Killing Happiness!
CrossFireArabia- September 9, 2026
By Ismail Al Sharif
“I fear only one thing: That we might be broken forever, for whoever is broken forever can never rise again. Tell them: take care not to be defeated forever.” — *Gaza Weddings* (also known as *The White Horses*), a novel in Arabic by Ibrahim Nasrallah.
In 2011, Palestinians set a world record by flying the largest number of kites on the Gaza beach during a summer camp organized by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
By 2024, however, the United States had halted its funding to the agency, while the Zionist entity designated it a terrorist organization, revoked agreements with it, and cleared out its premises. Furthermore, children in Gaza faced threats of death if they flew even a single kite—despite kites being among the few remaining playthings that offer them moments of joy—at a time when even a child’s smile or expression of happiness has become a provocation to the Zionists, warranting death.
Just days ago, a four-year-old child was killed after the army fired missiles at a warehouse in the Al-Wayda area, near Salah al-Din Street. The strike killed three Palestinians, including the child Abdul Salam Taha, in retaliation for the flying of kites.
Subsequently, war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Israel Katz, threatened to target any area in Gaza where kites were spotted—an escalation revealing that the targeting encompasses everything, even the simplest expressions of joy and play among children. A nuclear state—possessing the world’s most advanced weaponry, receiving billions of dollars in aid, enjoying limitless military supplies, and shielded by aircraft carriers—views small children flying kites as a threat to its national security. It deems killing them as the appropriate response to this “threat,” as if the blood of tens of thousands of children were not enough to slake its thirst for bloodshed.
No foreign official has stepped forward to condemn the targeting of children flying kites; on the contrary, the matter has been treated as routine—as if the act itself constituted a threat warranting death. Foreign media outlets have echoed the same narrative claiming that Hamas orchestrates the kite-flying—the very narrative used to justify the destruction of hospitals, bakeries, and water stations, as well as the bombing and burning of displaced persons’ tents.
For instance, a BBC headline read: “Israel warns of strong response to kites launched from Gaza.” By attributing the kite-flying to an unspecified entity—implying an organized military operation—the incident was framed as a security confrontation. Consequently, the targeting of children—and the blowing of their bodies to pieces by bombs—was portrayed as a natural and justified response.
Preventing the children of Gaza from flying their kites—depriving them of one of the few remaining joys in their lives—cannot be separated from the attempt to break them psychologically and emotionally, nor from a policy aimed at rendering Gaza uninhabitable and denying its people their most basic human rights. The daily crimes in Gaza—compounded by impunity, a lack of accountability, and the support and encouragement of certain allies—reveal the extent of the corruption, brutality, and injustice in this world. The tragedy has not ceased; circulating figures indicate that Palestinian casualties continue to mount even after the announced ceasefire, amidst ongoing human suffering.
In Gaza, even the simple joy of a child holding a kite is treated as a threat—as if the objective were no longer merely to defeat the human being, but to steal their smile.
This article written by Ismail Al Sharif was originally published in Arabic in Ad Dustour newspaper and appeared in crossfirearabia.com
