For a very simple reason: Dead children create sympathetic media coverage. The headlines today note that Israel killed five Palestinians in Gaza yesterday, including a 10- and 12-year-old (the three adults were from Islamic Jihad). A report in today’s Haaretz reveals that the two children had been sent on a suicide mission to retrieve rocket launchers that had just dispensed their payload toward Israel.

This is a win-win strategy for Hamas and IJ. If Israeli soldiers are able to recognize that children are on the battlefield and refrain from firing, terrorists are able to retrieve their equipment and use it to kill Israelis another day. If the IDF destroys the launchers, Israel suffers the public relations fallout from being accused of killing children. I’m not sure, in the minds of the members of Hamas, which is better: retrieving the rocket launchers, or seeing Israel globally condemned for child-murder. I’m going to guess the latter.

The use of children in terrorism, in other words, is not a military tactic. It is a media strategy, and a very successful one. The obvious antidote to this savagery is for journalists to assign blame for such deaths on the culpable party — that is, on Hamas and Islamic Jihad. I feel safe predicting that it’ll be a long time before that happens.