This article from Agence France-Presse looks at how Hamas is trying to influence Gaza's children via its summer camps, set up in oppostion to the United Nations' own summer camps:
A battle for the hearts and minds of children in the Gaza Strip has broken out with competing summer camps.
Both the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the Islamic organization Hamas run camps for the region's children–but the activities are somewhat different.
The UN has a summer program that concentrates on games and sports for boys and girls. Catering to both sexes has brought charges that the camps are degenerate and corrupting Gaza's youth and resulted in two arson attacks.
The Hamas camps feature swimming and horseback riding as well as teaching Islam, involve military-style marching and carry an anti-Israeli message. As the major slogan for the summer camps this year, the Islamic movement chose the slogan, "Our Aqsa Mosque, Our prisoners, Freedom is pending."
"Each summer camp carries the name of a Hamas militant killed by the occupation, or the name of a village destroyed in Palestine in 1948 and the names of the prisoners," Ihab al-Eisawai, Hamas summer camp media officer, was quoted by the Xinhua news agency as saying.
"UN summer camps have affected our summer activities this year, because they attract the children by offering them entertaining games. Our camps are different; we carry out cultural, media, arts and technology activities, in addition to focusing on teaching them about the real Islam."
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