Hamas’ latest target

Editorial

Like many parents, perhaps you will kiss the kids goodbye this month as they head off to the adventure that is summer camp. By the end of the adventure, the worst our kids will probably experience is some homesickness and maybe a bee sting or a scraped knee. Children in Gaza face a different kind of summer altogether.

There are many reasons to be thankful we do not live in Gaza, of course, but yet another comes in the form of jihadi summer camps for Palestinian children. If this comes to you as news, it is a symptom of a broader problem. Camps that teach children to hate and even to kill have existed in the Palestinian territories for at least a decade. The fact that the world, for the most part, remains unaware of these camps, is a question for media outlets that subscribe to a narrative of oppressed and oppressor that does not fit the facts on the ground.

These camps have been run, in the past, under the auspices of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. Now, in Gaza, these camps have gained some unwanted attention, finally, with news reports that there are no fewer than 300 camps, reaching as many as 100,000 children in Gaza. These summer escapes are run by Islamic Jihad and by the Hamas terrorist regime that controls that area. The kids learn an extremist Islamist ideology and even receive military training.

Thankfully, Palestinian children in Gaza have another option. There are also camps run by the United Nations, which offer fairly traditional camping activities such as games and sports, as well as human rights lessons, for a potential 250,000 children in Gaza.

Perhaps jealous that their camps will enrol a comparatively paltry 100,000 kids, supporters of the jihadi camps took it upon themselves recently to vandalize and terrorize the UN summer camps. This occurred not once, but twice, and involved tying up the guard on duty before torching tents, vandalizing washrooms and slashing an inflatable swimming pool. According to a statement from the previously unknown group The Free of the Homeland, the UN camps are targets because they are "teaching schoolgirls fitness, dancing and immorality."

A UN official in Gaza called the attack "cowardly and despicable" and promised to repair the damages quickly. Hamas police are investigating, which should put all involved at ease.

The UN official added that the attack was a sign of growing extremism in Gaza and said that it reflects "the urgency to change the circumstances on the ground that are generating such extremism." It is possible that this UN representative meant that what needs to change are circumstances on the ground like Islamist extremists indoctrinating children with a murderous ideology and equipping them with the skills to kill. But we suspect he was referring to the decades-old fallback position of the UN, which is that Israel is to blame for everything and terrorism and murder are legitimate responses to the political impasse.

The saddest part of this story is not that children in Gaza, whose lives are a tragedy of war-induced stress and Hamas repression, may have reduced opportunity to enjoy a real camp experience. The saddest part is that their children will probably also miss out on such an opportunity, because the inculcation of hatred in young Palestinians is one of the most significant factors perpetuating the conflict in the region.

While there are the optimistic among us who believe a peace agreement is a matter of finding the right partner and compromising on a deal, the prospects for long-term peace between Israelis and Palestinians will remain out of reach until Palestinian leaders – religious leaders, teachers, the media and parents – prepare the next generations to live in peace. If that message of coexistence became part of the Palestinian narrative today, peace might be possible tomorrow.

Israel has not been engaged in the sort of extreme demonization that jihadis instil in young people toward Israel. Even so, during the Oslo process, Israel analyzed its curriculum and attempted to sensitize its citizens to the compromise of a two-state resolution. On the other side, even as Yasser Arafat was receiving his Nobel Prize, Palestinian teachers, imams, TV shows and political leaders were continuing to instil genocidal anti-Israel and antisemitic values in their people. This continues today, becoming ever more imaginative, and, as strategies like jihadi summer camps expand and other options for summer fun recede, the remote potential for peace moves further and further away.

^TOP