How Hezbollah uses sports to indoctrinate children for the terrorist ideology
Hezbollah established educational and athletic networks, including its “Sports Mobilization” network, to indoctrinate young people into embracing the terrorist organization’s radical ideology, a recent Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center report finds. Since its founding in 1982, Hezbollah has invested significant resources in developing institutions to recruit and cultivate future terrorists.
As part a broader vision to create a “Society of Resistance,” Hezbollah targets youths from kindergarten through post-secondary schools. This includes “The Imam al-Mahdi Scouts Association,” Hezbollah’s official youth movement, which is devoted to brainwashing young Lebanese Shia in order to make them loyal disciples of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s revolutionary ideology. The Scouts Association has branches throughout Shia areas across Lebanon, with tens of thousands of members nationwide.
“Hizballah perceives sports as a means of inculcating its values in the youth and attracting it to its ranks, based on the connection between sports and the jihadi-military sphere,” the report said, citing Sports Mobilization chief Jihad Atiya’s 2015 interview with Hezbollah’s Al-Manar channel.
Photos of Islamic Republic founder Ruhollah Khomeini and current leader Ali Khamenei are often displayed during Hezbollah youth award ceremonies. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) similarly spreads the regime’s radical ideology by producing computer games, books, documentaries, and children’s videos.
The Hezbollah sporting programs teach athletic skills from a young age to develop effective future terrorists and fighters. These skills include martial arts, weightlifting, swimming, and sports shooting. Hezbollah emphasizes soccer, given the sport’s immense popularity in Lebanese society. According to the Meir Amit report, roughly half of all athletic competitions are hosted on symbolic dates for the terrorist organization, including “Shahid (martyr’s) Day.”
Sports teams and facilities are named after Hezbollah operatives killed during militant operations. Children are encouraged to follow in their footsteps.
This phenomenon is similar to Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s use of educational facilities and athletic activities to incite violence against Israel and encourage children to become terrorists. This year, PA-affiliated institutions, including Fatah’s student movement, organized several sporting events named in honor of terrorists. Similar events were held in Hamas-run Gaza.
Hezbollah’s Sports Mobilization program keeps a low-profile with no official online or social media presence. But throughout the course of its study, the Meir Amit Center was able to uncover 400 Hezbollah-run sports events since 2011.
Lebanon’s minister of Youth and Sports, Muhammad Fneish, is not featured on a US sanctions list targeting Hezbollah operatives, despite the fact that he is a known Hezbollah figure, the report points out.
Click here to read the full Meir Amit report. It is part of a wider research project devoted to exposing Hezbollah’s vast social networks and institutions meant to strength the terror group’s stranglehold over Lebanese society.
Source: Algemeiner
