Defending Gaza’s Children: The West’s Conscience on Trial
Friday, September 12, 2025.
The Old Testament gave the world a magnificent notion: every human being is made in the image of God.
Not just our own, not just the strong, not just the politically convenient—but everyone. Genesis 1:27 does not hedge or qualify: “So God created humankind in his image.”
If that is true, then the life of a child in Gaza carries the same divine imprint as the life of a child in Tel Aviv, New York, or London. To look away from that truth is to betray it.
The Ten Commandments were not carved on stone tablets to be admired in museums. They were a demand: do not kill, do not steal, honor your family, protect life.
These words became the bedrock of Western moral tradition and law.
To destroy neighborhoods where children live and excuse their deaths as “collateral damage” is to disobey those commandments in real time.
The prophets sharpened the message. They thundered against kings and priests who forgot their covenant, insisting that justice is measured by how a people treats the vulnerable.
“Seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow” (Isaiah 1:17).
“Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24). There is no way to honor these words and remain indifferent to Gaza’s children.
The West cannot claim the legacy of the Old Testament while abandoning the very lives that such a legacy commands us to protect.
These values inspired the abolitionists, fueled the civil rights movement, and still echo powerfully in our international law.
The Geneva Conventions declare that civilians—especially children—must be shielded from the violence of war.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is unambiguous: “Every child has the inherent right to life, survival and development.” These are not suggestions. This is the covenant of our age.
To defend Gaza’s children is not a political gesture. It is the bare minimum threshold of human decency. It is the only position that honors scripture, Judeo-Christian values, and the very idea of human rights. To excuse their deaths is to shred every moral claim the West makes about liberty and dignity.
So, please, let us stop pretending. Let us reason together instead.
The measure of our civilization is not found in its speeches or its slogans but in its willingness to protect children—all children.
If we cannot, with a clean heart, defend the lives of Gaza’s children with the same urgency we defend our own, then every invocation of justice, freedom, or human worth from our Western Tradition collapses into meaningless empty noise.
History is watching as Gazan children endure amputations without anesthetic. More importantly, so is our sensensibily of the sacred.
What You Can Do
Obviously, we cannot resurrect the children who have already been killed.
But we can refuse to let their deaths be normalized as merely collateral.
We can raise our voices where silence is complicity, demand accountability where power turns away, and insist that international law and human conscience mean something.
Write and Call Your Representatives. Demand that civilian protection—especially for children—be the cornerstone of any American policy on Gaza, or anywhere else for that matter..
Support Humanitarian Aid. Credible organizations like UNICEF, Save the Children, and Doctors Without Borders are on the ground providing relief. Support them, I implore you.
Share Their Stories. Refuse to let the lives of Gaza’s children be reduced to gruesome statistics or euphemisms like “collateral damage.” Give them back their names, their faces, their humanity.
Final thoughts
Defending Gaza’s children is not charity.
It is a sacred covenant. It is also the law. The starving and emaciated children of Gaza are the conscience of our Western Civilization.
And, frankly, it’s also pretty much a reliable measure of whether in 2025 we’re still capable of calling ourselves human.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.