Video: Gaza kids festival focuses on killing Israeli troops
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}No sign of clowns, arcade games or pie-eating contests here.
Videos from an annual children's festival in Gaza showed kids celebrating the killing of Israeli troops, showing off makeshift tanks and plastic guns during quick skits.
The events apparently took place over the past month. One skit showed a child mock-stabbing two soldiers.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}In another video, a child dressed as an Israeli soldier was on his knees with his hands behind his back as two other children held fake guns to his head.
Activists say Hamas gave the green-light to the eighth annual festival in Khan Younis, part of what they call the group's ongoing efforts to indoctrinate children towards terror. The United States has designated Hamas a foreign terrorist organization.
Israeli government spokeman Ofir Gendelman described the festival as an “ISIS-like brainwashing,” TheTower.org reported.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Last month, Israel discovered and destroyed another tunnel dug from Gaza into Israel. The two tunnels are the first to be found since the 2014 Gaza war, sparking concerns in Israel that Hamas is rebuilding its underground tunnel network in preparation for more deadly fighting.
Toward the end of the 2014 war, Israel destroyed more than 30 tunnels that Hamas had dug under the border. Hamas militants had used the tunnels to infiltrate Israel and carry out attacks.
Israel and Hamas have fought three wars since the Islamic militant group seized power in Gaza in 2007. In the 2014 summer war, more than 2,200 Palestinians, about two-thirds of them civilians, were killed. On the Israeli side, 66 soldiers and seven civilians were killed.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Israel and Hamas have largely observed a cease-fire since that war, but other militant groups also operate in Gaza. Israel says it holds Hamas responsible for any attacks out of the territory.
The latest escalation comes amid a months-long wave of violence that has seen near-daily attacks by Palestinians, mostly stabbings, which have killed 28 Israelis and two Americans. Some 193 Palestinians have been killed, most said by Israel to have been attackers and the rest killed in clashes with Israeli forces.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.