Gaza kids’ festival theme suicide bombs, guns and murder

There are some resemblances to a traditional children’s carnival. The children are dressed in beautiful, bright colors. Young girls are bearing flowers in their hair, and the children moving around to loud, fun music, waving flags and singing songs. The one exception at this children’s festival in Gaza is that the songs, musical acts and dances are about guns, bombs and killing Israeli soldiers. It’s the eighth annual Khan Yunis festival and hundreds of young children seated in a stadium watch the show—one in which other children dance around role playing the killing of Israeli citizens, the waving of guns and shouting “Allah Akbar” and children dressed as militants simulating the abduction of an Israeli soldier.

“Hurry up, my child, and join the battle! Die as a martyr, and blow up the enemies,” one young girl said in a monologue to the audience in a video uploaded to YouTube and observed by The Foreign Desk.

 In one scene, a child dressed as an Israeli soldier is kidnapped by several other boys dressed as militants passing through a tunnel.

“We are not afraid. The young people of Jerusalem are staging a knife revolution,” two girls proclaimed to the audience.

The festival, organized by the Islamic Society in Gaza, comes after a new round of violence along the Gaza/Israel border, where there have been several instances of Hamas fire against Israeli soldiers.