Palestinian demonstrators display a poster showing terrorist Dalal Mughrabi alongside the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat. Photo: File.

In cooperation with Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah Movement, the Palestinian Authority (PA) Security Forces offer Palestinian children — starting at age seven — military training in camps.

A video posted by Fatah on one of its Facebook pages shows and explains that during the “army camp,” the kids “wear soldiers’ uniforms, eat their food, and are trained in military order and discipline.’’

The Internet host presenting the report explains that at the concluding ceremony of all the camps, “commanders of the Security Forces and a member of Fatah’s Central Committee are present.” He further explains that these camps are for all Palestinian children, regardless of political affiliation, because:

Our battle with the sons of dogs [i.e., Israelis] is long, and we need a young generation.”

[Facebook page of the Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, June 21, 2022]

In the video, children are seen disassembling and assembling weapons. A song in the background stresses the significance of this training, revealing the ideology and atmosphere of the camps:

Lyrics: “Everyone raise their weapons and put a bullet in the barrel …

We are the national Security [Forces], we are the men of Al-Asifa

Fatah! Fatah! Fatah! We are its men!

We are the men of Al-Asifa, we do not fear death…”

[Facebook page of the Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, June 21, 2022]

Another part of the video further illustrates the values imparted in these PA Security Forces/Fatah camps. Through chants, the young children are taught to admire the terrorist who led the most lethal terror attack against Israel: Dalal Mughrabi. Together with other terrorists she murdered 37 Israelis, including 12 children, in what is known as the 1978 Coastal Road massacre:

Guide and children: “Dalal [Mughrabi] arrived in Palestine (i.e., led murder of 37, incl. 12 children)

She is equal to the entire world

O Dalal, they trained you

and had you carry a Kalashnikov [assault rifle]

They led you to the shore

to a self-sacrificing operation [i.e., terror attack]

Dalal trained girls

in preparing explosives

and hand grenades.”

[Facebook page of the Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, June 21, 2022]

The PA Security Forces’ army camp program as presented in the video posted by Fatah reflects PA values that have been exposed for decades by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) — values that include promotion and glorification of terror and denial of Israel’s right to exist in any borders.

The PA’s child terror training camp must be of serious concern for everyone, but in particular, for the UN Secretary General and US President Joe Biden. 

Every year, the United Nations Secretary General issues a “blacklist” of countries and entities that commit “grave violations” of the rights of children in the context of armed conflict. One of the original categories is the recruitment and use of child soldiers. The UN organization charged with monitoring and reporting on these grave violations is United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF).

While PMW has provided UNICEF with scores of examples of the PA abuse, indoctrination, and recruitment of the Palestinian children to act as child terrorists, whose mission is to hate, kill, and be killed, UNICEF constantly fails the Palestinian children. Preferring to adopt a politicized anti-Israel rhetoric, UNICEF has adopted a policy of attacking Israel, while simultaneously ignoring the PA’s institutionalized abuse of Palestinian children and their recruitment as child terrorists.

If UNICEF focused more on its real mandate of protecting the Palestinian children, rather than attacking Israel, and exposed the PA’s child abusing policies, the lives of scores of Palestinian children would be saved.

In the meantime, PMW is calling on the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Tor Wennesland, to immediately and unequivocally condemn the PA for its abuse of the Palestinian children and to recommend that the PA be added to the UN Secretary General’s list of child abusers.

The 2018 Taylor Force Act (TFA) conditions most of the US aid to the PA on the abolishment of the PA’s policy to pay terror rewards to terrorist prisoners, released terrorists, wounded terrorists, and the families of dead terrorists. The US aid that continues to reach the PA unaffected by TFA is the aid the US provides the PA for the PA Security Forces.

What this means is that US money given to the PA Security Forces to defend itself against Hamas, is also directly being misused to train and indoctrinate Palestinian child terrorists to attack Israelis.

As PMW is certain that the Biden administration is fundamentally and unreservedly opposed to the PA raising children to be terrorists, with or without US money, PMW is calling on US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides to examine the many hundreds of examples of the PA’s raising children to hate, kill and seek martyrdom, and bring this to the attention of President Biden before his meetings with the PA this week.

If the US cares about the welfare of Palestinian children, President Biden must condemn this recruitment of Palestinian children to terror, and condition any future warming of relations between the US and the PA on the PA’s cessation of its abuse of its own children.

The authors represent Palestinian Media Watch, where Itamar Marcus is the executive director, and where a version of this article was originally published.