Palestinian children parade with toy machine guns

At West Bank kindergarten graduation ceremony, preschoolers perform to song promising enemies will be turned into ‘body parts’

Children in a kindergarten run by a Palestinian charitable organization recently held a graduation ceremony in which preschoolers wore military uniforms and brandished toy machine guns as they performed a parade routine to a song vowing violence against enemies, a media watchdog group said.

The ceremony was filmed by a television station affiliated with the Palestinian Authority and posted on the internet last week, according to the US-based group MEMRI, which translated and posted the clip on Monday.

The kindergarten is in Anabta, in the Tulkarm area of the West Bank, and belongs to the Anabta women’s charity association, MEMRI reported.

A large photograph of the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat was on the stage where the children performed.

The room was festively decorated, and the performance was watched by what appeared to be several dozen adults.

Palestinian pre-schoolers perform with toy guns at a West Bank kindergarten, June 2015. A photograph of Yasser Arafat is at the back of the stage. (MEMRI screenshot)

According to MEMRI, the words of the song to which the children performed run as follows:

“On the mountains, behind the hills, within the valleys – you will be defeated, you will be defeated.

“Whether you come by sea, or by air – you will be crushed, you will be crushed.

“If you stretch your hand, it will be chopped off. If you just look with your eye, it will be gouged out. The defeated army will be too terrified to come back.

“We come for you before, and woe betide you if we come back again. You come to this land alive, but you will leave it as body parts.”