Hamas camp: Sun, fun ... indoctrination!

And you thought those counselors in Meatballs were dangerous. (From the SF Chronicle. Thanks to Laura Ingraham for the heads up.)


Seventeen-year-old Osama Abu Asi knows what Hamas stands for: swimming lessons, horseback riding, potato sack races and other summertime fun -- including religious education and paramilitary training.
This is summer camp in the Gaza Strip, as organized by Harakat al-Moqawama al-Islamiyah, the Islamic Resistance Movement, better known as Hamas -- which is officially regarded by the United States and many other countries as a terrorist organization that has killed hundreds of Israelis.

All summer long, at camps in playgrounds, in dirt-poor neighborhoods and on glittering Mediterranean beaches, Palestinian boys and young men get together in safe, well-managed, comfortable facilities decorated with the fluttering green flags of Hamas.

"In this camp we learn the important things of life -- good behavior, respect," said Osama, who was spending the summer at a Hamas-run camp on the beach outside Gaza City.

They also learn how to sing "intifada songs," including one urging them to "kill Zionists wherever they are, in the name of God."

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's spokesman Ra'anan Gissin described the summer camps as "indoctrination camps" comparable to the Hitler Youth camps, and accused Hamas of taking advantage of Gaza parents' desperate economic straits by offering to care for and feed their children while concealing the organization's true motives.

"This is where you create cultural hatred, so by the age of 15 or 16 you can send them out as suicide bombers. That's the whole purpose of them," he said.

Osama didn't see it that way. "They are not terrorists. We've been trained and taught to live and forgive. That is the lesson here."

I don't know about you, but I missed garotte training way back when at Camp Imperialist Amerika.

But while Hamas leaders point to their social programs as the reason for the camps' popularity, Israelis -- and some Palestinians -- are far more critical of what the young campers are learning besides horseback riding and the backstroke.

At one beach camp, attended by approximately 100 kids, an instructor wore a heavy flannel shirt under which a webbed belt could be seen strapped to his stomach. Asked by a reporter what it was, he answered, with a broad smile, "Boom!"

Yeah, poverty creates terrorists.

Idiots.

The instructor led a group of young teenagers through marching drills on the sand -- facing movements, close quarter drill. With a smile at the reporter, he put a megaphone to his lips.

"What are you?" he called.

"Monsters!" the kids replied.

"What are you?!"

"MONSTERS!"

As the instructor, Sa'eb Dormush, stepped aside for an interview, a youth in the group shouted out "moqawama!" -- resistance.

"That is the first word they learn when they are born," Dormush said with a laugh. "This is the next generation."

Across camp, a group of younger children -- most between 10 and 12 -- sat in a circle in the sand singing one of the "intifada songs" they learn at camp. One boy sang verses in a rolling soprano as the others joined in on the one-word chorus.

"We don't want to sleep.

HA-A-MAS!

We want revenge.

HA-A-MAS!

Raise it up.

HA-A-MAS!

Rifle fire.

HA-A-MAS!

If it will take a thousand martyrs.

HA-A-MAS!

Kill Zionists.

HA-A-MAS!

Wherever they are.

HA-A-MAS!

In the name of God.

HA-A-MAS!"

Not exactly Kumbaya, kiddies.