Confronting UNICEF Over Its Failure to Condemn Hamas Terror Balloon Attacks Targeting Israeli Children

RECENTLY, IN THE WAKE of Palestinian terrorist actions from Gaza, Shurat HaDin confronted UNICEF on the issue of Hamas balloon bomb attacks targeting Israeli children. In a letter sent on February 5, 2020, we demanded that UNICEF issue a public condemnation of these attacks, as “in the past months, hundreds of balloon bombs, explosive and incendiary devices attached to brightly colored helium balloons, have been released by Hamas into Israel from the Gaza Strip. Some of the balloons have children’s toys attached as well, with the clear intention of targeting Israeli children”. In its rather disgraceful response on March 2nd, not only did UNICEF refuse to issue the required condemnation, but it has once again equated the effects of these illegal and deliberate attacks against Israeli children with the “effects of the armed conflict” on Palestinians! The letter coldly claimed that the international organization, mandated to safeguard all children, “shared our concerns”. UNICEF’s boilerplate response drafted by its local representative Genevieve Boutin did not promise that it would act in any way. This unacceptable response has been met with our reply letter from March 24, 2020, where we once again demanded UNICEF to act, and attacked the unjust and biased comparison between the deliberate and illegal balloon attacks in which “death lures in the most appealing and tightly associated objects with the innocence of childhood” and the children casualties on the Palestinian side, which are the direct result of the Palestinian terrorist groups’ deliberate use of these children as human shields and their encouragement to participate in armed clashes, writing that “your effort to group the deliberate violence perpetrated by Hamas and the actions of the Israeli side is completely baseless and unacceptable to us”. We will continue our efforts to bring this important organization to live up to its own mandate. For an article on YNET.