As the old saying goes, those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. Last week, 67 MPs and Lords urged the Prime Minister to create an emergency visa route for Palestinians with family in the UK. Setting aside Britain’s ongoing illegal migrant crisis, it’s clear that few of these politicians appreciate just how thoroughly jihadist ideology is woven into Palestinian society from cradle to grave. If they did, they wouldn’t risk importing attitudes that already fuel the gravest challenges facing this country.
In Gaza, indoctrination begins in nurseries. In a preschool graduation ceremony, children marched in military uniforms and carried mock rifles. A five-year-old girl dipped her hands in red paint to mimic the bloodied hands Palestinians displayed after lynching two Israelis in Ramallah. Another child dressed as Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yasin, surrounded by other children dressed as suicide bombers. Such spectacles aren’t isolated events, they’re the beginning of lifelong indoctrination.
Hatred is channelled directly into children’s programming. Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV aired a children’s show, Tomorrow’s Pioneers featuring a Mickey-Mouse-style character who staged AK-47 shoot-outs and mock grenade attacks. In one episode, the character was “interrogated” and beaten to death by an Israeli officer seeking the “key” to fictional Tel al-Rabi, the supposed Palestinian settlement which they claim was turned into Tel Aviv by the Jews.
And if you thought British textbooks were lacking, a 2020 review found that every Palestinian social studies, history and Arabic textbook for grades 2 — 12 contained content designed to incite violence. In response, the EU announced that it would provide the PA with €400 million in aid, contingent upon curriculum reform. The PA Ministry of Education introduced this new curriculum in 2024, which was subsequently used by approximately 625,000 school-age Gazans. This “reformed” curriculum includes a Grade 1 reading exercise teaching the word “shaid” (“martyr”), a Grade 5 calligraphy lesson instructing students to write, “Dalal [who perpetrated the 1978 Coastal Road massacre, killing 38 Israelis, including 13 children, on a civilian bus] watered the land of Palestine with her pure blood, to shine a history of revolution that will not yield”, a Grade 7 maths lesson where students calculate the number of first-Intifada “martyrs”, a Grade 9 spelling exercise which describes the “strewn remains of women and children splatter[ing] the streets of the city,” and a Grade 12 Islamic lesson which teaches that “Jihad is the best deed in the eyes of God Almighty”.
Arab states know that the relocation of the Palestinian population will spread Hamas
Radicalisation takes place outside of the classroom too. At Gaza’s 2016 “Childhood Festival,” partially funded by a charity supported by Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn, girls urged one another to “die as a martyr, and blow up the enemies,” while boys ran through mock tunnels with toy rifles and “captured” a pretend Israeli soldier. Footage also shows a girl theatrically stabbing boys dressed as Israeli soldiers.
Each summer, tens of thousands of Palestinian youths attend camps run by Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). In 2023, approximately 100,000 children enrolled in these camps, where they wear Hamas uniforms and learn drills including methods to kidnap Israeli soldiers, how to stab and stone Israelis, and how to assemble, load, and shoot weapons. Participants have used computer simulators to practice shooting Israeli soldiers and police officers. A PIJ spokesman boasted that these camps ensure “jihad and resistance will continue”.
Evidently, the radicalisation works. In December 2023, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) found that 72 per cent of Palestinians (82 per cent in the West Bank, 57 per cent in Gaza) approved the Hamas-led October 7th attacks on Israel. Incredibly, follow-up in March 2024 showed these approval ratings increased among Gazans, to 71 per cent. The latest May 2025 poll indicates sustained support with 50 per cent of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank still backing the 7 October attacks and 64 per cent of Gazans opposing the disarmament of Hamas.
Anti-Hamas demonstrations in Gaza have garnered headlines, but PCPSR polling also reveals that a majority of Palestinians (59 per cent, and 54 per cent in Gaza) believe these protests are staged by “external hands,” while only 20 per cent view them as genuine grassroots dissent.
Here in Britain, we are already combating Islamist extremism. At the end of last year, the Home Office reported that the majority (62 per cent) of the record-breaking 254 individuals in custody for terrorism espoused Islamist-extremist views, while entire prison wings are run by inmate-led “sharia courts,” with convicted terrorists teaching bomb-making and assault techniques to other inmates. For the third year in a row, MI5 categorised the terrorism threat level facing the UK as “substantial”, meaning that an attack is likely. Not to mention the decades-long rape gang scandal which has ruined the lives of thousands of white working class girls in towns and cities across the country. These aren’t isolated horrors, they flow from the same ideology that treats violence as piety in Gaza’s schools and summer camps. Importing a population steeped in such teachings risks expanding a fifth column that we simply cannot afford.
Arab governments understand this all too well. It’s why they continue to fiercely oppose absorbing Palestinians into their countries. As British-Saudi Professor Madawi al-Rasheed explains, Arab states know that the relocation of the Palestinian population “will inevitably spread Hamas, its fighters and political Islam — mainly the Muslim Brotherhood — into countries that have been deliberately and successfully suppressing such ideology. None of the Arab regimes want to see Hamas fighters and their extended communities living in their countries.”
Why, then, should we?
