Israeli President Isaac Herzog shared what he described as a “strictly confidential document” that detailed Hamas’s intent to use summer camps to indoctrinate Palestinian children.
He presented the brochure, which he said was found in a Hamas headquarters and was a “directive by the commanders of Hamas as to how to manage summer camps,” during a Sunday morning interview on Meet the Press.
“It’s a brochure which is a directive by the commanders of Hamas as to how to manage summer camps for children in order to disseminate the values of jihad,” he explained. “It says it clearly, ‘to disseminate the values of jihad and the values of the resistance,’ meaning terror, ‘and how to make it a militarized society.’”
The brochure was written and issued in July 2023 by the Al Qassam Brigade military wing of Hamas, according to the Israeli government.
“And it’s all over the Gaza Strip, meaning they take the kids, whilst we all know what summer camps are and what they’re aimed for, and what a wonderful experience it is … to enable youngsters, kids, and adults — I mean adolescents — to become citizens of the free world with liberties, with happiness, with joy, with sports,” Herzog added. “Here … the entire aim is to make them terrorists.“
The children would be trained to shoot weapons and conduct simulations with the intended goal of radicalizing the next generation in Gaza to serve in the terrorist organization.
The Washington Examiner could not independently verify the brochure, though Hamas’s summer camps have been previously reported on.
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Israel’s war in Gaza, which was precipitated by the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks, has gone on for roughly three months and has incurred overwhelming destruction, displacement, and death. Roughly 22,000 people have been killed in Gaza, per the Gaza health ministry, which is controlled by Hamas, and the total does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
“The war shifted a stage,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, Israel Defense Forces spokesman, told the New York Times. “But the transition will be with no ceremony.”
