This summer, Palestinian children were able to join a summer camp that was named by the Palestinian leadership in honour of a terrorist who had murdered three Israelis last October.
The “Martyr Baha Alyan Pioneers” summer camp was named after terrorist Baha Alyan, who with an accomplice murdered three Israelis – including two over the age of 70 – on a bus last October.
Alyan had boarded a bus in Jerusalem with Bilal Ghanem and attacked passengers with a gun and a knife, killing three and wounding four. Alyan was shot and killed by an Israeli security guard at the scene, and Ghanem, a Hamas terrorist who served time in Israeli prison from 2013-14, was wounded.
The camp is run under the supervision of the PLO’s Supreme Council for Sport and Youth Affairs, which is headed by Deputy Secretary of the Fatah Central Committee Jibril Rajoub, and in partnership with the Jerusalem Suburbs Education Directorate, which is under the PA Ministry of Education.
Rajoub has previously glorified and promoted terror, which has included a public blessing of terrorists on TV as well as publicly encouraging the killing of more Israelis.
During the summer camp the 11-17 year olds received “informational visits” by the PLOs Palestinian Political Guidance Authority as well as the PA police. This visit suggests that both institutions support the idea of turning murderers into role models for children.
The Martyr Baha Alyan camp is not the only time that a camp for children has been named after a terrorist. Martyr Mamoun Al-Khahb Camp, named after a Palestinian teenager who tried to stab an Israeli civilian, was opened in Bethlehem. At the opening of the camp, the Deputy Secretary General of the Supreme Council for Youth and Sports Southern Council, Majeh Al-Izza stated: “the Supreme Council is focusing on the youth sector, as it’s the foundation of the future and the hope of the present”.
