The AFP reports on Hamas’ recruitment of Gazan children.
Hatem is only 14 but has already lived through three wars with Israel. Now the young Gazan says he is making sure he’ll be ready to fight in the next one.
“The Israelis killed my niece last summer. Now I want to kill them,” he told AFP after completing a week-long youth training camp with militants from the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamist Hamas movement.
“I will become a resistance fighter,” the boy said proudly during a graduation ceremony in Gaza.
Leaving aside the appropriateness of the kid’s name, notice the narrative – the kids are joining because Israel killed their relatives in the last war. But this conveniently omits to mention the program of indoctrination and incitement to which these children have been subjected even years before the last war.
Hatem is one of 17,000 youngsters who graduated late last month from two military training camps where Hamas — the de facto power in Gaza — said it was preparing the next generation to fight against Israel.
Last summer, Israel and Hamas militants fought a 50-day war that killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians and 73 on the Israeli side, and left swathes of the impoverished enclave in ruins.
Besides showing their aversion to the more apt ‘t’ word, the AFP has chosen to lump in terrorist casualties with civilian casualties.
It was their third conflict in less than five years, following an eight-day bombardment in 2012 and a 22-day war in late 2008 and early 2009.
The phrase “eight-day bombardment” clearly makes Israel sound like the aggressor, and is completely out of context.
Children were on the frontline of the latest conflict, with UN figures showing about 500 were killed.
Again, no context, being that the terrorists were deliberately placing the children in harm’s way. Or actually included some of the children in their ranks.
And just five months after the war ended, thousands of those who survived signed up to join the Hamas training camps.
“I want to join the Qassam Brigades because they are the strongest in Gaza,” said 15-year-old Mohammed Abu Harbid, who also took part in the training.
With the humanitarian situation in post-war Gaza growing steadily worse, a fresh flare-up with Israel seems likely.
And with many schools being used to shelter the displaced and unemployment standing at 41 percent, it was not difficult to convince youngsters to join the camps.
Hamas insists that teaching children how to fight is a legitimate part of “resistance” activities against Israel.
But the camp, which accepts boys and men aged 14 to 21, has incensed human rights activists who accuse Hamas of exploiting children traumatised by war.
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But local human rights groups are accusing Hamas of exploiting children for political purposes.
“We are not disputing the right of an occupied people to resist, but it must be done by adults, not children,” one human rights activist told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
At least the AFP included this important part – an anonymous “human rights activist” supporting terrorism, as long as it perpetrated by adults and not children.
