More than once, child sacrifice walks off the pages of ancient history

Let's try to wrap our heads around this one, okay?

Child sacrifice is alive and well in Gaza (and in the Palestinian Authority under Fatach in what the Jordanians called ‘the west bank’). I will first show you three recorded incidents of modern Arab child sacrifice and then discuss the cultural-religious context that makes it possible for parents to hug and kiss their kids and then send them off to be killed or injured. I guess one could say that parents of IDF soldiers do the same, but these Arab kids are about four years old, not 18, and they are not armed with anything but their innocence.

---

Yesterday the two images in the X post below went viral on social media. The IDF safely returned a 4-year-old child who claimed to have been sent to the military post by Hamas. Times of Israel questions the veracity of this report and wonders how a 4-yo kid could know that Hamas sent him. That’s easy, TOI; they told him to say that.

Perhaps they did not know for sure that the kid would come back alive. Maybe you remember this video?

Given what Hillel Fuld posted on X, it appears that her ‘handlers’ perhaps expected the soldiers to kill her without having seen that she was a mere child:

It was 2 am and IDF soldiers noticed some suspicious movements in the horizon. In a time of war, that would generally mean to open fire. But the IDF, being the IDF, waited and then noticed it was a kid, a 4 year old girl.

She was walking around aimlessly without shoes and with multiple wounds.

The IDF soldiers took her to the field doctor, they treated her wounds and helped her in every way they could.

After they treated her, they brought her to the humanitarian corridor so they can try to locate her family and care for her.

Turns out, the child was sent by Hamas into the heart of a war zone to see if the Israeli soldiers were up and alert.

If you don’t believe these videos, since they were taken and posted by IDF soldiers, perhaps you remember this one taken by the “Palestinian” Arabs themselves. This father was prepared to sacrifice his sweet little boy for a propaganda coup against Israel should the soldiers have done something they never do — kill him ‘just because.’

The Cultural Context Today

It seems that child sacrifice is an accepted part of Palestinian Arab culture where the highest honour is that of the shaheed, the martyr. For example, what about this PA official who is proud of his toddler for singing songs about killing “Zionists?” Surely that must lead at some point to martyring himself for jihad, fighting the infidel Jews!

Yasser Arafat once told his people that to die as a child-martyr is a wonderful thing. Look at his face as he talks about the child “grasping the stone, facing the tank.” You can see that he is overcome by emotion and can barely contain his delight as he sees that wondrous spectacle of the child martyr in his mind’s eye.

Here is a mother grieving the son who martyred himself wishing it had been one of her other sons and not that particular one who brought her so much joy. ( ! )

Historical Cultural Context for Child Sacrifice

I am still a rank beginner in understanding the history and cultures of Arabs and Muslims (not necessarily the same thing). Aside from knowing that the Arabs seem to believe that Abraham was about to sacrifice Ishmael and not Isaac before the angel intervened and stopped him, I knew nothing about the phenomenon of child sacrifice in Islam (in this particular case, the child was, in fact, an adult). I was aware, however, that human sacrifice of adults and children were part of pre-Islamic society and primitive cultures in other parts of the world.

The very few academic articles I have been able to find on the topic of child sacrifice have not helped me get a grasp of the topic. However, from a Zoom class I watched this week with the wonderful Zvi Yehezkeli (you can register for free here, but it is in Hebrew only: ), I gained a bit more understanding of the tribal nature of Arab society upon which Mohammed established Islam.

According to Yehezkeli, Mohammed sought to wean the pagan Arabs from some of their more violent and “paganic” behaviours. However, their tribalism was not touched. Tribalism was redefined to include those who accepted Islam and those who did not, whereby those who did not accept Islam were then considered outside the “family” even if they were members of one’s biological family. I hope I am not confusing you.

Among members of the believer groups, these vicious violent ways were unacceptable. But they remained very acceptable and even desireable when confronted with infidels.

In other words, there was no extinction or anticipation of eliminating beheadings, rape, etc. when the target was an infidel.

What this has to do with child sacrifice, another pagan behaviour? I am still researching this and I will ask Yehezkeli in one of his next lectures if he does not answer my email query on the matter.

I can only believe that there must be some deeply ingrained societal values that allow parents to raise their children, not to become doctors, farmers, teachers, but to anticipate becoming human bombs or to throw rocks or molotov cocktails at cars and tanks, or to walk into a restaurant and start shooting people, or to ram pedestrians just waiting for a bus, or to stab people, something that requires them to get up close to their victims.

Or to send a kid not yet five years old into a war zone where IDF soldiers may not see that it is just a kid approaching.

After all, this is a form of child sacrifice on the alter of jihadism, no?

---

Because Israel is not supported on the Substack payment platform, I have set up an alternative for those who want to support my work.

You can make one-time or repeated donations in your own currency using Paypal (Buy me a Coffee, above) or the Ko-fi payment platform here. Israelis can send me a private message for another option.

Articles will always be free for all subscribers but a one-time or repeated donation is a way to help me sustain myself while doing all the work involved in putting these articles together and would be greatly appreciated.

Thank-you to all those who have supported my work by subscribing and/or by donating coffees.