''When Al Fatah opened training camps for 8- to 15-year-old "Lion Cubs" last spring, the response was immediate. Now, on playgrounds of Palestinian refugee camps, Yasir Arafat's young lions— many of them dressed in cut-down combat...''</ref>
The boys were taught fighting techniques,<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/1977/11/07/archives/arafat-rejects-pullout.html Arafat Rejects Pullout], Marvine Howe, ''The New York Times'', Nov. 7, 1977, p. 2.<blockquote>Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat declared today that the joint Palestinian‐Lebanese leftist forces would not pull out of southern Lebanon, because to do so would mean surrender to Israel. Mr. Arafat, who is overall commander of the Palestine Liberation Organization, took his firm stand in an address at graduation exercises for 75 new Lebanese and Palestinian guerrilla leaders on the outskirts of this southern Lebanese port city. The ceremony was held outside Ain el‐Hilweh, the largest refugee camp in Lebanon, at a training field where young Palestinians called '''lion cubs learn fighting techniques'''.The graduation rally, which included martial music and pledges to continue the struggle “until victory”..</ref> to dismantle, clean and reassemble rifles, pistols and machine guns and are allowed to fire live ammunition. The children underwent a Mau Mau-like hardening course in which each boy was required to '''tear apart a live chicken''' to develop a "lust for killing."<ref>John Laffin, "Fedayeen; the Arab-Israeli Dilemma." Free Press, 1973. [https://books.google.com/books?id=VrsLAAAAIAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=Chicken pp. 96-97]</ref><ref>Arms Control and Disarmament: A Quarterly Bibliography with Abstracts and Annotations, Volume 6. Library of Congress. Arms Control and Disarmament Bibliography. 1969, [https://books.google.com/books?id=BDS27BqMWdgC&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22tear%C2%A0live%C2%A0chickens%22 p. 420]
''Arab youths have proved eager to join up for tough Mau Mau - like military training; one unit, the Lion Cubs, for boys ten to fourteen, instills a blood lust by making recruits tear live chickens apart''.</ref><ref>Isaiah L. Kenen, "Near East Report," Volume 19. Near East Report, Incorporated, 1975. [https://books.google.com/books?id=dLMMAQAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22Chicken%22 p. 37].
''Few can be taken in by PLO's "democratic, secular state"...