While Hizballah’s attempts to infuse itself with popular culture and entertainment, and to indoctrinate children are not new, materials discovered by the Israel Defense Forces show a lower-tech and more direct angle via the content of children’s games. From YNet News: “Hizbullah presents: How to recruit children”
Do you know who is “the most senior Lebanese prisoner jailed in the Israeli enemy’s prisons”? And where did the aircraft of “the Zionist enemy” assassinate Sheikh Abbas Mussawi (who served as the Hizbullah secretary-general before Hassan Nasrallah), his wife and his toddler son?
If you know the answers you have a good chance of winning the children’s quiz written by Hizbullah members. However, this is not a simple quiz examining the general knowledge of the children and youth of Lebanon. Hizbullah is attempting to recruit them to the organization at an early age.
Material collected by Israel Defense Forces soldiers in southern Lebanon — alongside the weapons, rockets and explosives — reveals a complex and rare picture of Hizbullah’s contents and activities among children and youth, mainly in southern Lebanon
villages which are considered its stronghold.
A special document of the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies (CSS), which was distributed this week, sheds light on the issue. It appears that one of the organization’s goals is to assimilate its values among the younger generation.
The document writers note that “the aid authority for the Islamic resistance” is part of a comprehensive infrastructure of Hizbullah institutions and bodies which hold diverse social activities among the Shiite community in Lebanon, focusing on the young generation.
These activities are not only performed “for a purely spiritual purpose,” but are aimed at raising the popularity of the organization among the Shiite population and assimilate the its radical Islamic-Shiite ideology, similar to Hamas’ Daawa activity
in the territories.
Quiz stars: From Playstation to Samir Kuntar
A special kit for children was found at the village of Aita al-Shaab. It includes an award-bearing quiz titled “the 2006 competition of victory youngsters,” alongside a possibility of donating money to Hizbullah.
The kit was produced by the “aid authority for the Islamic resistance.” Alongside the questions presented to the infants in southern Lebanon, there are also quizzes presented as a multiple-choice test. Alongside answers to questions like “the Risk game, Playstation or Atari,” one can find answers like “Nissim Nasser, Samir Kuntar or Yahya Sahef” (the three prisoners which Hizbullah wants to see released).
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