The Secretary General of the United Nations and the Norwegian government slammed the Palestinian Authority for naming a women’s center built with their support after a notorious terrorist.
Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said in a statement on Sunday that naming the center after Dalal Mughrabi was “offensive” and that the world body will “take measures to ensure that such incidents do not take place in the future,” The Times of Israel reported.
“The glorification of terrorism, or the perpetrators of heinous terrorist acts, is unacceptable under any circumstances,” Dujarric continued. “The UN has repeatedly called for an end to incitement to violence and hatred as they present one of the obstacles to peace.”
Dalal Mughrabi, a member of Fatah, led the Coastal Road massacre near Tel Aviv in 1978. Thirty-eight people — including 13 children — were killed and 71 more injured in the attack, which turned Mughrabi into a national hero among Palestinians, with multiple schools, buildings, and streets in the West Bank bearing her name.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Børge Brende similarly said in a statement last week that naming the center, which used Norwegian funds, after Mughrabi was a “glorification of terrorist attacks” and “completely unacceptable.”
“Norway will not allow itself to be associated with institutions that take the names of terrorists in this way. We will not accept the use of Norwegian aid funding for such purposes,” he added. Norway also asked the PA to return the funds it used to build the center.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Norway on Monday for withdrawing its support for the center following Israeli requests. “We cannot accept it that friendly governments support organizations that glorify terrorism and act against IDF soldiers,” he said.
Guterres has been vocal in insisting that UN stop treating Israel unfairly.
The secretary-general said in January that Israel should be treated as any other nation by the General Assembly, which adopted 20 resolutions against the Jewish state in 2016 and only six on the rest of the world combined. He also acknowledged that a Jewish temple once stood on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, offering a rebuke to a pair of UNESCO resolutions last year that erased the connection between Judaism and its holiest site. Palestinian officials blasted Guterres for his remarks, with a PA minister saying that Guterres “neglected the UNESCO resolutions, which clearly said that the al-Aqsa Mosque is purely an Islamic heritage.”
Guterres demanded in March that a UN agency representing 18 Arab nations rescind a controversial anti-Israel report it issued, which had been co-authored by discredited 9/11 conspiracy theorist Richard Falk.
The Israeli government thanked Brende and Norway in May 2016 for promising to insist that no funds sent to the PA would be used to pay terrorists.
[Photo: palwatch / YouTube ]