Neoliberal criminalization of being a child: [Absence of] moral panic for Palestinian children

This paper analyzes the absence of moral panic surrounding the genocide of Palestinian children, challenging the Human Rights declarations. This absence is structural, produced through the intersection of settler colonialism, necropolitics, and Orientalism/Islamophobia, operating within neoliberalism and Israeli exceptionalism. Palestinian children are positioned within a racialized hierarchy as part of an “elimination project”. This is sustained through Islamophobic logic that casts Palestinians as existential threats. Processes of adultification and “unchilding” construct children as “disposable”. These dynamics are reinforced through narratives that frame Palestinian children as inherently “pre-terrorists or future terrorists”. Hence, normalizing and legitimizing the absence of moral panic.