The world’s gaze is once again on Palestine, where three teenage Israeli settlers were killed, and a young Palestinian was lynched and burned alive in an apparent act of revenge. From social media announcing that “Hating Arabs is not racism, it’s values!” to news outlets declaring that “there is absolutely no need to feel guilty about . . . killing or wounding enemy civilians,” Israelis are calling for violent “reprisal” against Palestinians, though no evidence showing who killed the youths has been provided.

These developments bring into sharp relief the fate of the young in the region, particularly because Israel has used the deaths to legitimize yet another round of bombing the Gaza Strip, to murder Palestinians in the West Bank, and to subject Palestinians to collective punishment and other war crimes.

Palestinian children are subject to brutal violence far more frequently and on a far wider scale than are young Israelis. Such violence is official state policy. And the governments of Canada and the United States either tacitly or overtly back it. Over 1,400 Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers since 2000, according to Defense for Children International-Palestine Section (DCI), a group with consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, UNICEF, UNESCO, and the Council of Europe. Yet the much larger volume of violence endured by Palestinian children receives far less media attention than did the disappearance of the young Israelis.