Illustrative: Palestinian children compelled to participate in a Hamas military parade. Photo: Twitter.

Posting a video from the graduation ceremony of a Fatah summer camp for boys — called “lion cubs” — Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement provided a glimpse of what goes on in these camps.

The video from the camp for high school children, which is accompanied by a song promoting “revolution and a rifle,” shows that masked teenage boys wearing yellow Fatah headbands were taught to handle and assemble Kalashnikov assault rifles, and were trained in close combat:

Lyrics: “My brother, my cousin, my friend, Shabiba
Train me in the streets of pride and sort me into Shabiba
Light and fire are my path, Shabiba
My brother, my cousin, my friend, Shabiba

Fatah is a revolution and a rifle
Birzeit of self-sacrifice
Knights in the lion’s den

And here the self-sacrificing fighters have set out

Fatah is a revolution and a rifle

Birzeit of self-sacrifice

Knights in the lion’s den

And here the self-sacrificing fighters have set out

Shabiba is the path of the revolutionaries

Shabiba is free men

Sort me, teach me to follow the difficult path

Enlist me and train me in the Shabiba camp”

Posted text: “The graduation ceremony of the lion cubs of the [Fatah] Shabiba High School [Student Movement], the Al-Asifa [i.e., Fatah military unit] [summer] camp in Salfit.”

[Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, Facebook page, Aug. 3, 2023]

Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reported on a similar Palestinian Authority (PA) summer camp last year, in which hundreds of children had their photo taken posing with automatic rifles.

PMW recently exposed that this year’s PA summer camps taught 65,000 Palestinian kids aged 13-17 that terrorist “Martyrs” are role models, and that Israel has no right to exist in any borders because there is only “Palestine.”

The author is a senior analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.