Children filmed chanting, ‘We will crush Zionism’ at Peak District summer school

A youth group has posted footage on social media showing scenes from its summer school, where over 100 young attendees were filmed chanting in Arabic: “We will crush Zionism” and “Young people, rise up, our revolution is an Arab revolution.”

The four-day event was held by the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) at the YHA Edale Activity Centre in the Peak District.

Instagram footage shows a woman leading a group of mainly young girls, along with several boys, in the inflammatory chants.

In a separate Instagram post, PYM Britain shared photos from an event in North Kensington, West London — a community football tournament for children, with participation from local schools and community groups.

A photograph from the tournament shows five children from behind, and notably, two are wearing shirts numbered 7 and 10 — a clear reference to the October 7, 2023.

Another photo from the event shows a male organiser presenting medals while wearing a shirt emblazoned with the number 40 and the slogan “The future is decolonial.”

Photos and videos from both the summer school and the recent football tournament in London have raised concerns that young people in Britain are being indoctrinated into hardline anti-Zionist positions.

There are also fears that youth are being encouraged to celebrate terrorist ideology under the guise of supporting the Palestinian cause.

PYM was initially founded in 2006 as the Palestinian Youth Network. According to an academic history published in the Journal of Palestine Studies, it became the Palestinian Youth Movement at its second international general assembly in Istanbul in 2011.

Since then, the group has expanded rapidly across the West, now maintaining more than 15 chapters in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Its website states: “The Palestinian Youth Movement is a transnational, independent, grassroots movement of young Palestinians in Palestine and in exile worldwide as a result of the ongoing Zionist colonization and occupation of our homeland.”

The organisation is explicitly and fundamentally anti-Zionist, identifying itself as an anti-colonial movement opposing Zionism, which it defines as a settler-colonial ideology responsible for the displacement and subjugation of Palestinians.

Former Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and ex-Foreign Secretary David Lammy have both been directly targeted by PYM members.

Communal organisations in America and Israel have long accused the PYM of having an explicit goal to “eradicate Zionism,” which acts as a proxy for antisemitism. Reports from groups like NGO Monitor and the Israeli Ministry for Diaspora Affairs highlight PYM’s alleged links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Additional images from the group’s official platform show a lecture at the May summer school, with a projected image of Ghassan Kanafani—the Palestinian novelist and former Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) spokesman.

Kanafani was killed in Beirut by a car bomb planted by Israel’s Mossad on 8 July 1972. The assassination was in response to the Lod Airport attack two months earlier, which left 26 dead and over 70 injured.

Another photo shows children being shown a quote from Kanafani which urges the masses to to transform society because “History is not transformed by a magic wand.”

In a July 31 Instagram post, PYM described the summer school as four days of political and historical sessions, a hike, and a cultural night featuring revolutionary songs and poetry.

The post added: “Together we discussed what the last two years have looked like in our region, and our role as diaspora youth in the next phase of our national liberation struggle.”

The venue for the May summer school, YHA Edale, is operated by YHA (England and Wales), which received £949,499 from Sport England over three years and £2.34 million in recovery grants between 2020 and 2022.

The centre, a registered charity, advertises serviced group stays for between 16 and 153 people.