Kindergarten incitement: Palestinian 5-year-olds play ‘martyr’

Clip posted by Hebron-area kindergarten depicts 5-year-olds with toy guns in simulated clash with IDF soldiers, resulting in the ‘martyrdom’ of one of the kids. A funeral procession, with the child playing dead, follows.

By Adina Katz, World Israel News

A kindergarten in a Palestinian Authority-controlled enclave in Judea and Samaria released clips of children, who appear to be around the age of five, play-acting clashes with troops that result in the martyrdom of one of the kids.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) watchdog group discovered the disturbing videos, which were originally published by the Al-Tofula Kindergarten in Beit Awwa, west of Hebron.

MEMRI regularly scans Arabic and Farsi language TV and social media networks and provides English language translations of clips which include incitement and violent rhetoric against the State of Israel and Jews.

With a nasheed (Islamic battle hymn) as the background music, the videos depict children carrying toy weapons and waving Palestinian flags, while teachers film the students marching through the kindergarten.

The video then cuts to a separate scene, where children dressed as IDF soldiers – identifiable as Jews by armbands with the Star of David, which actual Israeli security forces do not wear – burst into the classroom, as though they are raiding it.

Groups of children dressed as IDF soldiers and in traditional Palestinian clothing point weapons at each other, leaving one child, with a kefiyyeh wrapped around his head, playing dead on the floor. A female kindergartener appears to be mourning him, then kisses him on the forehead.

A funeral procession follows, with several male kindergarteners carrying the “dead” child, who is wrapped in a Palestinian flag, as the rest of the class follows behind.

Israelis have long noted that the Palestinian education system is rife with incitement against Jews and Israel, and has urged bodies such as the European Union to cut funding to the PA until they pledge to remove incendiary material from their textbooks and curriculum.

After a spate of recent terror attacks perpetrated by teens who were 13 and 14 years old, Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich vowed to crack down on TikTok terror and incitement on social media.