Ten-year-olds being trained in terror at secret Hamas camps
Israel claims that cache of photos reveals...
PALESTINIAN children are being sent to Hamas terror training camps where they learn to hold rifles, fire weapons and navigate its vast underground tunnel network, it was claimed last night.
Israel’s military released photographs of children in Gaza holding machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
In a video, youngsters were led through a tunnel guarded by masked Hamas gunmen. Many of the faces were blurred but some appeared to be as young as ten.
According to an Israel security official, the materials were found in a military operation inside Gaza in raids of schools and homes.
Israel claims that children in Gaza are indoctrinated from a young age to hate Israel and Jewish people and are sent to summer camps and youth organisations where they undergo training for Hamas, including on how to kidnap soldiers. Israel said a ‘significant number’ of minors are active in Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
‘Hamas is a terror organisation that does not value human life at all,’ Moshe Aviv, head of Israel’s National Public Diplomacy Directorate, told The Mail on Sunday.
‘This is what led to their criminal and murderous behaviour on October 7.’ More than 1,200 Israelis were killed in Hamas’s October 7 attacks, with 240 taken hostage.
Mr Aviv added: ‘All of this fundamentally stems from the terror education they are given from a young age, from infancy, where they are taught to hate Jews, which leads to terrorism and mass murder.’ He accused Hamas of using women, children and the elderly as ‘human shields’, and said it hid its ‘terrorist infrastructure inside and underneath homes, hospitals, mosques, schools and other civilian sites, deliberately putting the Palestinian population at risk’.
Israel also accuses Hamas of using schools and playgrounds to stash weapons. Its military says it found children’s backpacks and dolls filled with explosives to target Israeli soldiers.
Mr Aviv said: ‘The state of Israel will eliminate the rule of Hamas and its military capabilities, return the hostages and ensure that there is no security threat from Gaza to
Israel. It will also make sure that whoever is in charge of Gaza educates its citizens without hatred for Jews or anyone else in the world.
‘Gazan youth and the entire society need to start the deradicalisation process so that they can enjoy a normal, peaceful life without being encouraged to be martyrs.’
‘A significant number of minors are in Hamas’