U.N.-funded school honors infamous terrorist

Graduates at Al Quds University

JAFFA, Israel – A Palestinian Authority-allied university funded in part by the United Nations dedicated its graduation ceremony to one of the most infamous Palestinian terrorists, WND has learned.

The Al Quds Open University dedicated the ceremony last weekend at a major campus in the West Bank city of Qalqiliya to the memory of female suicide bomber Dalal al-Mughrabi, who led an attack in March 1978 that killed a total of 36 Israelis.

According to a faculty member who helped lead the graduation, the master of ceremonies announced the year's graduation cycle was dedicated to the "hero" Mughrabi, who planned and led an attack in which she and 10 other Palestinians infiltrated Israel by sea, landed on a beach, killed an American photographer and then hijacked and blew up a crowded bus.

Mughrabi long has been glorified as one of the most important "martyrs" in Palestinian society. Official PA institutions, such as girls' schools and police training camps, bear her name. Songs and poems in her honor are routinely broadcast on PA television and radio.

Israel had kept the remains of Mughrabi and the other terrorists in part so that Palestinian society would not make shrines of their burial places.

But as part of a prisoner exchange deal with the Hezbollah terror group last month, Israel released Mughrabi's body and that of dozens of other Palestinians.

In the controversial deal, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government also agreed to release Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar and four captured Lebanese guerrillas in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers.

Al Quds Open University functions like a community college and maintains campuses throughout the West Bank, with five additional centers in Gaza. The school's headquarters are in Ramallah, the de facto Palestinian capital.

The university is funded by the PA and wealthy Palestinian donors as well as by the U.N. Development Program, or UNDP, the world body's global development network. Other contributors to the university include the French Agency for Development and the KFW Banking Group, a German development fund.

Several major U.S. charity funds, such as the Ford Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, contribute to the UNDP, but it could not immediately be determined whether those funds were used to donate to the Open University.

To interview Aaron Klein, contact M. Sliwa Public Relations by e-mail, or call 973-272-2861 or 212-202-4453.