Of the 1,845 people killed on both sides of the fighting in Gaza, 380 — about one in five — are thought to be children. One reason why violence in Gaza seems to afflict so many children is explained by the chart above. To a greater extent than you see in most of the world, Gaza's population largely consists of children. So when bad things happen to Gaza bad things happen to kids. The US population, for example, is 19.4 percent under-15 while for Israel it's about 27 percent. The election in which Gazans voted for Hamas, meanwhile, happened back in 2006 when most currently-alive residents of the Strip were too young to vote.
John Snow from the UK's Channel 4 did a video on this that went viral last week, but the basic demographic facts that serve as context for the violence often don't make their way into the news coverage:
