With Hamas' Al Aqsa TV is being banned throughout Europe, Hamas is increasingly turning to the Internet to undertake its recruitment and indoctrination strategy. Nowhere is this more apparent than in a web-based magazine for children, Al-Fateh. Hamas denies that it runs the website, but reporting by the Middle East Forum has established that such refutations are simply a ploy to prevent the website from being taken down by its host countries.
Due to the Palestinian Authority's continuing control of the formal education system in the Gaza Strip, Hamas has had to rely on informal methods to radicalize children and create the next generation of adherents to Hamas' radical ideas. The Al-Fateh website brings that mission into the 21st century, preaching "ideals" such as the denial of the existence of the state of Israel and glorification of martyrdom.
The Al-Fateh website places a large amount of anti-Israel and pro-Jihadist material at the fingertips of children surfing the web. The website never calls Israel by its actual name, referring to it instead as the "Zionist entity," "the cursed state," the "state of the monstrous entity," the "criminal state," the "alleged entity," and the "thieving usurping entity." Al-Fateh calls for the violent destruction of Israel, describes Jews as 'the lowest of the human race,' and even makes statements that call out to God to kill the Jews. The website's violent rhetoric is not limited to Israel, however, at points threatening the United States:
"We are currently subjugated by the Jews, the Americans, and the British who occupy our holy land of Palestine, in Iraq, and in many Arab and Muslim states…it is [incumbent] upon us, the lion cubs of Arabism and Islam, to be prepared to fight those abject people and to liberate our country from occupation."
The website uses high quality graphics and multimedia presentations to appeal to young audiences. But, Al-Fateh is only one example of terrorist organizations continued utilization of the Internet for recruitment and radicalization. Similar uses of developing technologies can be found throughout the Internet.
A music video on YouTube called "When We Seek Martyrdom" encourages violence through a play that shows Israeli soldiers killing innocent Palestinian children and then the children to violently attack Israeli soldiers in an act of revenge. All of this is reminiscent of Hamas' knock-off Mickey Mouse—Farfour. On the show Farfour preached many radical ideas, adherence to the tenets of Islam, hatred towards Israel and the West, and the importance of committing acts of terrorism.