Palestinian Affairs

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Palestinian Authority Names School After Planner of Munich Olympics Massacre

by TheTower.org Staff |

The Palestinian Authority has dedicated a new school to the mastermind of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reported Tuesday.

A school in the West Bank city of Tulkarem has been named “the Martyr Salah Khalaf School” in memory of the leader of the Black September terrorist group. Khalaf, who was also known as Abu Iyad, planned the attack on the Israeli Olympic compound at the 1972 Munich Olympics, during which 11 Israeli athletes and coaches were tortured and killed. Khalaf also had a role in the 1973 takeover of the American embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, which ended in the murder of two American diplomats and a Belgian envoy.

The cornerstone of the school was laid last month, when District Governor Issam Abu Bakr “emphasized the importance of the project of building the school named after Martyr Salah Khalaf, in order to commemorate the memory of this great national fighter,” Al-Hayyat Al-Jadida, the official PA newspaper, reported. Other PA officials attending the ceremony included Tulkarem Mayor Iyad al-Jallad and Salam al-Taher, head of the Tulkarem Education Directorate, part of the PA Ministry of Education.

This is the fourth school dedicated to the memory of Khalaf; the three others are in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

PMW wrote a letter to the European Union calling on the group to stop funding the PA’s education budget as long the Authority is “presenting terrorist murderers of Israeli civilians as role models for Palestinian children.”

The EU said in response to another PMW letter earlier this year that it would not stop its financial support of the Palestinian Authority, despite revelations that the PA was paying salaries to imprisoned terrorists. The United Kingdom suspended $30 million in aid payments earlier this month for that reason.

The PA was also criticized last week after it arrested four Palestinians who attended a coexistence event held by Oded Revivi, the mayor of Efrat, a Jewish city in the West Bank. “It is absurd that having coffee with Jews is considered a crime by the Palestinian Authority,” Revivi said after the arrests. “Initiatives that seek to foster cooperation and peace between people should be encouraged, not silenced. It’s time the Palestinian Authority asks itself whether it would prefer to fan the flames of conflict instead of working to bring people together.” The four were later released.

[Photo: CNN / YouTube ]

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