The news that the remains of Kfir and Ariel Bibas—two innocent children who should never have been caught in the horrors of war—have been recovered from Gaza fills me with a grief so deep I do not know where to place it. Their names join an ever-growing list of children lost in this conflict, Israeli and Palestinian alike, each one a world of possibility stolen before their time. As a parent, I see my own children in them. I see them in all the children whose lives have been cut short. And I weep.

 

But my grief is not only for the dead. It is also for the living—those who remain and have allowed themselves to be consumed by a darkness so profound that they rejoice in the suffering of others. When I saw the footage of people in Gaza celebrating as the remains of these children were returned, my heart broke again, but this time, for humanity itself. That people could dance in the streets over the bodies of babies, that they could turn tragedy into triumph, is something I struggle to comprehend.

 

I refuse to let terror and inhumanity strip away my own humanity. I will not let the barbarism of those who kill and those who celebrate death define me. I will not let them win by becoming what they are. But I will not turn away from this pain either. Because to feel this sorrow, to cry these tears, is to bear witness to what has been lost—not just the Bibas children, but something even greater: our collective ability to see the humanity in one another.

 

A child should never be a casualty of war. A child should never be a prize of conflict. And a child should certainly never be a reason for celebration in death.

 

We must hold on to our humanity. If we lose it, then the terrorists—the ones who slaughtered families on 7 October, the ones who launched this war and continue to perpetuate it, the ones who desecrate the very idea of human dignity—will have won more than just a battle. They will have won our very souls. And that, I refuse to surrender.

 

May the memories of Kfir and Ariel, and all the children who have perished in this war, be a blessing. May we find a way to honour them—not through more bloodshed, but through a future where no parent, Israeli or Palestinian, ever has to bury their child again.