Hamas claims record turnouts for its summer camps for children in 2011. The 'summer camps,' combining indoctrination, paramilitary exercises, and social activities, are set to start again this year. UN summer camps, considered competition by Hamas, are being openly scorned by jihadis.Youngsters are an important target demographic for Hamas, from which its future terrorist army will be recruited. Summer camps are an valuble means for indoctrinating Gaza's youth with Hamas' jihadist ideology.
In 2010, Hamas ran camps for an estimated 100,000 campers, around the same number as in 2009. The Islamic Jihad terror group ran 51 camps with 10,000 participating children.
Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan said the objectives of the camps were to raise a generation with 'genuine Islamic values.'
Radwan said, "Children working for the interests of their homeland and to educate them to the culture of the Islamic faith so they will remember their goals, including Jerusalem and the prisoners."
In addition to propaganda, Hamas gives children paramilitary training. Banners are hung on the walls with slogans promoting jihad and 'death for the sake of Allah.'
Other prominent themes for this year are solidarity with Turkey in connection with the Mavi Marmara flotilla, a call for the release of Hamas prisoners (children carry posters with their pictures) and organized
The UNRWA summer camp system hosted 250,000 youngsters in 2010. This year, as with previous years, the camps were harassed by jihadist terrorists.
On May 23, 2010, a group of 30 armed men broke into an UNRWA summer camp site and burned it to the ground. On the night of June 28, 2010, armed men broke into another UNRWA camp site in central Gaza and set it on fire.
A UNRWA spokesman called on Hamas to investigate and determine who was behind the attacks. But the groups of armed men who attack the UNRWA summer camps every year are inspired by, and probably supported by, Hamas and other terror networks networks operating in Gaza who say the UNRWA camps are 'undermining Palestinian values.'