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7 October and the Miseducation of the Palestinian Child

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By: Jonathan Myers | March 2024

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Brought up to Glorify ‘Martyrs'

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Palestinian Media Watch has drawn attention to how the environment of Gaza and West Bank children contains dozens of schools, sports events, and summer camps, bearing the names of terrorists.[1] Streets and recreational areas are named after suicide bombers. On street hoardings and the walls of community centres are posters or graphic images of martyrs; usually terrorists killed by Israeli forces. Dead or alive, all these named individuals are held up as role models. Similar glorification of terrorists and their violence occurs in movies. In 2009, Hamas released Emad Akel, a feature film written by Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar and former Interior Minister Fathi Hamad that celebrated the life of a Hamas terrorist killed by the IDF in 1993.

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Television

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Palestinian children are encouraged to be like the famous and respected jihadis they see valorised all around them. Television programming controlled by the Palestinian Authority – in a largely closed system, with minimal Western input – reinforces this. Through their Fatah children's TV channel, children as young as four are indoctrinated with the idea of dedication to the cause of Palestinian resistance. To that end, death is portrayed as glorious using simple songs, costumed animal characters, as well as – particularly for the older children – poetry with flowery language.

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Ru'a Tamimi, a girl of around seven, presented a poem that exemplified the approach.[2] In her recital, a mother tells her little boy who is expecting a toy for finishing his food, ‘My son, we were not created for happiness. In my eyes, you are meant for martyrdom… Jerusalem is ours, our weapon is our Islam, and our ammunition is our children.' Particularly disturbing is how Jews are often dehumanised in these presentations by being likened to dangerous criminals and animals. This alone makes it easier for the children to see the Jew as something that must be eliminated – it is also reminiscent of Naziism where Jews were equated with vermin (the 1940 film The Eternal Jew depicted Jews as rats).

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In Pioneers of Tomorrow,[3] a Sesame Street-like children's show first aired in 2007 on Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV, Nahoul, a giant bee (a person in a black and yellow bee costume), tells his young audience:

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My dears, Al-Aqsa [mosque] is very sad… Al-Aqsa is being held prisoner and is besieged by the criminal murderers of children. We must arise in order to take revenge upon the criminal Jews, the occupying Zionists…'
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At the same time Jews are, according to Fatah spokesman Raafat Alayan, the ‘sons of apes and pigs.'[4] This references a Quranic verse and is not an unusual piece of name-calling. PA Supreme Shari'ah Judge and Abbas' religious affairs advisor Mahmoud al-Habbash stated that Jews on the Temple Mount are ‘grazing herds of humanoids, of people or creatures that Allah created in the form of humans. He became angry "and made of them apes and pigs"'.[5] In another presentation he said ‘the conflict with Israel is not about territory but is against the Jews because they are Satan's ally on earth, disseminating evil and falsehood. Israel is therefore Satan's project.'[6] On PA TV sometimes a child will recite poetry that extends the metaphor, so to speak, by including the line: ‘Our enemy, Zion, is Satan with a tail'![7]

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Trained to hate ‘the demonic Jew'

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Scientists Nour Kteily and Emile Bruneaua have shown how people, though they might claim to have no prejudices, have relative mental scales of humanity they attribute to different national groups.[8] It's an effect that can be made to manifest in children as young as three. Dividing preschoolers into two groups, one receiving red t-shirts, the other blue, psychologists Meagan Patterson and Rebecca Bigler found the children soon exhibited ‘in-group' and ‘out-group' behaviour (with bias shown for their own group on measures like preference for toys associated with group or predicting group a new student would join).[9]

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Many Palestinian children become caught in a twisted moral landscape where they soak up the simplified idea that, like ‘bad' or ‘naughty' animals, particularly apes, monkeys and pigs, criminal Jews steal from and hurt children just like them. In their childlike innocence they of course respond that it is wrong when asked. And with the finger pointed at the Jews – who've now become the ‘other', less than human, animalistic – they are the ones the children are led to agree must be put in jail or removed to protect all the other children. it's what Allah wants, a child will chirrup when prompted. The children who consumed those initial shows are of an age to be the terrorists of today.

