Jason Greenblatt, the US’ Special Representative for International Negotiations, slammed the Palestinian Authority (PA) for its annual exploitation of its summer camps for incitement to terrorism and indoctrination of the campers.
Every summer, the PA, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terror groups conduct summer camps in the PA and in the Gaza Strip for youngsters, mostly for high school students. Thousands of campers enjoy summer activities, which are combined with the indoctrination of radical ideologies and paramilitary training.
Hamas, which rules Gaza, is the most prominent organization conducting the summer camps, as a continuation of the military training it holds in high schools during the school year.
The Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reported this week that the Fatah and the PLO, both of which are headed by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, again named a summer camp after terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, who led the most lethal attack in Israel’s history when she and other terrorists hijacked a bus in 1978 and murdered 37 Israeli civilians, 12 of them children.
The participants at the “Sisters of Dalal Summer Camp,” which was held in Tulkarem, were female high schools students.
“It’s absolutely detestable that a children’s summer camp is named after and glorifies a known terrorist who killed 35 people – including 12 children,” Greenblatt stated Tuesday.
“How can [the] Palestinian leadership say they want peace when they support this and promote the memory of a murderer!?” he demanded.
The PA has named youth centers, sports tournaments, other venues and town squares after Mughrabi.
The IDF’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) earlier this week released a clip on Hamas’ now-traditional terrorism-related summer camps.
“The Hamas terror organization began its annual operation of a summer program that teaches thousands of children in the Gaza Strip how to carry out acts of terror against civilians while ingraining them with hatred. Imagine what they could be learning instead,” COGAT stated.
The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC), in a report on the summer camps in Gaza, wrote that Hamas and the PIJ consider the activities held during the summer camps as very important.
In most cases the camps are named for Shaheeds, terrorists killed in while carrying out attacks, or milestone events in the history of the terrorist organizations.
At the camps, the youths receive paramilitary training, some of which is held in military posts and provided by terrorist organization operatives.
Ideological indoctrination includes the so-called “Right of Return,” the Shahada, i.e. the willingness to die as a martyr for the sake of Allah and become a Shaheed, the so-called “liberation of Palestine” by means of the “resistance,” meaning the destruction of the state of Israel through terrorism, and inculcating the tenets of radical Islam.
The terror groups regard the summer camps as workshops for producing the next generations of operatives, who in the future will be integrated into the military and political networks of Hamas and the PIJ in the Gaza Strip, the ITIC explained.
The PA’s educational system routinely educates its students to hate Israel and Israelis through terror-promoting messages. They use cultural mediums such as school plays, sports events and summer camps for this objective.
In line with this policy, the PA has named at least 28 schools after terrorists and at least three schools after Nazi collaborators. The PA Ministry of Education is directly and solely responsible for naming schools.
