A West Bank kindergarten held a recent “graduation ceremony” that saw preschoolers covered head to toe in military fatigues and equipped with toy rifles, a Middle East analysis organization has uncovered.
The Middle East Media Research Center (MEMRI) posted the clip—which had originally aired on Al-Sheera TV in the Palestinian Authority—online Monday that showed the children marching in place while pledging to conquer their enemies.
While the children were on stage displaying their rehearsed military maneuvers, a photograph could be seen in the background of Yasser Arafat, the first leader of the jihadist Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Some of the lyrics from the song played at the preschooler’s commencement ceremony read, according to MEMRI:
Whether you come by sea, or by air – you will be crushed, you will be crushed.
If you stretch your hand, it will be chopped off. If you just look with your eye, it will be gouged out. The defeated army will be too terrified to come back.
We come for you before, and woe betide you if we come back again. You come to this land alive, but you will leave it as body parts.
Training children as future jihadists has become commonplace in the Palestinian territories.
In January, reports surfaced that Palestinian terror group Hamas had started a program called “Pioneers of the Resistance,” which trains an estimated 10,000 young Gazans on how to wage war against Israel.
In October, Palestinian Media Watch uncovered a similar Hamas kindergarten graduation ceremony where children wore full military fatigues while holding assault rifles.
The children chanted, “Jihad! Allah Akbar! Your Role Model? The Prophet [Muhammad]. Your path? Jihad! Your aspiration? Death for Allah. Your movement? Hamas! Your movement? Hamas!”