Palestinian youngsters have a new martyr to emulate when they grow older and join the battle to exterminate Israel. Once more, Hamas' TV channel has perverted children's programming by sending a cuddly character to death as a recruiting tool for jihad.

There is no mistaking the Al Aqsa TV show "Tomorrow's Pioneers" for "Sesame Street." Its death rate is stomach-turning. Farfur, the mouse, was beaten to death by an Israeli policeman. Nahul, the bee, died when an Israeli blockade prevented him from getting to the hospital. And now Assud, the bunny, who once vowed to "finish off the Jews and eat them," has died in the Israeli bombing of Gaza.

His deathbed scene was captured by the Middle East Media Research Institute at www.memritv.org. Assud tells his friend Saraa:

"The Zionist enemy is treacherous, and it kills everything, but I never thought it would kill the children of Palestine and that it would bomb the Al Aqsa TV station.

"I went to Al Aqsa TV when they said it would be bombed. I collected the gifts, books, magazines and stories, which belong to the children of Palestine.

"Tell them that Assud died a martyr's death, Saraa. We should teach our children that we have a land to which we must return: Jaffa, Acre, Haifa and Tel Aviv. We will return to all these cities, Allah willing."

After Assud dies, Saraa wails: "Don't die, Assud. Victory is near. The soldiers of the Pioneers of Tomorrow will grow up. O, Palestine, we will liberate your soil, Allah willing. We will liberate it from the filth of the Zionists. We will purify it with the soldiers of the Pioneers of Tomorrow."

What hope can there be as long as Hamas steeps the most innocent of the Palestinians in a culture of death?

Copyright New York Daily News 2009

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