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Arthur M. Horwitz
Publisher / Executive Editor
ahorwitz@renmedia.us

Summer Camp: Hope For Some, Hate For Others

T

his season of introspection, long
on invigorating splendor, provides
a fitting backdrop to appreciate
the life-sustaining values imbued in our
kids at Jewish summer camp — in stark
contrast with the Palestinian practice of
indoctrinating campers to revere terrorists
aiming to murder or maim.
As we prepare for the
High Holidays by seek-
ing the meditative state
of kavanah, of intention
to elevate our very being
to the ideal of helping
make the world a better
place, I can’t help but
think how lucky Jewish
Robert Sklar campers are compared to
Contributing
their Palestinian coun-
Editor
terparts. Jewish camp-
ers can expect ethical
enrichment; Palestinian campers get terror
indoctrination.
A new report out of Israel is a wake-up
call to how Palestinian leadership contin-
ues to deliberately and calculatedly name
summer camps after terrorists to present
them as role models in the eyes of highly
impressionable 11- to 17-year-olds — boys
and girls long bombarded on the streets if
not at home to hate Israelis and their sup-
porters.

Jewish campers

can expect

ethical enrichment;

Palestinian

ca mpers get terror

indoctrination.

GOVERNMENT BLESSED
The breeding ground for indoctrination
promoted as Palestinian “summer camp”
is under the rubric of the Free People of
Palestine Camps. That alliance falls under
the political and governmental auspices of
the Palestine Liberation Organization (via
its Supreme Council for Sport and Affairs)
and the Palestinian Authority (via its
P.A. Ministry of Education). The Fatah-
led P.A. governs Palestinian-controlled
areas of the West Bank. The PLO is the
Palestinians’ umbrella negotiating arm.
Palestinian kids around Jerusalem, for

6 September 29 • 2016

example, attended a summer camp in the
West Bank village of Beit Anan named
“Martyr Baha Alyan Pioneers.” Baha
Alyan was a 22-year-old Palestinian ter-
rorist who, with an accomplice, murdered
three Israelis on a Jerusalem bus last
October.
Kids in the city of Al Dawha near
Bethlehem had the “benefit” of attending
the “Martyr Mamoun Al Khatib Camp.”
Al Khatib was a 16-year-old Palestinian
terrorist who attempted to stab an Israeli
hitchhiker at Gush Etzion Junction in the
West Bank last December. This camp’s
opening saw a Supreme Council for Sport
and Affairs spokesman emphasize the
focus “on the youth sector as it is the
foundation of the future and the hope of
the present.”
That view is hardly startling given PLO
roots in Yasser Arafat-inspired terror.
Scripting a narrative for 104 Palestinian
summer camps, including four in Hamas-
ruled Gaza Strip, that teaches kids how
“special” Palestinian “martyrs for Allah”
are in the fight against “the Zionist infi-
del” is an extraordinary obstacle to any
long-term chance of Israeli-Palestinian
peace.
It’s also barbaric.
These revelations about Palestinian
summer camp and more are cited in a
Sept. 19 report released by Palestinian
Media Watch (PMW), a respected Israel-
based watchdog organization.
Based on numbers available, I would
guess more than 5,000 Palestinian kids
join the Free People of Palestine Summer
Camps.

IN SHARP RELIEF
Successful North American Jewish camps
“have created euphoric communities for
campers and staff that are infused with
Jewish pride,” says Rabbi Jason Miller, a
local entrepreneur and educator. While
in rabbinical school, he spent three sum-
mers working for Ramah, a Conservative
Jewish summer camp network.
The Reform movement’s Camp George
in Ontario and the Orthodox movement’s
Camp Stone in Pennsylvania are other
examples of popular denominational
camps.
Acknowledging the range in Jewish
camping, both in mission and motivation,
Rabbi Miller said “many camps — specif-
ically the denomination-sponsored ones
— do a great job of ensuring the par-
ticipants have a fun summer experience
while also being entrenched in Jewish
pride, love for Israel and an appreciation
for the culture of the Jewish people.”

F. Kevin Browett
Chief Operating Officer
kbrowett@renmedia.us

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Rabbi Jason Miller

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Over the years, JN readers have cited
many Jewish summer camps that instill
pride in Judaism without disparagement
of others. Michigan-based examples
include Tamarack Camps, Habonim Dror
Camp Tavor and the day camps run by
the Jewish Community Centers in Metro
Detroit and Greater Ann Arbor.
Jewish studies continually find the
Jewish future in North America tied inex-
tricably to Jewish summer camp, where
young Jews typically can find worthy role
models and enduring Jewish friendships
while burrowing deep into their Jewish
soul. Such camps have become a ritual for
more than 200,000 campers and counsel-
ors each year, according to the New York-
based Foundation for Jewish Camp.
Rabbi Miller imagines a world where
“Palestinian summer camps try to
replicate the Jewish summer camping
playbook and create dynamic camping
experiences for their young people while
focusing on their own culture without
disparaging any other people or faith.”
Such a synergistic attitude, impossible
under current Palestinian leadership,
certainly would do wonders, especially
long term, for the stasis surrounding
the peace process. It’s a process crippled
in fundamentally different ways by the
Palestinians’ government-supported
incitement and Israel’s continued settle-
ment expansion.
May the powerful lessons taught by
the Jewish summer camp experience, as
punctuated by Rabbi Miller, resonate this
High Holiday season. Let us embrace the
critical rung such camps command on the
ladder of Jewish life.
L’Shanah tovah tikateivu. May you and
yours be inscribed in the Book of Life this
new year of 5777.

*

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