NGOs call for public support in ending use of Palestinian child soldiers
https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-C...oldiers-617332
An estimated 10,000 children are trained in Gazan terrorist camps each year, while at least 160 have died digging terror tunnels into Israel.
For decades, the letter states, Palestinian children "have fulfilled the role of combatants, human shields, rioters, laborers, support staff, and even as suicide bombers, and as a result, their childhoods have been short by death, severe injury, or imprisonment."
The global community's unwillingness to address the issue "has emboldened organizations such as Hamas, Fatah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and PFLP in their exploitation of children as war resources," the letter continues.
A 2016 report found 240 US-government approved textbooks, used in hundreds of UNRWA-sponsored schools were teaching Arab children between the first and ninth grades to kill Israelis and martyr themselves.
"These organizations expose them to inciteful and violent children’s shows, and flood social media with calls for jihad and terrorism," the letter reads. "When the children are older they’re sent out to partake in violent riots and to act as human shields as thousands of others have before them."
"In combat, children from 17 to as young as 9 have been pushed into the battle fray, to fight and die alongside adult militants and terrorists. While in some cases the youngest of these casualties has been covered up with older, fake ages on casualty lists, Hamas and PIJ have been proud of the ****agers that have been “martyred” in battle," the organizers noted in a statement on their website.