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Educating Gaza's Children for Hatred

(Jerusalem Post) Seth Mandell - In Gaza, Islamic Jihad is running camps for kids featuring lessons on how to shoot an AK-47 and how to kidnap an Israeli soldier. In an Agence France Presse YouTube video, the commander of the children's camp says, "We have full confidence that they [the children] will be able to carry weapons and open fire against the enemy because we have planted hatred of the enemy in their hearts." Tens of thousands of young boys ages 6 to 16 will be indoctrinated into this mindset this summer. When the UN partitioned Palestine, the Jews, tempered by a couple of thousand years in the diaspora and influenced by the European enlightenment, decided to compromise and accept part of what they considered their rightful homeland. The Arabs couldn't relate to the concept of compromise at all. They have never given up on their certainty that Israel's very presence in Palestine is unjust, and they have never given up their desire to drive the Jews into the sea. But without the ability and will to compromise, whether they know it or not, they have no hope. Even assuming that PA President Mahmoud Abbas and moderate Palestinians are committed to peace, the Palestinian people as a whole still believe that the Jews stole their land - that a Jewish state has no place in the Middle East. One can only imagine the psychological impact of having "hatred of the enemy planted in the hearts" of children as young as six. You won't find such deliberate poisoning of a youngster's mind in any program in Israel. And if you did, the organization and its leadership would be run out of town. As Golda Meir once said, "We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us." The author is a rabbi and co-founder of The Koby Mandell Foundation.
2013-06-28 00:00:00
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