PYM’s Summer School Features Chants to “Crush Zionism”
Over 100 youth attended PYM Britain’s four-day camp, which included chants to “crush Zionism” and programming featuring a former spokesman for the U.S.-designated terrorist group PFLP
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The Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) Britain held its first Summer School over the May 2026 bank holiday, gathering more than 100 Arab young people from across Britain for four days at the YHA Edale Activity Centre in the Peak District. The centre is operated by YHA (England and Wales), which received £949,499 over three years from Sport England and £2.34 million through three recovery grants between 2020 and 2022.
An application post advertised the residential to people aged 17 to 35 and listed the dates as May 22 to 26. In a July 31 Instagram post, PYM described the event as four days of political and historical sessions, a hike and a cultural night featuring what it called revolutionary songs and poetry.
Footage included in the post shows attendees chanting in Arabic: “Young people, rise up, our revolution is an Arab revolution” and “We will crush Zionism.” The latter can be rendered more literally as “We will trample on Zionism.”
Kanafani Featured in Programme
One of PYM’s photographs shows a projected slide featuring Ghassan Kanafani, the Palestinian novelist who also served as a PFLP spokesman and as the founding editor-in-chief of Al-Hadaf, the organisation’s official weekly magazine. Kanafani was deeply involved in the operational side of the PFLP, and was a close associate of Fusako Shigenobu, the founder of the Japanese Red Army (JRA), which was responsible for the Lod Airport massacre.
Another photograph shows attendees posing with raised fists, wearing shirts with maps that erase Israel.
Kanafani’s inclusion is consistent with PYM’s longstanding promotion of his work. PYM lists the Kanafani scholarship among its early projects and says it produced a yearly anthology whose proceeds funded awards for selected submissions. A PYM-affiliated reading group in New Jersey advertised a February 2025 discussion of Kanafani’s short story “Letter from Gaza.”
PYM Britain also published a March 2026 programme teaser advertising sessions on the “foundations and principles of Palestinian struggle” ahead of the residential.
Official Findings and PFLP Statements
A July 2024 report published by Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism alleged that PYM had “close ties” with the PFLP and its affiliates. That conclusion should be attributed to the Israeli ministry rather than presented as an uncontested independent finding.
In April 2024, the PFLP issued a public statement expressing support for student activism associated with Students for Justice in Palestine and PYM at Columbia, Rutgers, Yale and Stanford. The statement demonstrates the PFLP’s public endorsement of those movements, but does not by itself prove operational coordination.
YHA’s Public Funding
The Summer School took place at YHA Edale, which advertises serviced group stays for between 16 and 153 people. The centre is operated by YHA England and Wales, a registered charity listed under number 306122 in the charity register.
YHA has received substantial public funding at the organisational level. Its 2022-23 annual report states that it secured £284,079 from Sport England for its Outdoor Citizens programme, alongside funding from Natural England, the Pilgrim Trust and other partners.
Growth of the Britain Chapter
PYM was initially founded in 2006 as the Palestinian Youth Network. According to an academic history published in the Journal of Palestine Studies, it transformed into the Palestinian Youth Movement during its second international general assembly in Istanbul in 2011.
The organisation describes itself as an international movement that organises Palestinian and Arab youth for Palestinian liberation. Its website says its objective includes working to liberate Palestinian land “from the river to the sea.”
The Anti-Defamation League reported in 2025 that PYM operated more than a dozen North American chapters and had expanded into Sweden and the United Kingdom since at least 2022.