How Gaza Kids Are Spending Their Vacation
It’s that time of year again: school’s out, the kids are under your feet, and, much as you love the little brats, you find your patience being tested. Eventually, after clearing yet another dirty plate, or tripping over a discarded sneaker, you give them a well-deserved piece of your mind: “Why don’t you get out of the house and do something useful, like memorize the Koran or learn how to fire a shoulder-launched rocket?”
In Gaza, parents have no such frustrations. Hamas and Islamic Jihad, ever mindful of their responsibilities as pillars of the Palestinian community, are running their annual summer camps for thousands of youngsters. And these children won’t be wasting their time going on nature walks or visiting the Smuggled Animals Zoo. In addition to receiving healthy doses of religious and political indoctrination, they’ll be learning how to handle weapons and navigate assault courses.
Hamas, the terrorist organization that rules Gaza, is running camps for as many as 150,000 children. Ynet News reports that “the focus is on familiarizing kids with the Palestinian towns and cities destroyed in 1948, as well as instilling religious fervor in them. The camps also feature sports and military-type training such as crawling under barbed-wire.” (I wish I’d been taught how to crawl under barbed wire properly as a youngster — it would’ve made escaping from irate farmers after another botched fruit raid with my cousins a lot easier.)
The curriculum is similar at the Islamic Jihad camps, where “the kids study passages from the Koran and participate in quizzes on religious matters, with emphasis on the required commitment to political prisoners and Palestinian land. They also learn how to hold a Qassam rocket-launcher.”
An Islamic Jihad operative was at pains to point out to Ynet that children would only be handling dummy rockets, not real ones. Allah forbid that they should play with real Qassams or Katyushas — someone could lose an eye.
It’s reassuring to know the camp staff are so mindful of their charges’ welfare. They don’t want anyone getting hurt — at least not before they’ve been wired with explosives, wrapped in ball bearings, and dispatched to some bar, bus station, or shopping mall in Israel.
In a video report about the camps at Haaretz.com, children are shown going through martial arts routines, learning how to take a prisoner, and performing the high-stepping speed march that for some reason is standard practice for the militias of dictatorships. And while the children jump through plastic hoops on the parade ground (another sure-fire sign of fascistic inclinations), their minders jump through semantic ones, insisting that the camps preach a message of peace before rattling off the usual lists of grievances and demands.
But mostly the young campers shout. They shout a lot. They shout “Kill!” “Slaughter!” “Blow up!” and “Charge!” (They’re probably parroting the phrases at random rather than memorizing some particular battlefield tactic, otherwise “Charge!” would surely have to come before “Blow up!”) Some — presumably the star pupils from the propaganda workshop — make hysterical speeches proclaiming their loyalty to the “struggle.” The motto for these camps could well be “Give me the child, and I will give you the martyr.”
None of this should come as much of a surprise. It was Hamas, after all, that brought us the spectacle of children’s TV shows in which cartoon-like characters spew hatred and glorify violence. And Palestinian terror groups certainly like to start their killers young. Samir Kuntar, recently freed by Israel, was just 16 when he battered four-year-old Einat Haran to death after shooting her father, during an attack on the Israeli town of Nahariya in 1979. Einat’s two-year-old sister and two Israeli police officers also died. Since the beginning of the second intifada in 2000, several 16-year-olds have carried out suicide bombings, while children as young as 14 and 15 have been arrested for planning bombings, or intercepted on their way to carry out attacks.
I am afraid Yousef is just noise in the system. The Palestinians have been wrapping their kids in toy suicide bomber belts for well over a decade. It is unlikely this kind of mass indoctrination cannot be overcome by one individual out of millions. No doubt there are others but you rarely hear their voices.
There will never be peace in the middle east until one side wins. Since the Israelis can’t possibly win it will only end one way.
SAF – since you seem to be ignorant of Jewish history, let me remind you – according to the Book, in the end they win.
EPICENTER by Joel C Rosenberg tells the story very well and gives a ‘spoiler’ about the ending.
“The increasing exploitation of children by Palestinian extremists is largely the result of the Islamization of the conflict with Israel. “
While perhaps nominally factual with regards to the shocking exploitation of children, it is not accurate or true to suggest the “conflict with Israel” didn’t always have Islam (or Islamization if you prefer…) at its core. Today Jihad is particularly virulent, but that is mostly caused by the stunning influx of massive unearned loot into Muslim coffers due to oil, and the catastrophic explosion of Muslim populations due to foolish Westerners sharing food, money, and medical technology with them. They are our enemies — they always will be our enemies — Islam itself makes this so. The “conflict with Israel” is simply a new chapter in a very old Jihad, as are all the mass killings, mass intimidation, and widespread subversion of societies which Muslims have infiltrated over the last several decades.
We still are unwilling in the West to face the truth about Islam. To do so challenges the very notion that Muslims can or should live amongst us in the West, or that they should ever be permitted to practice their war doctrine of Islam in the West. Even those who profess to be on Israel’s or the West’s side often fail to realize these facts. Islam (or if you prefer “Islamization”) was ALWAYS at the heart of tthe “conflict with Israel”.
