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Recently, Lawrence J Haas of the US Foreign Policy Committee promoted a dangerous phenomenon in Newsweek: “The silence of the West is because the Gaza Summer Camp trains future terrorists.”
According to Haas-his underwear has been pushed to a whole lot by the Western media and academic circles obsessed with the “narrative of Israeli oppression and Palestinian victimization” (illusion), Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad are in Gaza. The teenage boy stripped how to “shoot, launch anti-tank missiles and protect himself while observing the wall.”
Fortunately, however, the so-called “silence” of the summer camp was compensated by organizations such as the Middle East Media Institute (MEMRI), a notorious Zionist propaganda factory subsidized by American taxpayers, and similar specialized agencies.
For example, in early July, the Times of Israel reported that Hamas was training young campers to kidnap Israeli soldiers. At about the same time, a report in the Long War Journal, a project of the US neo-conservative think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracy, warned that the summer camp was part of “strengthening the military to continue the jihad against Israel.” .
On July 12, the Jerusalem Public Affairs Center sounded the alarm of the “Hamas Summer Camp for 50,000 Children”, where the children were taught kidnapping skills and weapon operations, and instructed them to use a “computer simulator to practice shooting Israel.” Soldiers and policemen on the Temple Mount and Al-Aqsa Mosque”.
According to the report, Hamas not only claimed that “the education of children…cruel and inhuman, depriving these children of their childhood and innocence”, but also violated international humanitarian law because campers are said to be eligible to be “child soldiers” . “Based on the 2007 Paris principles and guidelines on children associated with armed forces or armed groups.
Then, readers will see a compilation of other ways Hamas violates international human rights law related to children—from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court to the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, to the United Nations Human Rights Convention. Children, among other things, “prohibit children under the age of 15 from directly participating in hostilities”.
This brings us to the following question: If children’s rights are so sacred, why do they disappear naturally whenever the Israeli army promises to kill children? Similarly, if Israel is so opposed to the concept of child soldiers, why should children be regarded as military targets?
In the latest 11-day Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip in May called Operation Guardian of the Wall, more than 250 Palestinians were killed and at least 67 children were killed. In the summer of 2014, Operation Protect the Edge eliminated 2,251 lives in Gaza in 50 days-of which no less than 551 children. During Operation Cast Lead, which lasted 22 days from 2008 to 2009, the Israeli army massacred approximately 300 children and approximately 1,100 adults.
Indeed, if we want to talk about international law, Israel’s own behavior basically constitutes a continuing violation of international law.
In his Newsweek rant, Haas described the summer camp in Gaza as “not the swimming and softball, hiking, and picnic that many of us fondly remember.” Similarly, the Jerusalem Public Affairs Center lamented that in the Palestinian coastal enclaves, “summer camps look very different from the rest of the world” and do not involve “playing football or outdoor camping”.
It is true that there are not many places in the world where children participating in outdoor summer football can easily be blown to pieces by Israeli airstrikes-as happened in July 2014. It is worth mentioning that the New York Times headline is almost criminally ambiguous: “The boy was attracted to the beaches of Gaza and into the center of the conflict in the Middle East.”
Fast forward to the summer of 2018, when the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs uploaded a video to YouTube with the title: “What are your children doing in this #summer? #Gaza中的#Hamas is poisoning Palestinian youth with hatred and violence and depriving them of childhood.”
The video features an Israeli woman with a baby as the protagonist. She expressed concern that “the Hamas summer camp is creating a dangerous reality for Palestinian children” and “destroying the future of Palestinian youth.” It doesn’t matter, Hamas is not the one who occupied, besieged and morbidly bombed the territories, and at the same time caused massive mental trauma to his youth.
At the same time, the Zionists armed in the summer camp activities in Gaza will reflect on the content of the Israeli summer camp plan very well-for example, the content detailed in the 2019 article that appeared on the Israeli CTech technology news website: “Fun and Games, shoot down enemy planes”, in which we were told that in Israel, “the new trend of summer entertainment is military-themed summer camps and courses”.
Forget swimming and picnics; Israeli kids can now spend their summer vacation in the “most advanced F16 fighter simulator developed by American aerospace manufacturer Lockheed Martin.” They can “reproduce the Israeli air strike that destroyed a nuclear reactor near Baghdad, Iraq in 1981”, participate in a “recruit training camp” at a paintball shooting range, and have “special scenes designed for urban warfare: densely built houses, burnt down Vehicles and sniper posts”, or sign up for “Anti-Terrorism 101” and “Aggression Training.”
Or, they can “train to thwart cyberattacks and others that can help them in [Israeli cyber spy agency] The 8200 unit and other top cyber warfare units have reached the age of enlistment.” According to a lecturer interviewed for the article, “every child participating in the summer program already knows how to prevent someone from going online.”
In other words, in contrast, Palestinian children learning how to “protect themselves while peeping at the wall” sounds rather gentle.
It is worth mentioning that Israeli summer camps that do not have a clear military theme usually also contain some military aspects. For example, the website of an “Israel Extreme” camp advertises activities such as water sports, paragliding, visits to Israeli military bases, and cave exploration in order. The staff at the camp clearly stated that they are all “serving in the special forces of the military.”
Of course, the fact that even cave exploration should be effectively militarized is not surprising in a country, as Haim Bresheeth-Zabner strictly records in his book “The Army of Distinction”, “Before Birth Started military service”, and the army is “the center of Israel’s existence.”
Bresheeth-Zabner wrote that long before the Israelis began to perform mandatory service in the armed forces, they were mentally prepared for “the violence they needed to commit and use in adult life.” For a country “essentially of conflict and war”, the military’s deep involvement in “all Israeli academic institutions” undoubtedly promotes this arrangement. The academic community constitutes the “racialized part of the apartheid mechanism”, while the academic community does Is “Israel’s partner”. Military-industrial complex”.
Bresheeth-Zabner himself was the son of a Holocaust survivor who moved to the newly formed State of Israel in 1948. He recalled an episode in the 1950s when he and other school children “successfully were persuaded to donate their meager penny” To support Israel’s re-armament work.
Childhood is so much.
As Israel continues to train its children to kill — now with the help of large financial contributions from the global superpower — the Hamas summer camp is undoubtedly a useful way to distract.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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