Condi: “We need more educated terrorists”

U.N.-funded school honors infamous terrorist

Declared ‘hero’ led attack that murdered 36 civilians in Israel 

* SCHOLARSHIPS FOR TERROR

Back in May, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice publicly raked Israeli officials over the coals after they refused to let seven Palestinians who’d won US-sponsored Fulbright scholarships leave Hamas-controlled Gaza.

* Israel’s Explanation of the Palestinian Fulbright Scholar Fiasco

That had Rice fuming. More on page 2

WorldNetDaily 

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.

srael 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.

*

SCHOLARSHIPS FOR TERROR

August 10, 2008

Back in May, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice publicly raked Israeli officials over the coals after they refused to let seven Palestinians who’d won US-sponsored Fulbright scholarships leave Hamas-controlled Gaza.

Israel insisted the seven had ties to Hamas terrorists and were security risks. Faced with Israel’s refusal to let them leave Gaza, the State Department revoked the scholarships for study at US institutions.

That had Rice fuming.

“If you cannot engage young people and give complete horizons to their expectations and their dreams,” she declared, “I don’t know that there would be any future for Palestine.”

Under heavy pressure from Washington, Israel agreed to give exit visas to four of the Palestinians, letting them accept their US-taxpayer-funded scholarships.

But the Israelis remained adamant about the other three, all of whom were either students or teaching assistants at the Islamic University of Gaza – a notorious Hamas stronghold.

Now State has taken a closer look, and guess what? Washington has notified all three that “information has come to light that you may be inadmissible to the United States” – and their visas once again have been revoked.

No one’s saying precisely what that information is, but we can well imagine.

Islamic University, after all, is where Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier whose kidnaping by Hamas helped fuel the 2006 Lebanon war, initially was held, according to Israel’s largest newspaper. The paper also reported that a raid last year by Fatah forces at the university found a cache of rocket launchers and rifles.

A professor at the school told The Baltimore Sun in 2006 that “Hamas built this institution. The university presents the philosophy of Hamas. If you want to know what Hamas is, you can know it from the university.”

(Sadly, that sounds just like the sort of training ground most of American academia likely would consider appropriate.)

Fortunately, wiser heads appear to have prevailed. Secretary Rice’s protests notwithstanding, the last thing US taxpayers need to be wasting their money on is prestigious scholarships for terrorists-in-training to come to America.

And next time, Rice might want to give Israel a bit more credit when it comes to ferreting out security risks before she issues public broadsides in the name of “education.”

*

U.S. revokes visas for 3 Gaza Fulbright scholars

Officials cite ‘new information’ in case which drew Rice’s intervention

	Palestinian Fulbright scholars Zuhair Abu Shaban, 24, second from right, Osama Daoud, 25, second from left, and Fida Abed 23, left, wait to cross the Erez Border crossing between Israel and Gaza Strip in order to meet U.S. consular officials on July 10. The trio have now had their American entry visas revoked.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Three Palestinian Fulbright scholars have had their American entry visas revoked after “new information” was received about them, a U.S. diplomat said on Tuesday.

Visas for the trio, along with a fourth Palestinian student from Gaza who had hoped to come to the U.S. under a different program, were approved after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice intervened in June after Israel refused to let them leave Gaza for interviews.

“There were four Palestinians who were issued visas about whom we then received additional information,” State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said. “We decided that we needed to take a closer and harder look at them in light of the additional information we received.”

He said the visas were canceled under a “prudential revocation” clause in immigration rules that allows them to be rescinded based on information gleaned about the holders after they were issued. It does not preclude the applicants from reapplying for visas in the future, he said.

Gallegos declined to comment on the nature of the “new information” about the four Palestinians, one of whom had actually arrived at Dulles International Airport outside Washington before he was told his visa had been revoked and was forced to return to Jordan.

Security issues?
But another official familiar with the situation said the information related to security issues that were behind the refusal by Israeli authorities to allow them to leave Gaza to be interviewed for visas at the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem in May.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to privacy concerns about visa records.

Palestinian students cannot apply for U.S. visas in Gaza because Washington does not recognize the territory’s Hamas government and has no diplomatic presence there. Israel bans all Gaza students from leaving for security reasons but has made exceptions on a case-by-case basis.

The three Fulbright scholars, Zuhair Abu Shaban, Fida Abed and Osama Daoud, received visas after being interviewed and fingerprinted by U.S. consular officials last month at Erez, a passenger terminal on Gaza’s border with Israel.

‘Great shock’
“They gave us the visas on July 30 and two days later we were told the visas were not valid,” Shaban, who wants to pursue a second degree in electrical engineering, told Reuters.

“It was a great shock. We had hoped to complete our studies, especially after we were granted the visas. We were packing our bags.”

According to Shaban, Abed had flown to the United States via to Jordan, only to be turned back at the airport.

Rice had been infuriated when State Department officials canceled the Fulbright scholarships of seven Palestinian students whom Israel had refused to let leave Gaza for their visa interviews.

After she took their cases to senior Israeli officials, Israel allowed four of the seven to travel to Jerusalem for interviews in June. Over Israel’s objections, U.S. diplomats then made a rare trip to the Gaza border in July to interview the remaining three.

One official said Rice, who had been outspoken about the negative signal the original cancellations sent to Palestinians and the broader Arab world, had ordered a top-to-bottom review of the entire Fulbright scholarship vetting process in the wake of the cancellations.