LGF and Ace say yes, I think it’s overblown. Judge for yourself. The top video is the CNN segment, which includes footage at around 1:55 of one of Hamas’s psycho kindergarten graduation ceremonies; the bottom clip is supposedly the full unedited tape supplied to CNN by the IDF. Pay attention at the very beginning — literally five seconds in — and you’ll see the kiddie jihadis rush the stage as the “Israeli soldiers” fall down dead. That part didn’t make CNN’s final cut. Deliberate omission? Maybe, but if the point was to obscure the fact that they’re being turned into terrorist zombies, why show them marching around with fake machine guns and wearing jihadi headbands? If CNN wanted to whitewash what was going on, they could have cut that entirely and limited the clip to images of the kids rolling around playfully on the mats, giving everyone an “awww” moment. Remember this Hamas child abuse classic, in fact? It looks a lot like the footage CNN used and still managed to peg the creepiness meter notwithstanding the absence of any play-acted murder.

I don’t want to defend them too strenuously since they did, after all, choose to omit the most potentially incendiary part. Honestly, though? The more I watch the beginning, the more I think it dilutes the effect of the rest of it. Seeing the “Israeli soldiers” fall down turns it into some sort of cutesy-poo bizarro world cowboys and Indians game. Watching the kids march around like the budding Nazis they are seems far more menacing. Click the image to watch.