UN's Terror Teacher

The gullibility and duplicity of the UN never ceases to amaze. They have an outright hostility toward Israel while consistently downplaying the terrorist activities and connections of Palestinians, whom they portray and noble freedom-fighters just struggling to survive hostile Zionists oppression.

Well, what do you know, here we have yet another case where their actions have literally blown up in their faces.

By day, Awad al-Qiq was a respected science teacher and headmaster at a United Nations school in the Gaza Strip. By night, Palestinian militants say, he built rockets for Islamic Jihad.

The Israeli airstrike that killed the 33-year-old last week also laid bare his apparent double life and embarrassed a UN agency that has long rebuffed Israeli accusations that it has aided and abetted guerrillas fighting the Jewish state.

Game. Set. Match.

In interviews with Reuters, students and colleagues, as well as UN officials, denied any knowledge of Qiq's work with explosives. And his family denied he had any militant links at all, despite a profusion of Islamic Jihad posters at his home.

But militant leaders allied to the enclave's ruling Hamas group hailed Qiq as a martyr who led Islamic Jihad's "engineering unit" - its bombmakers. They fired a salvo of improvised rockets into Israel in response to his death.

Qiq's body was wrapped in an Islamic Jihad flag at his funeral, posters in his honor still bedeck his family's home this week, and a handwritten notice posted on the metal gate at the entrance to the school declared that Qiq, "the chief leader of the engineering unit," would now find "paradise."

Seems like pretty strong evidence to me.

Still, the dupes are bewildered at any accusation they're soft on terrorists.

Spokesman Christopher Gunness said UNRWA was looking into the matter.

"We have a zero-tolerance policy toward politics and militant activities in our schools. Obviously, we are not the thought police and we cannot police people's minds," he said.

Sure. They immediately point fingers every time there's a Palestinian "work accident," but now claim they're not mindreaders.

Sure.

The Post editorial also weighs in with a devastating editorial, appropriately entitled Teaching Rocket Science. Read the whole thing, bust just wash this part around a bit.

Indeed, Islamic Jihad gave him the ultimate sendoff tribute: firing a barrage of his rockets into Israel in mourning.

So much for UNRWA's self-proclaimed "zero-tolerance policy toward politics and militant activities."

Of course, that policy was pretty well shown up as a joke when a UNRWA teacher named Saeed Seyam was named interior minister of the Hamas-led government in Gaza and immediately vowed never to arrest any Palestinian for "resisting the occupation."

According to Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), UNRWA confirmed last December that families of suicide bombers have received money from the agency.

The United States, incidentally, pays 30 percent to 40 percent of UNRWA's budget - $505 million last year alone.

For years, Congress has tried to ax US funding for UNRWA, with little success.

It's time to try again.

For some reason, no reporters ever bother to ask our erstwhile presidential candidates about this.

Reuters: Heartless Israelis Block Aid to Woebegone Palis

The idiots at Reuters are giving the New York Times a run for their money in the propaganda game.

Check out this headline.

Israel closes Gaza crossings, blocks aid shipments

Israel tightened its closure of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip on Friday in response to cross-border rocket fire, preventing even U.N. humanitarian supplies from getting in, officials said.

Aww, the poor things.

Well, this is a direct result of the actions of Hamas. It's their problem.

Israel's stepped up campaign against Gaza militants has prompted warnings from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's government in the occupied West Bank that renewed peace talks -- spurred by last week's visit by U.S. President George W. Bush -- were in jeopardy.

The Israeli Defence Ministry ordered all of the border crossings with Gaza closed and said only "humanitarian cases" which receive Defence Minister Ehud Barak's personal approval will be allowed through.

"If milk is low in Gaza, the minister will be asked to approve a milk shipment, and it will enter," a Defence Ministry spokesman said.

Gaza is home to 1.5 million people, most of whom depend on foreign aid.

Barak had vowed to broaden Israeli military operations against Gaza militants who have fired more than 110 rockets into the Jewish state in the last three days.

One of the makeshift rockets landed 40 meters (44 yards) from an Israeli nursery school on Friday, and government spokesman David Baker said Israel "will not be deterred from taking any necessary steps" to halt the fire from Gaza.

They're firing rockets at nursery schools and we're supposed to feel sorry for them?

Israel has killed more than 30 Palestinians in Gaza this week, including a militant in a missile strike Friday morning.

In the West Bank city of Nablus, Israeli troops killed a militant linked to Abbas's Fatah movement.

An Ecuadorean volunteer on an Israeli farming community bordering Gaza was shot dead by a Palestinian sniper on Tuesday.

'SHUT DOWN'

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which provides food to refugees, said it was not allowed to deliver truckloads of supplies on Friday morning as it usually does.

"Gaza is completely shut down. This will only add to an already dire situation," said UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness.

Well, Mr. Gunness, that's just too bad.

Maybe of these bloodthirsty Islamofascists stopped trying to murder Israelis with impunity, the dire situation would improve.

Until then, I can't for a second feel their pain.

Pali Civil War Claims Two UN Workers

Surely the media will find a way to blame this on Israel.

Two Palestinian employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) were shot dead in the Gaza Strip and the agency said on Wednesday it was suspending most of its operations due to the internal fighting.

UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness said one of the employees was shot in the abdomen on Tuesday and died on Wednesday. The other employee was shot in the head on Wednesday.

Gunness said they are the first UN employees killed in Gaza since internal fighting erupted between Hamas Islamists and President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction last year.

Gunness said they appeared to have been caught in the crossfire and not targeted because of their work for the UN Agency, which provides services to Palestinian refugees.

“In view of increased threats to our staff, UNRWA has no choice but to scale back its operations in Gaza with immediate effect,” Gunness said. He said the agency was temporarily suspending all but emergency medical and food programs.