Jonathan Myers
Fathom Journal, March 2024
“The children who consumed those initial shows are of an age to be the terrorists of today.”
BROUGHT UP TO GLORIFY ‘MARTYRS’
Palestinian Media Watch has drawn attention to how the environment of Gaza and West Bank children contains dozens of schools, sports events, and summer camps, bearing the names of terrorists. Streets and recreational areas are named after suicide bombers. On street hoardings and the walls of community centres are posters or graphic images of martyrs; usually terrorists killed by Israeli forces. Dead or alive, all these named individuals are held up as role models. Similar glorification of terrorists and their violence occurs in movies. In 2009, Hamas released Emad Akel, a feature film written by Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar and former Interior Minister Fathi Hamad that celebrated the life of a Hamas terrorist killed by the IDF in 1993.
TELEVISION
Palestinian children are encouraged to be like the famous and respected jihadis they see valorised all around them. Television programming controlled by the Palestinian Authority – in a largely closed system, with minimal Western input – reinforces this. Through their Fatah children’s TV channel, children as young as four are indoctrinated with the idea of dedication to the cause of Palestinian resistance. To that end, death is portrayed as glorious using simple songs, costumed animal characters, as well as – particularly for the older children – poetry with flowery language.
Ru’a Tamimi, a girl of around seven, presented a poem that exemplified the approach.] In her recital, a mother tells her little boy who is expecting a toy for finishing his food, ‘My son, we were not created for happiness. In my eyes, you are meant for martyrdom… Jerusalem is ours, our weapon is our Islam, and our ammunition is our children.’ Particularly disturbing is how Jews are often dehumanised in these presentations by being likened to dangerous criminals and animals. This alone makes it easier for the children to see the Jew as something that must be eliminated – it is also reminiscent of Naziism where Jews were equated with vermin (the 1940 film The Eternal Jew depicted Jews as rats).
In Pioneers of Tomorrow, a Sesame Street-like children’s show first aired in 2007 on Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV, Nahoul, a giant bee (a person in a black and yellow bee costume), tells his young audience:
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