A Palestinian government children’s TV program aired a poem advocating youth martyrdom and the use of assault rifles, according to a clip of the show posted by an Israeli watchdog group.
The Best Home, a children’s show broadcast by the Palestinian Authority government, included a segment where a young girl read a poem about taking up arms and dying as a martyr on Nov. 21.
“I am the Palestinian lion cub … The blood of the martyrs flows in my veins,” said the girl, according to a translation posted by Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli watchdog group. “If the drums of war call, I harvest the souls in the fields. My sword is drawn and won’t return to the sheath.”
“The armies of treachery fear me, and the Dark-Eyed [Virgins] yearn for me,” the poem continued. “I have not sold my homelands, and have not given up my assault rifle.”
The show’s host responded, “Bravo, bravo!” and clapped as the audience of children applauded.
Last year, another Palestinian Authority TV host reportedly read the same poem to honor 17-year-old Abdel Rahman Abu Jamal, who was fatally shot after he attacked three Israeli police officers with a knife.
Palestinian Media Watch called on the United Nations to condemn the broadcast, which it described as “child abuse and completely irreconcilable with the Rights of the Child.”
“Tragically, it is the government-controlled PA TV that undertakes this appalling education of Palestinian children – again in violation of the convention the PA has signed, which stipulates that it is the responsibility of ‘governments’ to “make sure that children survive and develop in the best possible way,” said the watchdog group.
The children’s TV program has come under fire before for promoting violence.
In 2017, the Times of Israel reported that children read poems on the air about AK-47s and slaughtering their enemies. “For you, Yasser Arafat, for you we shall die,” said one young boy on a Jan. 6, 2017 episode. “After the night comes the light of day, and the fig leave will be removed…Tomorrow we will take our vengeance, and their leader will be carried in a coffin.”
