War Doesn’t Ask How Old You Are. It Just Kills

Every time a missile hits a house, the news reports: "Three killed, including one child." The camera freezes. Headlines scream. The comments are full of tears and broken heart emojis.

But let me ask: what about the other two — are they not people? Didn’t they want to live? Didn’t they have plans for the evening, families, loved ones, hopes? Or is an adult just a casualty of war, biomass, a backdrop for the tragedy of a child on screen?

It’s convenient. To see a child’s death as “more painful,” because an adult is “understandable” — they’ve already lived, already grown old, maybe even “to blame themselves.” War has taught us cynicism, and the media — selective sympathy.

No. That’s not how it works.

The death of an adult is no less terrible. It’s just not as “marketable.” There’s less suffering to sell. A child is a click, a tear, a symbol. An adult is a statistic. A silent cross on the map.

But the truth is, war takes everyone the same way. Adults have souls, too. They hurt. They’re afraid. They want to live. They are also victims, even if they have a passport, work experience, a mortgage, and their age doesn’t evoke tenderness.

Stop dividing the dead by age. Stop the hypocrisy. If you are truly against war, you must be against every death, not just the ones that look good on camera.

Life has no age. Pain has no age category. War has no heart.

Remember this. And don’t forget that every death is the end of a universe. It doesn’t matter if they were 5 or 50.