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Textbooks

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This othering of the Jew is supported through the curricula of Gaza and West Bank schools run by UNWRA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) and Hamas. IMPACT-se (Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education) has found basic subjects are perverted for that purpose. In Physics, Newton's Second Law is demonstrated by asking children to calculate the forces effecting the trajectory of a stone fired from a slingshot at an IDF soldier. Math is taught by asking children to add the number of martyrs of the First Intifada to those of the Second. And maps erase the State of Israel, portraying the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as Palestine; where Israel should be is the label ‘Zionist occupation.' Despite criticism from organisations like IMPACT-se, it's evidently immensely important for the Palestinian leadership that this distorted education continues. As PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyah has stressed in relation to international agency funding, if money is withheld because of what is in their textbooks, he'd rather take money from electricity and water than change textbooks.[10]

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‘Summer Camps'

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Summer camps provide similar indoctrination, though often with a greater focus on memorialising terrorists. These camps are operated by the PLO's High Council for Youth and Sports, a ministry headed by Fatah Central Committee member Jibril Rajoub. In 2023, for the 13 to 17 age group, 648 camps were attended by around 65,000 boys and girls. Sixteen of the summer camps were named after ‘martyrs', emphasising for the children ‘the obligations of this generation … towards this cause,' said Qalqilya District Governor Rafe' Rawajbeh.[11] Children are inculcated to emulate as ‘heroes' those who, in a variety of horrific ways, murdered their Israeli victims. One activity encouraged children to see themselves as ‘friends' of past terrorists: ‘I am the friend of Martyr Fayez Damdoum, who died as a Martyr on October 1st, 2022,' exclaims a boy.[12] Geared to providing that type of activity, the camps, by holding up a terrorist's butchery, or death, as an inspiring and noble aim, educate the children with an inverted morality, while compounding their desensitisation to dying.

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Some summer camps, besides providing similar radical Islamic or jihadi ideological indoctrination, also deliver military training. And, note academics Mia Bloom and John Horgan, very young children's parents are often supportive of this.[13] Approximately 120,000 Gazan eighth to twelfth graders attended Hamas-run camps in 2014, according to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Center.[14]

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Focusing on the boy's camp (as it was men who later committed the 7 October atrocities), youths in identical t-shirts and baseball caps in Palestinian colours of white and green were instructed on how to: crawl on their stomachs, jump through flaming hoops, fieldstrip a rifle, shoot light weapons, fire rockets into Israel, smuggle an Israeli citizen into the Gaza Strip through a tunnel, and on how to abduct and beat an IDF soldier. Such summer camps funnel children into combatant roles. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, speaking on Al-Jazeera, said ‘The blood of the children … we need this blood so that it will ignite within us the spirit of revolution.'[15]

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‘By all Means': Permitting Barbarism

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A particularly effective form of extending permission-for-barbarism is the instruction by Palestinian leaders to act against Israel and Jews ‘by all means'. This term, or some variation, is common: ‘Our people… will continue to stand firm… with all means… until liberating all the Palestinian territories,' stated The [Palestinian] National Council.[16] The late Maryam Mohammad Yousif Farhat (Umm Nidal), a Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, stated with pride, ‘I already gave three sons, I have another seven [children] to give.'[17] Fathi Hammad (at this point at Hamas's Political Bureau) takes this messaging further, making the meaning of ‘by all means' very clear to would-be terrorists when speaking on Al-Aqsa TV in mid-2019.

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We are sharpening the knives … If we die it will be when we are killing you [Jews], and we will cut off your heads, Allah willing … There are seven million Palestinians abroad … You have Jews everywhere. We must attack every Jew on the planet – slaughter and kill… And you, the people of the West Bank… We want the knives to come out. Five shekels [for a knife] – isn't the throat of a Jew worth five shekels to us? … I will die as I blow up and cut – what? The throats of the Jews and their legs. We will tear them to shreds, Allah willing.[18]
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That the 7 October terrorists felt they had permission for their acts has been revealed during their post-capture interrogation by the IDF. As one said, in addition to orders for the perpetration of acts mirroring Fathi's words, he was given permission to rape the corpse of a girl.[19]

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The terrorists' rampage was purposely directed at children. They had detailed plans, NBC's Anna Schecter described, for targeting elementary schools in Kibbutz Kfar Sa'ad, and for murdering the children there or taking them hostage.[20] The killers were devoid of compassion, empathy, and humanity. As another captured Hamas terrorist explained, raping women and children was a tactic of war. He didn't differentiate. The purpose being, ‘To have our way with them, to dirty them…'[21]

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The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle said, ‘Give me the child until he is seven and I will show you the man.' Good character, he meant, is laid down through social learning in the early years. Likewise, brutalise a child and any moral compass, any conscience, they might have developed is destroyed. In time, the abused becomes the abuser and the stage is set for 7 October.

