27-Jan-14: In Gaza, a death cult celebrates its graduating class

Hamas leader Hanieyeh: From the Al-Aqsa TV coverage
of the graduation event

A January 16 ceremony took place in the terror-rich atmosphere of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip marking the graduation of several thousand high-school children from a government-imposed, paramilitary indoctrination course in which the goal of self-destruction played a central role. It would have done the North Koreans proud.

But unlike in North Korea, what took place on a sports field in Gaza was based explicitly on the values of a religion with hundreds of millions of adherents throughout the world. The Hamas satellite channel Al-Aqsa TV broadcast the ceremony throughout the Arabic speaking world where it was viewed in real-time and via recordings by a global audience. This was no mere flower show or Friday morning local sermon.

The translation team at MEMRI published the English-language text of the television coverage today. From experience, it's unlikely to get much airplay in the conventional media channels. This is a shame since watching the video [online here] and reading its transcript [here] is a sobering, shocking experience.

Viewers watching it understand, in ways that reports alone rarely convey, that what is in evidence here is a failed state in the tragic grip of a massively-intrusive religious cult consuming its own children. The hatred and zeal, the recurring calls to kill and be killed (the one evidently no less praiseworthy than the other), claim to be derived from Islam. They explicitly invoke its tenets and values.

For those of us who hold by non-Islamic belief systems, we are left again wondering where the outrage from believers in a civilized, respectful Islam is. (Perhaps not all of us. Harriet Greenwood, for instance, until this week the Guardian's Middle East correspondent, inserted into her sadly credulous April 28, 2013 profile of the Gazan Futuwwa programs a malicious and misleading comparison with Israel's compulsory post-high-school national service program.)

Something hideous is happening in Gaza. Those doing it declare it's what Islam demands. As far as we can tell, Islam's adherents in other places are largely silent. This cannot be because they don't know it's happening.

Hamas minister Fathi Hammad reminds graduating high
schoolers where to place the emphasis

Some selected extracts from MEMRI's transcript of the Al-Aqsa TV coverage of the January 16, 2014 graduation ceremony in Gaza:

• Chant: "Our utmost desire..." [Announcer] "Is death for the sake of Allah!" [Graduating children]
• "Today, 13,000 youth are graduating from the Futuwwa camps.... Remain steadfast on the path. Continue the work you began in the camps... Memorize what you have learned, and implement it in the battlefield when you meet the enemy." [Osama Al-Mazini, Hamas regime's minister of "education"] [The New York Times published some background on the Futuwwa camp phenomenon in its January 14, 2014 edition]
• "To the Zionist enemy, everywhere and at any time... You shall never enjoy a pleasant life on our beloved homeland. We... will confront you on every hill, in every valley, and on every road. Nothing awaits you here but to be killed. Nothing awaits you here but to be killed or to leave. [A high-school student who graduated the Hamas training course]
• "Sons and brothers, you do not have much time to train. Study, conduct training, become experts and be inventive, with the help of Allah. The battle will be your battle. The Jihad will be your Jihad. Palestine is your land, Islam is your religion, and Allah is your God. The Messenger is your role model, and the Koran is your constitution. You have been planted by Allah, and therefore, you will harvest the enemies of Allah in the battle to come... We pray for Allah to choose martyrs and leaders from among you – and not only in Palestine, but throughout planet Earth, so that the call for Jihad will be spread all over the world, and the entire world will embrace the religion of Allah." [Fathi Hammad, Hamas regime's minister of interior. Note that when his own child needed the best possible medical care in April 2010, he had little hesitation in getting her across the border into an Israeli children's hospital ward. Though her life was saved there following a botched medical procedure in Gaza, he carefully avoid any mention of Israel when later thanking those responsible for the act of salvation.]
• "These words, which we memorize well, are uttered by the martyr who ascends to Allah. We are the vanguard to be joined by Arab and Islamic armies – from Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, and Egypt, and from every country that turns towards Jerusalem to liberate it." [Announcer]
• "The best way for us to celebrate the Prophet’s birthday is to walk in his footsteps and provide the future generations a Jihadi education. We shall walk in his footsteps in educating the future generation to love death for the sake of Allah as much as our enemies love life... This is the generation of stone, the generation of the missile, the generation of tunnels, and the generation of martyrdom operations.... I call upon my brothers, I call upon the education minister, the minister of the interior, the Al-Qassam Brigades, and the national security agencies to open courses in the Futuwwa camps for girls too..." [Ismail Hanieyeh, Hamas prime minister and another Hamas insider who has had no hesitation in sending sick family members to the best-available Israeli doctors and Israeli hospitals]

Minister Hammad delivers a theological/educational message

High schoolers show the message was delivered