In a play, children pretend to shoot dead ‘Zionist pigs’ for their ‘defilement’ of the holy compound in Jerusalem, like reported by toi.com
Children at a Hamas summer camp staged a reenactment of the recent tensions at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, with kids dressed up as Hamas fighters pretending to storm the compound and “liberate” the holy site.
Footage of last month’s graduation ceremony, which was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, shows a group of children dressed up as Muslim worshipers confronting kids in Israeli Border Police costumes guarding metal detectors at the Mount, yelling, “We want to pray in the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”
When the “worshipers” refuse an order to leave the Mount by the kids playing border guards, the “officers” aim their guns at the group and drive them away from the metal detectors, forcing them to hold prayers outside the site.
At the conclusion of the prayers, several of the children stand up and declare, “We want to liberate Al-Aqsa,” and one of them pretends to stab one of the kinds playing Border Police officers.
The rest of the group proceeds to pelt the border policemen with rocks to chants of “Allahu Akbar,” and the officers open fire. The play’s narrator announces that “one martyr has fallen while carrying out a stabbing operation” after “killing one of the Zionist pigs.”
With the riot escalating, the “officers” attack the crowd, and sounds sounds of gunfire can be heard alongside flurries of smoke meant to invoke tear gas, and the announcer declares that “another martyr has fallen” in the melee.
As the riot ends, a group of kids dressed up as members of Hamas’s military wing arrive to “liberate the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque,” while the rioters chant, “With our souls and our blood we will redeem you, O Al-Aqsa,” a line often said by protesters during the actual standoff over the security measures at the site.
After blowing up the metal detectors, the terrorists proceed to knock down the rest of the gates and storm the Temple Mount in a hail of gunfire, as the narrator says “the mujahideen [holy warriors] are confronting the Zionist pigs and wiping them out.”
Following their violent takeover the Temple Mount, one of the terrorists addresses the crowd, saying that the terror group will stand with them in “the battle for the liberation of Jerusalem and of Palestine in its entirety,” and explaining that “this is a battle to break the chains, to shatter the shackles and to liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the defilement of the occupation.”
Israel installed metal detectors at the Temple Mount after a July 14 terror attack at the site, in which three Arab Israelis shot dead two police officers using weapons an accomplice smuggled into the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Last week, Israel removed the metal detectors and other new security measures after nearly two weeks of widespread unrest and accusations that it was seeking to change the longstanding arrangements in place at the site.
As part of its boycott against praying at the site, Muslim worshipers held daily prayers outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, which often devolved into violent clashes.
The security measures were also cited in a pair of terror attacks, including one in the West Bank settlement of Halamish, where a Palestinian man broke into a home and stabbed to death three members of a family as they celebrated Shabbat.
Although no terror group took responsibility for the attack, a Hamas spokesperson praised the shooting as a “natural response to Israeli terrorism and the desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” and insisted that it proves “that the intifada continues and our people are united behind the resistance.”
