Some of you may recall a story I featured a few weeks ago about a children’s television show starring a high pitched voiced Mickey Mouse rip-off, who encouraged children to fight Israel. Amid international pressure, the producers finally decided to drop the character, but not before adding their own little psychotic twist by martyring him.

We’re all aware that there are organized indoctrination campaigns all across the Middle East designed to create generations of suicide bombers. To succeed, they rely on two important tactics in their efforts to turn human beings into walking bombs: (1) they target the weak, young, vulnerable, and uneducated to do their bidding, and (2) they rely on the mechanism of blind faith as a tool for mindless obedience. What better targets than children, since they have all the necessary requirement?

Violent rhetoric doesn’t rely on subtlety to be effective. In the case of Farfour, the creepy mascot of religious intolerance, his final skit involved an Israeli soldier beating him to death while attempting to usurp him from his land. His teenage co-host, a young woman whose soft smiling face belied a cold and calculating grin, explained how Farfour’s demise was the result of his defending Palestine, a clear message that a peaceful compromise in Israel was not on the mouse’s mind.

Luckily, not everyone in Palestine was content with the show’s violent and malicious message. Many segments of the population are peaceful individuals, desperate for a compromise that would allow them to live in harmony and peace with their neighbors. It’s difficult to imagine, however, how such a thing is possible when characters like Farfour are given access to young and impressionable minds. The future of both Palestine and Israel will forever be compromised so long as zealots are allowed to incense children to violence and murder. I can only hope that unlike his North American counterpart, he will fade into obscurity, a forgotten memory of a desperate and turbulent time.