#HamasSummerCamp

During the summer many parents send their children to summer camp to grow, learn and make new friends. Hamas—a U.S. listed Palestinian terrorist organization that has brutally ruled the Gaza Strip since 2006—sends young Gazans to summer camps too. But there they are indoctrinated with hatred of Jews and the West and trained to murder.

On June 13, 2015, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades—a wing of Hamas—was running its third summer camp for Gaza teens and young adults to learn military tactics and training. The brigades take its name from Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam, a Syrian-born Islamic revivalist preacher and president of the Young Men’s Muslim Association in Haifa who led terrorist attacks against British officials and Jews in late 1920’s and early 1930’s Mandatory Palestine.

Hamas recruits their youth from mosques and central cities in the Gaza Strip for the Brigades’ camps. Groups known as “The Liberation Pioneers” were formed to provide youthful terror recruits after the summer 2014 Hamas initiated war with Israel.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) notes in a July 6 report on the camps that the Hamas daily newspaper Filastin advertised the al-Qassam Brigades “aim to “create a nucleus for the future liberation project,” that is, the attempted destruction of Israel. Summer camp activities for the young terrorists-to-be include “sermons, displays of courage, training in military skills, live fire exercises, field training, civil defense classes and first aid.”

Fliers promoting the camp carry the “Liberation Pioneer” anthem, which includes a verse exhorting “martyrdom”: “We [come] from our people and return to it, our blood is sacrificed for young and old.”

According to MEMRI, Hamas’ marketing for the summer camps “is meant to impress youths and entice them to register” through special videos, social media, especially Facebook, that provides registration information, cartoons, and public displays featuring loud public music and martial arts demonstrations.

Although Hamas claims that summer camps to train future terrorists are only for those 15 and over, pictures in the MEMRI report indicate otherwise. Taken from social media posts by Hamas, the images show children apparently much younger than 15 crowding tables that are attended by masked terrorists. AK-47 assault rifles lay on the tables next to registration sheets. In one image, a young child is seen sitting in the lap of one of the terrorists.

By training youth to fulfill Hamas’ charter calling for the destruction of the Jewish State and the genocide of Jews, Hamas is in violation of the United Nations 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. The convention defines child soldiers as combatants under the age of 15.

Children forced to take up arms by Ugandan Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army resulted in the viral “Kony 2012” campaign. This anti-child soldier effort gained numerous Facebook ‘likes,’ ‘retweets’ on Twitter, and much notice on other social media platforms. It garnered—if briefly—public notice and disgust with Kony’s tactics. The predatory terrorist activities of Hamas—whose “leaders” attend graduation ceremonies for camp trainees—has yet to receive similar notice and condemnation in very many media outlets. –Sean Durns