Kids Dressed as Terrorists in Pro-Jihad Kindergarten Graduation Ceremony in Gaza

Yesterday, we reported about the Palestinian puppet show in East Jerusalem teaching the children that while it’s bad to smoke, it’s admirable to tote a machine gun and target Jews.

Now it appears that no child is left behind in Gaza, where kindergarteners recently held a jihad-promoting graduation ceremony replete with camouflage make-up, fatigues, fake machine guns and a kiddie version of water-boarding.

Ynet News translates from Islamic Jihad’s website which posted the photos:

"It is our obligation to educate the children to love the resistance, Palestine and Jerusalem, so they will recognize the importance of Palestine and who its enemy is," the kindergarten's director said.

The children were dressed up in uniforms of Jihad's armed-wing, the al-Quds Brigades, and each of them received a toy rifle [...]

One child, Hamza, said "When I grow up I'll join Islamic Jihad and the al-Quds Brigades. I'll fight the Zionist enemy and fire missiles at it until I die as a shahid [martyr] and join my father in heaven.

"I love the resistance and the martyrs and Palestine, and I want to blow myself up on Zionists and kill them on a bus in a suicide bombing," he said.

Here are some of the photos, captured by the pro-Israel bloggers Challah Hu Akbar and Elder of Ziyon:

Ynet translates one teacher who said:

"At every kindergarten graduation ceremony we focus on the children to represent the role of struggling and resistance in the way of Allah so they will grow up to love the resistance and serve the cause of Palestine and Holy Jihad, as well as to make them leaders and fighters to defend the holy soil of Palestine."

In an op-ed in Ynet News, Yigal Walt criticizes so-called terrorism experts who promote the theory that it’s economic hardship or political repression that prompts youths to turn to terror and carry out “desperate acts.” He writes:

The simple and sad truth is that terrorism is an “acquired taste” and affinity for terror is a value that one must nurture and impart. Just as many families and states worldwide educate their children and people in line with the value of tolerance, for example, other people and nations prefer to encourage their sons and daughters to choose the path of murder and terror. Indeed, after long years of such “education” in kindergartens, schools, on television and in prayer houses, there is no wonder that many members of these peoples take the path of terror and turn this murderousness into a prevalent way of life.

Some of the children’s relatives are themselves members of Islamic Jihad and other armed Palestinian groups, now educating them to follow in their violent footsteps.