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Sources

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[1] Marcus, I. (2012). Deception: The Palestinian Authority's Public Commitments and its Actual Activities and Messages in Ambassador Alan Baker (Editor). The Changing Forms of Incitement to Terror and Violence: The Need for a New International Response. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Konrad Adenauer Stifung. See also Marcus, I., Zilberdik, N. J. (2019, May, 3). The making of a Palestinian terror superstar. PMW. https://palwatch.org/page/15580

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[2] Zilberdik, N. J., Marcus, I. (2019, Nov. 28). ‘Palestinian child abuse! Mom tells her son he is "ammunition," destined for Martyrdom – in girl's poem'. PMW. https://palwatch.org/page/16939

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[3] MEMRI (2007, Aug. 10). ‘Hamas' Bee Nahoul Abuses Cats and Lions at Gaza Zoo and Calls to Liberate Al-Aqsa Mosque'. Source: Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas/Gaza). https://www.memri.org/tv/hamas-bee-nahoul-abuses-cats-and-lions-gaza-zoo-and-calls-liberate-al-aqsa-mosque

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[4] ‘Fatah spokesman: Jews are "sons of apes and pigs"'. Official Palestinian Authority TV (2015, Nov 1). https://palwatch.org/page/9028

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[5] Official Palestinian Authority TV (2022, Sep 30). ‘Abbas' advisor on Islam: Jews are "humanoids… apes and pigs"'. https://palwatch.org/page/32197

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[6] Marcus, I. (2020, Jan 26). PMW Special Report, PA Antisemitism: Jews must be fought for Allah on behalf of all humanity. Special Report for International Holocaust Remembrance Day. https://palwatch.org/page/17292

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[7] Marcus, I., Zilberdik, N. J. (2015, Nov. 22). ‘Girl's hate speech on PA TV: "Our enemy, Zion, is Satan with a tail"'. https://palwatch.org/page/9220

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[8] Kteily, N., Bruneau, E. (2017). ‘Darker Demons of Our Nature: The Need to (Re-)Focus Attention on Blatant Forms of Dehumanization'. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0963721417708230

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[9] Patterson, M. M., Bigler, R. S. (2006). ‘Preschool children's attention to environmental messages about groups: Social categorization and the origins of intergroup bias'. Child Development, 77, 847-860. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2006.00906.x

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[10] Jeffay, J. (2023, Dec.7). ‘In UK-funded schools in Gaza, pupils learn maths by counting martyrs'. https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/in-uk-funded-schools-in-gaza-pupils-learn-maths-by-counting-martyrs-jz5rqqle

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[11] Zilberdik, N. J. (2023, Aug. 7). ‘Palestinian Summer Camps for Terrorism and Martyrdom'. Algemeiner. https://www.algemeiner.com/2023/08/07/palestinian-summer-camps-for-terrorism-and-martyrdom/

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[12] Ibid.

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[13] Bloom, M., Horgan, J. (2019). Small Arms: Children and Terrorism. Cornell University Press

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[14] Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Center (2014, July, 22). This year, as in years past, summer camps in the Gaza Strip were exploited by Hamas for radical Islamic ideological indoctrination and semi-military training. https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/en/20664/

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[15] Al-Jazeera TV (Arabic), (2023, Oct 26). ‘Hamas leader Justifies dead Palestinian civilians'. PMW. https://palwatch.org/page/34834

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[16] Zilberdik, N. J. (2023, Sep. 6). PA: ‘The "covetous" Jews "defile" the Al-Aqsa Mosque, have begun preparing for "building the alleged Temple"', PMW. Source: Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Aug. 22, 2023 https://palwatch.org/page/34562

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[17] Nidal, U. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umm_Nidal

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[18] Spencer, R. (2023, Nov. 21). ‘Hamas' 2019 vows to "cut off heads," "slit throats," and "slaughter every Jew on the planet" were ignored. Jihad Watch. https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/11/hamas-2019-vows-to-cut-off-heads-slit-throats-and-slaughter-every-jew-on-the-planet-were-ignored

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