Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Palestinian Edition

When a science teacher is not always just a science teacher. Arutz Sheva reports:
Reuters reports that a terrorist killed in an IAF air strike last week, Awad al-Qiq, actually lived a double life: By day, he was a respected headmaster and science teacher at a United Nations school, but during the night, he built rockets for Islamic Jihad.

The news agency reports that Israel's air strike in southern Gaza last Wednesday not only revealed Al-Qiq's double life, but also "embarrassed a U.N. agency which has long had to rebuff Israeli accusations that it has aided and abetted guerrillas fighting the Jewish state."

Though his family, students, colleagues, and U.N. officials denied knowledge of Qiq's work with explosives, Hamas terrorists hailed him as a martyr who led Islamic Jihad's bomb-making unit. They fired a barrage of Kassam rockets into Israel in response to his death.

A spokesman for UNRWA - the UN Relief and Works Agency, which runs the school in which Qiq taught - told Reuters that it was looking into the matter. "We have a zero-tolerance policy towards politics and militant activities in our schools," he said. "Obviously, we are not the thought police and we cannot police people's minds."
Arabs from Gaza report that a member of the Hamas military wing, Hisham Shomar, was killed in an Israel Air Force strike early Tuesday morning. Three terrorists were reported wounded. The IDF confirmed the attack on armed terrorists, part of a cell that fired mortar shells at Israel from northern Gaza.
I think the UNRWA does protest too much. While no one was asking the UNRWA to police their employee's thoughts, a UN run school does have a responsibility to ensure their employees do not belong to terror organizations or make bombs after school.

Furthermore, it is a little rich for the UNRWA to claim ignorance as I am sure a quick call to the Israeli Shin Bet security services would have turned up someone who would have been more than happy to provide a background check for all staff members. It is too late in Awad al-Qiq's case (and may all his virgins look like Arafat), but if UNRWA was truly concerned about not supplying an economic safe haven and acting as cover or a beard for terrorists; it would take my advice and run an immediate background check on all current staff members with Shin Bet.

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