Just so, Islam will always be at the heart of any and all JIhad violence and the intolerance of Muslims against all “non-believers” for all time. Whether Muslims are strapping on bombs and mass murdering, raising money for their local Mosque, or simply subverting our society by exploiting our laws and openness to spread Islam among us — they are all working to replace our secular democracies with their hideous Islamic laws and norms — which will always include hatred of non-Muslims, and brazen intimidation to destroy our resistance to Islam itself. That is the nature of Islam — and we continue to pretend otherwise to our mortal endangerment.
Morton has just hit a walk off grand-slam, nice to see someone is still swinging for the fences in a small-ball society.
This is Yassir- the grandfather of terrorism- Arafat’s legacy. May he rot in hell. A toxic, psychotic society that is raised and nurtured on hatred, death, and destruction. Of course, the cowardly leadership will never offer themselves as “shahids” or martyrs but will gladly offer up children, brain-washed youth, and mentally retarded individuals.
As recently demonstrated in Gaza, the palestinians are incapable of creating a functioning, civilized society. But that have shown themselves repeatedly capable of nothing but destruction.
They are cursed society of pariahs and will never successfully create a nation with their present so-called leadership.
Like most of the stories in the media, this is totally one sided. Why there is no mention of occupation and seige of Gaza? One can not justify violence of any kind and from anyone. And the quote form Gold Meir that Palestinians do not love their children is the worst kind of nonsense a person in her position could have said.
Required reading for anyone from the West with anything to say about Israel or Palestine:
Edward Said and Norman Finklestein
Otherwise, you are blowing smoke in a hurricane.
Germany under Hitler had the Hitler Youth Group to indoctrinate / train the kids. He killed or imprisoned all opposition, and taught all in a totally militarized society to hate and kill all others. No peace was possible until almost all was destroyed and all people capable of fighting were dead, injured, or had all hope beaten out of them.
This is Deja Vu all over again–until Hamas and the PLO are destroyed militarily no peace is possible. In this situation there are no longer any innocent persons. My apologies to our State Department–they need a reality check. Think of 9/11/2001 as the logical outcome of this type of failed state’s existence–stop supporting them in any way.
Rocketman
Check your demographics, people. I worked in Jeddah 14+ years and I can tell you a fact of life. Arabs [read Muslims] hate Jews. There is no solution whatsoever and who is having babies? As Mark [says... correctly] Last man standing wins.
…and performing the high-stepping speed march that for some reason is standard practice for the militias of dictatorships.
“The salute” is also a biggie for terrorist kiddies in training.
Inside Hizballah (Time magazine, 2006)
Ayatollah Khomeini used Iranian children in frontal assaults against the Iraqis during the 1980-88 war…
The children were used to clear minefields. They wore plastic keys around their necks for entry into “heaven”.
I think Ahmadinejhad in his glorious “youth” was part of the Basiji, and he is a big promoter today, as well.
Arabs [read Muslims] hate Jews…
Both Semitic peoples with nearly indistinguishable DNA markers.
Link: Genetic Brothers
I guess it’s a form of self-hatred.
Already, in distant years, the devastating Iraq/Iran conflict, and more recently the Kuwait invasion, highlighted the fact that it was neither the existence of Israel nor the world’s dependency on oil that was central to the Middle East unrest. The vested interests of tyrants dominate the Moslem political arena. It is they who finance the pitiful indoctrinated, terrorists, hoping that they will aid in warding off the march of democracy that wILL, surely, herald their eventual downfall.
Libra and Keith,
The Palestinians scream for my death, and that of my friends and family. That makes them my enemy. I don’t care what happened to them, I will never sympathize for their worship of murder. When the Palestinians stop calling for my death and lauding the random murder of innocents, then we can talk about their grievances, and not a moment before.
I hear you, Omega.
The agenda for Israel is spelled out in the Hamas Charter. Hamas exists primarily, even exclusively, for the destruction of Israel.
While what is being done to the children in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran… in the form of brainwashing & conditioning, compounds the felony.
It would seem the adults cannot manage their agenda without corrupting the minds of the young and vulnerable.
The Palestinian children have been indoctrinated with hatred for over 60 years.
When deprived of gratification, in their struggle for dominance over Israel, they in their frustration will turn their anger on their less than enlightened leadrship. Benighted leaders usally land up on the gallows they set up for others.
I have to say whoever wrote this article is either extremely arrogant or just doesn’t have a clue . What about the peace activists tragically murdered for simply bringing food to the 1.5 million starving in Gaza? There is enormous evidence Israel not only started a genocide holocaust killing more than 18 million innocent Palestinian civilians but also murders those from other country’s who try to stop them from doing so,including Americans killed on latest flotilla massacre . These people have rockets & Israel has nuclear weapons do the math for yourself . Any one who does the research will know the long list of Israels war crimes . You cant compare it THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING ISRAEL & WERE MAD AS HELL!