Even though HAMAS’ dominance of its immediate political realm is a substantial improvement for peace, it is a symptom of a horrible tragedy. HAMAS is unmistakably an Islamist, propagandistic and ruthless organization. It unrepentantly foments hate against Israel. This is no more alarmingly evident than in the “Tomorrow’s Pioneers” TV show that has enjoyed a mercifully short life on the HAMAS sponsored “Al Aqsa TV”.

Video of the show, available through The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), is so butchered in its editing that one suspects they could have “proven” President Bush advocated armed resistance against Israel using the same technique. But the facts remain: It is a kid’s show, it at least periodically infuses the audience with chauvanistic rhetoric about world domination and Israel’s misdeeds, and it does, indeed, speak of armed resistance, suicide attacks and the glory of death.

Its most notorious aspect is the swollen charicature of Mickey Mouse they have walking around and squeaking some of the most atrocious lines, “Farfour”. Farfour seems alternately an object of ridicule and of adoration, and so I couldn’t help but wonder if some of the hatred he naively - as he often comes off as a naif - preaches is not condemned by virtue of him saying it. The wondering didn’t last long. Clearly he speaks the spirit of the show, as the majority of what he says is backed up by his grim little co-host, Sanaa, a young girl with a hidjab and an undertaker’s manner.

Farfour calls on resistance against Bush and Israel. He talks about building the “cornerstone” of a global Islamic Empire. Ultimately, just this last week, he was beaten to death by an Israeli official for not selling his grandfather’s land in Tel Aviv. As Sanaa put it, “he died a martyr”.

The rhetoric is shocking in and of itself. Taking a step back then, and trying to remember where such calls for resistance and talk of national supremacy might also have been heard, does little to diminish the vileness of “Tomorrow’s Pioneers”. Yes, I am certain there are fundamentalist Christian videos in America that gleefully tell kids come Judgment Day, the sinners will get what’s coming to them and the saved will be exalted. And yes, films like RAMBO Part Three and Red Dawn are just a few famous examples in propaganda against an actual nation of human beings. Even that “Tomorrow’s Pioneers” merges these two aspects, tying them nicely under a ribbon of death-glorification and proffering it to the young, is not the most horrid part of the show.

The most horrid part is that the kids who absorb its hatred and hubris are in a position to actually act on it. They won’t just watch Soviets torn apart and then go to play with their GI Joes with no more worry than the next day’s homework. They won’t watch their family rise out of the reach of a lake of fire into the arms of white and smiling Jesus, and have to merely pray for the Rapture to come swiftly. They will actually go out to tear people apart. Their Rapture could be any day of the week. They are stuck between the pressures of Israeli guns and radical preachings aimed at their heads, of explosive belts and air strikes, of arbitrary, unlawful detentions and arbitrary, unlawful resistance.

That kind of horror has inspired an understandable reaction. Observers have shaken their heads and wanted to banish “Tomorrow’s Pioneers” to the ash-bin. Fatah condemned it. It was removed from television entirely until HAMAS took back Gaza. But this does not remove that most disquieting aspect of the story of “Tomorrow’s Pioneers”:

It does not remove those children from that universe of harm and hate. Silence Farfour’s squeaking, and you still have incensed imams, Israeli tanks, crumbling houses, wailing poverty, soldier’s boots in their houses, families dragged away, and missiles - built and paid-for by America - that can shred whole tenements telling them how the world is. And always there is the Quran, taught by the extremists not as the tome of tolerance and inclusion it was meant to be, but as the tool for transcending their worldly misery through most glorious sacrificial fire.

I recently visited the home of Farfour’s cousin, Mickey - Disneyland. For the first time in ages I subjected myself to a trip on “It’s A Small World”. This was not out of a masochistic compulsion - though, yes, the song is still stuck in my head - but out of a genuine desire to be closer to that sentiment of peace and international cooperation. It is that kind of sentiment and cause that the desperate children of the world most need to hear.

We can hope that, somehow, that message reaches them; that we simply don’t know of it because it’s not as lurid as the rabid screechings of the anti-Mickey. We can hope this, but even if it is true, it only does so much. The children of Palestine can watch as much polynational hand holding as TV cares to pour on them. They can be taught to dream all they want of a better future.

But the reality is that they were born for dying in the Unhappiest Place On Earth.