Israeli President Herzog reveals Hamas documents showing how it teaches 'values of jihad' to Palestinian children at summer camps

Israeli military soldiers in Gaza unearthed a document at Hamas headquarters about terror summer camps for children organized by the Iranian-backed terrorist organization, according to an announcement made by Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Sunday evening.

“It is a brochure, which is a directive by the commanders of Hamas as to how to manage summer camps for children in order to disseminate the values of jihad. It says it clearly – to disseminate the values of jihad, and the values of the resistance, meaning terror, and how to make it a militarized society,” Herzog revealed on Sunday evening during an interview on NBC's “Meet the Press.”

The Israeli president told the NBC interviewer that the recently discovered documents were a directive about teaching children “the values of jihad” and that the goal of the summer camps was to encourage the children to become terrorists.

Herzog stated that while normal summer camps are about enabling “youngsters, kids and adolescents to become citizens of the free world and with liberty, with happiness with joy, with sports – here their entire aim is to make them terrorists.”

Every year, millions of children around the world attend summer camps to learn, have fun, and grow. In Gaza, the Hamas terrorist camps systematically train children to be martyrs and to learn the “values ​​of Jihad”.

In an interview today with @kwelkernbc on @NBCNews… pic.twitter.com/xNaSB8afBZ

— יצחק הרצוג Isaac Herzog (@Isaac_Herzog) January 7, 2024

Summer camps in the Gaza Strip involve both the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terror organizations that train kids how to use weapons and practice fighting, as well as how to kidnap and kill Israelis.

In August 2023, the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terror Information Center reported that 100,000 children and teenagers had attended terror camps last summer that consisted of “military and semi-military training, ideological indoctrination and Qur’an studies and memorization.”

The military training included “the theoretical and practical study of weapons, firing live ammunition at targets and training for urban warfare. The training was supervised by Izz al-Din Qassam Brigades terrorist operatives,” according to the Meir Amit Center.

Earlier this month, the IDF published footage showing how Hamas terror indoctrinates children in the Gaza Strip and incites them to participate in terrorist activities. One of the videos shows children excitedly touring one of the Hamas terror tunnels in Gaza alongside Hamas operatives. At the end of the training, the children received “certificates of appreciation” and ID cards showing their “membership” credentials into Hamas or PIJ.

The IDF has provided evidence that Hamas has been actively using children during the current conflict in Gaza for transporting explosives in vegetable bags or transferring messages. In addition, Hamas and PIJ use children to survey combat zones after attacks to assess the damage and report back to the operatives who are hiding in shelters. Using children to assist in combat situations is considered a war crime under international humanitarian law.

In 2023, PIJ official Darwish al-Gharabli boasted that “hundreds have participated in the camps of the al-Quds Brigades, the camps of glory and pride, ensuring that jihad and resistance will continue.”

In 2021, the Times of Israel reported that Hamas taught summer camp participants to shoot soldiers at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and Al-Aqsa Mosque through computer simulations. They also practiced a simulation involving the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier.