There are few images more heartbreaking than a dead child. Every innocent life lost in Gaza is a tragedy. As a father, as a Muslim, and as someone who has spent much of my life advocating for human rights, I refuse to become numb to the suffering of children, whether they are Israeli or Palestinian.

But compassion cannot replace honesty.

Much of the international conversation measures this war by counting the number of dead children, while asking almost nothing about how those children came to be in the middle of a battlefield in the first place. Numbers alone cannot explain reality. Context matters. Responsibility matters.

One of the most uncomfortable truths in this conflict is also one of the best documented: Palestinian terrorist organizations have systematically recruited, indoctrinated, trained, and used children for military purposes for decades.

This is not Israeli propaganda. It is documented by the United Nations, UNICEF, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Child Soldiers International, Reuters, and numerous independent researchers.

Children have served as lookouts, couriers, weapons carriers, intelligence gatherers,........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)