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"10,000 children are trained each year in Gaza terrorist summer camps” - Coalition to save Palestinian Child Soldiers

Girls attending a PFLP 'summer camp' in Gaza.

Belgian Minister of Development Cooperation Meryame Kitir

Links between Belgian NGOs and the PFLP. Source: NGO Monitor

Annual 'Palestinian Child Soldier's Week' begins today, aims to stop western funding of NGOs linked to terrorist organisations who put children at risk.

The Belgian public will be deeply concerned minister Meryame Kitir neither takes the plight of Palestinian child soldiers seriously, nor condemns Hamas and PFLP terrorist summer camps.”
— BFOI statement

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM, February 7, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- According to the Coalition to save Palestinian Child Soldiers Coalition (CPCS), whose annual awareness campaign takes place this week (February 7 - 13th), "The ruling power of the Gaza Strip, the terrorist organisation Hamas, has child training camps in which it trains children as auxiliaries and militia members. Approximately 10,000 children and teens are trained each year with terrorist “summer camps” which are grueling basic training boot camps. There, children learn combat manoeuvres, weapon operation, and terrorist tactics."

The PSC claims that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) infiltrates UNRWA summer camps and children's NGOs caring for children in order to indoctrinate them politically, and train them militarily, to carry out terrorist acts which put them in grave danger. "This absolute brainwashing of children turns them into an easy target for recruitment, causes deep psychological damage and raises a generation engulfed in hatred" the CPCS says in its publicity material.

"Dozens of children have been used as suicide bombers, hundreds incited to take up arms and go on the front line in tens of thousands. Often children do not even understand the consequence of their suicidal actions, and that they are going to be killed when their bomb explodes" the CPCS states.

The CPCS's website says that is was founded in 2019 as a collaboration of Non-Governmental Organisations, media influencers and caring citizens of the world who have banded together with the common goal of improving the lives of Palestinian children by ending their decades-long abuse as child soldiers at the hands of terrorist organisations and paramilitary groups.

The Palestinian Child Soldier's Week aims to highlight the CPSC's view that without funding, terrorist organisations such as the PFLP could not recruit child soldiers. Charities have an integral role in funding and facilitating access to funding for terrorist organisations, intentionally or unintentionally, it says.

A statement by Brussels-based Belgian Friends of Israel (BFOI), a member of the CPSC, cited the website of the Belgian Foreign Ministry where it states that the ministry wanted to "raise awareness among the Belgian and international public opinion about the grave violations of children's rights that are taking place in a number of partner countries of the Belgian Development Cooperation (BDC), such a the Occupied Palestinian Territories" . BFOI said that it would normally expect anyone who genuinely cares about children's rights to support Palestinian Child Soldier's Week.

"But when it comes to Palestinian terrorist organisations, the actions of the BDC and its minister Meryame Kitir are anything but normal", the BFOI statement said. "Meryame Kitir has been made aware many times and in detail of very close ties between the terrorist group PFLP, which runs many of these appalling abusive 'summer camps', and Belgian NGOs funded by her own administration. Yet incredibly, she employs as her spokesperson someone who has close family connections to the PFLP, and who tweeted that "we should carry on the fight" of her father-in-law who was a PFLP terrorist. Kitir has never condemned the PFLP to our knowledge" BFOI's statement continued.

"For these reasons, the Belgian public will be deeply concerned that minister Meryame Kitir neither takes the plight of Palestinian child soldiers seriously, nor condemns Hamas and PFLP terrorist summer camps. Indeed, by continuing to fund NGOs linked to the PFLP, and by having as her closest aide a person who actively support violent PFLP terrorism, Kitir is complicit in perpetuating the "grave violations of children's rights" that the Belgian Foreign Ministry falsely claims to oppose" the statement concluded.

Celia De Coster
BFOI
+32 493 03 86 78
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