Saraa Barhoum fidgets in her swivel chair and plays with the pink lace lining of her frilly top.

When first she speaks, her voice is barely a whisper. She can't be more than five-feet-tall or weigh 70 pounds.

Her pink bellbottoms cover her feet and drag slightly on the ground. The afternoon sun glints off the sparkly butterflies on her shirt.

She is a bashful and serious 11-year-old who wants to be a doctor when she grows up.

For now, though, she is the first Hamas television Mouseketeer.

Saraa is the young star of "Tomorrow's Pioneers," the weekly, hour long Hamas TV kids show that brought the world the militant Mickey Mouse look-alike who was beaten to death by an Israeli interrogator.

Like "The Mickey Mouse Club" show of old, "Tomorrow's Pioneers" doles out moral guidance for kids. Only the Hamas TV show takes a slightly different tack.

Kids are taught to respect their parents and be faithful to their God. They are encouraged to defend their land and fight the Jews. They are taught to conserve water because the Jews have stolen their drinking water. They are reminded of the young Palestinian children killed by the Israeli military.

Saraa wants to be a doctor. But she says she would be proud to die as a Palestinian martyr.

There's nothing quite as jarring as seeing what growing up in a war zone does to children. In the United States, Saraa might have been another Annette Funicello. Here in Gaza, she is a pint-sized revolutionary.

Political indoctrination of kids is hardly unique to Gaza. When I was half Saraa's age, my mother strapped an "I'm the price if there is no peace" placard on around my shoulders and stood me on the sidewalk during an anti-Vietnam War protest.

During another anti-war demonstration, my mom went running through the streets of Cambridge with my brother on her back as police fired tear gas at the activists.

In many ways, Saraa is nothing more than the natural byproduct of her surroundings. Saraa grew up in Rafah, the southernmost Gaza Strip town along the Egyptian border that was the scene of some of the worst fighting during Israel's 38-year occupation.

Until Israel razed its Gaza settlements and ended its military rule of Gaza in 2005, its military regularly clamped down on Rafah. Hundreds of Rafah homes were demolished during the worst clashes. The town is still a grim maze of rubble and abandoned, bullet-riddled apartment buildings.

During one clash, Saraa says, an Israeli tank fired a shell at her family as her father tried to spirit his kids to safety. Saraa and one of her brothers were both hit by shrapnel.

So it shouldn't come as a shock that kids like Saraa are militarized at a young age.

It's not common, but you sometimes see kids at political rallies toting both toy and real weapons.

After Hamas took control of Gaza in June, one father at a street corner press conference tied a green Hamas bandana around his daughter's head, dressed her in camouflage pants and placed a plastic machine gun in her hands.

This kind of thing isn't exclusive to Hamas. It's not even exclusive to one side.

One of the most controversial series of photographs during last summer's war between Hezbollah and Israel, taken by Associated Press photog Sebastian Scheiner, showed young Israeli girls drawing messages on artillery shells waiting to be fired into southern Lebanon.

The full series of shots can be seen here.

Many Israelis resented the implication that their kids were being used as pawns or brought up to embrace war. One Israeli blogger, Lisa Goldman, wrote a long explanation of the photos.

"I worry about the climate of hate that would lead people to look at it and automatically assume the absolute worst - and then use the photo to dehumanize and victimize," she wrote. "I wonder why so many people seem to take satisfaction in believing that little Israeli girls with felt markers in their hands - not weapons, but felt markers -  are evil, or spawned by an evil society. I wonder how those people would feel if Israelis were to look at a photo of a Palestinian child wearing a mock suicide belt in a Hamas demonstration and conclude that all Palestinians - nay, all Arabs - are evil."

Before Lebanon, the fight to prevent Israel from pulling out of Gaza in 2005 was spearheaded largely by teenage Israeli boys and girls who have been taught that the West Bank and Gaza belong to the Jews and that Palestinians have no claims to the land.

During the summer of 2005, Israeli teenagers by the hundreds descended on Gaza and had to be forcibly removed by the Israeli military.

Among the most hard core were the so-called "Hilltop Youth," a hard-core group made up of young Israelis who set up illegal settlements in the West Bank, cut down Palestinian olive groves and battle the Israeli military when they take down the renegade outposts.

Some of the most dramatic images during Israel's 2005 Gaza pullout focused on the ardent Israeli kids who barricaded themselves in settlement synagogues and fought their army wth paint, bricks and tomatoes. The biggest battle came at the Gaza Strip settlement of Kfar Darom (at right).

There are obvious differences between carrying a peace sign at a protest, putting a toy gun in your child's hands, handing your daughters magic markers to write on artillery shells, throwing paint on soldiers and starring on a television show that regularly demonizes Israelis.

These images give activists on both sides plenty of political ammunition to prove that those on the other side are raising their kids to hate. And there is certainly enough truth in such claims to continue fueling the emotional debate.