly disguising their racism in the process. Last year, Yair Lapid, deemed a “centrist” moderate in Israel, declared: “There will be no government with the Arabs again after 7 October. The public is not ready for a government that depends on Arab votes.”

But whoever becomes prime minister, the contempt for Palestinian children extends far beyond Netanyahu’s government. Take Avigdor Lieberman, who declared in November 2023 that “there are no innocents in Gaza”, repeating a statement he first made five years before the 7 October attacks. Lieberman is no ally of Netanyahu. He is one of the leaders of the opposition, and a possible kingmaker in a new government. More to the point, his attitude reflects mainstream opinion. According to polling last year, nearly eight in 10 Jewish Israelis agreed with the statement that “there are no innocent people in Gaza”.

Then there is Nissim Vaturi, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party who is deputy speaker of the Knesset. In January 2025, he declared: “Gaza is full of terrorists and every child born there is already a terrorist, from the moment of his birth.” Beyond wicked, yes, but how different is the attitude of Meirav Ben-Ari, a politician belonging to Lapid’s centrist party, when she exclaimed: “The children of Gaza have brought this upon themselves”?

And what to think of Gadi Eisenkot himself, the main opposition leader, now tasked with trying to form a government? He is an Israeli general who spent months in Netanyahu’s war cabinet as it erased Gaza.

He is also closely associated with the Dahiya doctrine, which emerged from Israel’s devastating 2006 invasion of Lebanon. In 2008, he threatened to use “disproportionate force” against the Lebanese villages from which Israel was attacked, insisting that these were “not civilian villages” but “military bases”. Nearly 400 children were killed during the 2006 war – more than a third of the total killed.

You will undoubtedly be sickened by another Likud politician, Amit Halevi, who said that “300 terrorists were born in the maternity ward” during Israel’s assault on al-Shifa hospital. But what of Naftali Bennett, another leading opposition politician? Back in 2018, he defended Israel’s shoot-to-kill policy against Palestinians crossing the Gaza boundary fence, and was asked if that included children. “They are not children – they are terrorists,” he replied. “We are fooling ourselves.” When, in October 2023, he was asked by Sky News about babies in incubators facing the loss of electricity, he spat back: “Are you seriously – keep on asking me about Palestinian civilians? What’s wrong with you?”

Among the cases documented by the UN independent commission report – titled “The essence of childhood has been destroyed”: Israel’s deliberate targeting of Palestinian children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 7 October 2023 – were a 10-day-old baby shot in the head while he was being breastfed, who survived with severe injuries; a 15-year-old boy shot dead while waving a white flag, followed by his brother who was trying to help; and two 16-year-old girls shot in the head while attending a wedding.

Western doctors have repeatedly testified that Palestinian children are being intentionally targeted. One of those doctors is Mark Perlmutter, a Jewish-American surgeon, who treated children who had been shot twice. “No child gets shot twice by mistake,” he testified.

As Israeli politicians engage in horse-trading, their soldiers continue to slaughter children. This week alone, a 13-year-old boy was killed alongside his father in an Israeli airstrike on a shelter in Gaza, while Israeli soldiers shot dead a 14-year-old boy in the West Bank.

This will not end simply because Netanyahu leaves office. It is all too convenient to cast Netanyahu – wanted by the international criminal court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity – as the bogeyman. But the dehumanisation of Palestinians is so extreme that even their youngest, most defenceless members are regarded as legitimate targets by leading figures in both government and opposition.

Sowing illusions that Netanyahu’s fall will bring meaningful change means, in practice, abandoning Palestinians and the children to their fate. Only huge external pressure offers any hope: from a total arms embargo to sweeping sanctions. Remember: white South African society did not abandon the system of apartheid out of conviction. It faced resistance at home and mounting pressure from abroad until it felt it had no choice.