Hamas Uses Children in Combat

Hana Levi Julian Hamas Uses Children in Combat

The Hamas terrorist regime in Gaza is using children to support its fighters during combat with IDF troops as they carry out counterterrorist activities in Operation Cast Lead in the region. Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) has created a five-minute compilation of key representative segments from Hamas TV that document indoctrination of children into the culture of terrorism, including a music video that teaches that bombs to kill Israelis are more precious to an Arab mother than her children. The PMW also noted that the Kul Al-Arab Arab weekly newspaper quoted a child, "Khaled, from A-Rimal", who described his job and those of his friends as they help adult terrorists at the military front.

"We, the children, in small groups and in civilian clothes, are fulfilling missions of support for the [Hama Resistance fighters, by transmitting messages about the movements of the enemy forces or by bringing them ammunition and food," he said. "We ourselves are not aware of the movements of the Resistance fighters. We see them in one place, they suddenly disappear, and then reappear somewhere else. They are like ghosts, it is very hard to find them or hurt them."

Called to form a human shield

During the course of a prior Israeli military operation against Gaza terrorists in March 2008, Hamas repeatedly called upon civilians to gather near buildings where they expected the IDF to launch air strikes against weapons storage facilities and other military targets.

Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV issued a special call to children at the time to form a human shield at the home of Abu al-Hatal of the a-Shouqaf quarter in Sajaiyeh in order to protect the building from an anticipated IAF air strike.

A month earlier, Hamas Member of Parliament Fathi Hammad claimed in a speech broadcast on February 29, 2008 on Al-Aqsa TV that for PA Arabs, "death has become an industry at which women excel… The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children."

In the video clip captured on tape and translated by the Washington DC-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Hammad is shown saying, "This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: 'We desire death like you desire life.'"