Arson, kidnapping, and calls to genocide.  Isn’t that what you learned at the YMCA Camp Widjiwagan too?

Rival Hamas, UN summer camps compete over children

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Masked men trashed a U.N. summer camp Monday, tying up guards and slashing tents and an inflatable pool in the second such attack blamed on suspected extremists in just over a month — a sign of how, in Gaza, youth camp is not just about crafts and volleyball.

You’ve got to love the Associated Press.  A bunch of thugs assault a summer camp to draft the kids into their Hitler Youth Auxiliary and they portray it like Ivan Reitman and Bill Murray have teamed up for the long-awaited sequel to Meatballs with the original cast.

In Monday’s vandalism, two dozen masked men broke into a U.N. camp before dawn, while children were not present. They tied up four guards, then slashed and burned tents, toys and a plastic swimming pool.

However, Islamic extremists, including a Hamas legislator, have accused the U.N. in the past of corrupting Gaza’s youth, objecting to camp activities such as folklore dancing.

Is it possible that they can both be wrong?  On one hand, the Palestinian thugs are wrong for their terrorizing and property damage and on the other hand I too would want to break my kids out of a summer camp nightmare where they were being forced to prance about the forest telling folklore through the medium of interpretive dance.

“We have two aims in our camps, our prisoners and al-Aqsa,” said the man, referring to Islam’s third holiest shrine, in Israeli-ruled east Jerusalem, and the more than 6,300 Palestinians held by Israel. “First we must free the prisoners, and then also al-Aqsa.”

“Where is al-Aqsa?” he asked. “In the hands of the occupation,” the children responded.

“Who is the occupation?” he asked. “Israel,” they responded.

“Where are the prisoners?” he asked. “In the hands of the occupation,” they said.

Then little Ahmed earned his merit badge in bomb-making thanks to a grant made possible by the US taxpayer.

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