Brainwashing the younger generation of Palestinians with concepts of terrorism and hatred has great importance for Hamas. As part of its indoctrination effort, Hamas makes extensive use of the Internet, with approximately 20 Internet sites in seven languages. One sites is an children's magazine called Al-Fateh ("The Conqueror"), www.al-fateh.net.

The magazine has attractive graphics and contains comic-like drawings and photographs to make it "friendly" and attractive to its target audience of young children. There are poems, articles about religious subjects, and tales of heroism from Arabic and Islamic history.

Side by side with these "innocent" items are articles preaching the perpetration of terrorist attacks, extolling the suicide bombers and presenting them as role models, and encouraging hatred for Israel and the Jewish people.

Examples:

(1) Turning the terrorist who perpetrated the 2001 suicide bombing attack at the Dolphinarium into a role model for children. The attack resulted in the deaths of 21 Israeli civilians, mostly teenagers, and 83 wounded. The attack was widely praised in Al-Fateh, which published the text of the will written by the suicide bomber before he left to blow himself up. The will was intended to glorify and extol the image of the suicide bomber and to encourage others to follow in his footsteps, promising the pleasures of paradise in the hereafter. His writings and posters bearing his portrait are distributed by Hamas throughout the Palestinian Authority- administered territories.

(2) Issue No. 38 of Al-Fateh, Hamas' online children's magazine, displayed a picture of a female suicide bomber next to a photograph of her decapitated head lying on the road. The caption praises the act and notes that she is now in paradise, a shaheeda like her male comrades. She killed two Israelis and wounded 17 in September 2004, at Jerusalem's French Hill junction.

(3) Issue no. 38 of Al-Fateh features a story about Muhammad al- Durra, a Palestinian child who died when he was trapped in crossfire between Israeli soldiers and armed Palestinians. Everything about the story is biased and a total fabrication intended to portray Israeli soldiers as a band of evil sadists who enjoy killing both adults and children, and to turn a tragic incident into a tool for inciting Palestinian children to hate Israelis and the Jewish people.

"...The soldiers' teeth protruded as they laughed aloud [when al- Durra was shot], like the protruding teeth of wolves grinding the bones of an innocent lamb they have hunted out of the arms of its mother..."

To intensify the children's hatred for Israelis, the little girl in the story is depicted as having lost an eye when she threw stones at Jews in Al-Aqsa mosque.

"Israa' fought against the pain in her eye with exceptional bravery... She thought of herself as a soldier in the ranks of Allah's army, and was of the opinion that Allah honored her and counted her as one of the defenders of blessed Al-Aqsa mosque... Today her grandmother said…'Do you know, Israa', that your missing eye will be proof and like a medal of honor... proof of the crimes of the Jews, and a medal of honor for your having stood up to their crime of wanting to desecrate our holy places..."

One article says that the Jews were the first to produce magazines for children, using them "in order to brainwash children in the ways of the Torah, the Talmud and the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion'" -- the libelous book purporting to contain the Jewish plot to take over the world.

Al-Fateh also includes a story which describes how Israeli soldiers demand that a boy, Mihnad, pull down a Palestinian flag flying above an olive tree. Mihnad refuses and does not give in even when he is shot at. When they force him to climb up the tree, Mihnad cries: "long live my land in freedom, long live the flag." The soldiers kill Mihnad in reaction and he is left clutching the flag, drenched in his own blood.

Another story speaks of martyrdom, as a suicide bomber declares that "there is nothing greater than killing oneself on the land of Palestine, for the sake of Allah."

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The terrorist organizations frequently use militant Islamic messages to encourage children and teenagers to join the conflict and to participate in military operations, including suicide bombings. Some examples:

▪ Salah Shehada, who was one of the leaders of the Hamas in Gaza, stated in an interview (on the website Islam On-line, 26 May 2002), that children should be properly trained before they are sent on a mission and that they should be recruited into a special unit of the military arm of the Hamas in order to instill in them the culture of military jihad and to teach them to distinguish between good and evil.

▪ Dr. Padhl Abu Hin, a psychology lecturer, was interviewed on this subject for a television movie entitled "Child Patriots and a Martyrs' Death." He noted that the Palestinian child understands that, by means of the shahada (a martyrs' death for the sake of Allah), through the perpetration of attacks, he/she can win honor and appreciation, without life being ended. [The concept of] Shahada, according to him, encourages children to take an active part in the conflict against Israel (Palestinian TV, 27 June 2002).

▪ Rasha el-Rantissi, wife of Abed el-Aziz el-Rantissi, told the Arab media that she is educating her children to resistance and jihad. She added, "I hope that my husband, my children and I will receive the shahada so that we may prove that we are the first to sacrifice our children for Allah;" "Allah is generous with us, because our children die as fighters, and we wait with them for death for Allah's sake any minute" (el-Bian, 16 June 2003).

▪ Yasser Arafat's speech on the occasion of "Palestinian Child Day", broadcast by Palestinian television (1 June 2003), in which Arafat conveyed a militant Islamic message to the Palestinian child, based on Islamic tradition, encouraged the children to be fighters on Islam's front line (rabat) and to die as martyrs for Allah, while bestowing special status on the ones thus killed (shaheeds).

with thanks to MediaLine