UNESCO's Mind-Boggling Ineptitude

"UNESCO's motto is that 'It is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed', yet the Islamic University of Gaza is poisoning the minds of men for the cause of terror.
"Hamas uses Gaza University laboratories to develop and produce explosives and rockets and has even run a course on explosive making.  The university is a warehouse for weapons and a venue for secret meetings of military leaders.
"UNESCO is now establishing a chair linked to a terror organization. That UNESCO should choose to establish a chair in such a university damages further UNESCO's reputation and it creates uncomfortable and inappropriate bedfellows."

The above taken from a statement by a spokesperson representing the State of Israel condemning the news release from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on the establishment of a chair in astronomy, astrophysics and space sciences at the Islamic University in Gaza (IUG).

This is quite the academic institution.  Quite unlike most academic institutions.  Its focus is clearly on the furtherance of Islamism, which is to say jihad related to Islam's imperative to impress itself upon the larger international community.  This is an institution known as a breeding ground for Hamas terrorists.  Gaza is simply doing it differently than, for example, Pakistan with its madrassas. 

The Wahhabi-based madrasses funded by Saudi Arabia merely teach impressionable young Muslim boys that their first and foremost duty to Islam is to evangelize, through martyrdom if necessary.  And why would martyrdom not be necessary, and wildly sought after in the violent commission of terrorizing and murdering non-Muslims in the commission of one's sublime duty to Islam?

Hamas in Gaza simply goes one further, in a far more sophisticated training exercise at the university, through their higher-education-level, encompassing madrassa and terror training camp all in one.  Where lectures on Hamas ideology, radicalizing Islam to a deeply fundamental purity take place, alongside a stern commitment to violent adversity to Israel.

The university head, Kamalain Shaath, takes grave offence at such unwarranted allegations against the academic professionalism of the institution he represents.  "The Islamic University is a purely academic university that is interested only in education and its development."  There are those who choose to take those words at face value and to respect them hugely.

Among those that do give them credence is the Ontario chapter of the Canadian Union of Public Employees which in righteous indignation after Israel bombed the university during Operation Cast Lead in 2008, (having first identified it as an arms depot) called for a ban on Israeli academics speaking, teaching or performing research at Ontario universities.

Worthwhile repeating is a 2010 profile of the university that the Boston Globe undertook.  It held that the university was a top education establishment.  And then it added the following: "At the same time, the university is something else again:  the brain trust and engine room of Hamas, the Islamist movement that governs Gaza and has been a standard bearer in the renaissance of radical Islamist militant politics across the Middle East."

"Thinkers here generate the big ideas that have driven Hamas to power; they have written treatises on Islamic governance, warfare and justice that serve as the blueprints for the movement's political and militant platforms.

"And the university's goal is even more radical and ambitious than that of Hamas itself, an organization devoted primarily to war against Israel and the pursuit of political power.  Its mission is to Islamicize society at every level, with a focus on Gaza but aspirations to influence the entire Islamic world."

Subhi Al-Yaziji, dean of Koranic studies at the university, in May spoke of the need for the Islamic conquest of Spain and the Vatican:  "The conquest of Andalusia is an old dream, something Muslims proudly hope for and will continue to hope for in the future.  We place our hopes in Allah and trust that the day will come when our triumph will not be restricted to Palestine.  Our hopes go beyond that - to raise the banner of the Caliphate over the Vatican, the 'Rome' of today, in accordance with the hadith of the Prophet Muhammad:  'Constantinople shall be conquered and then Rome'."

The Palestinian Fatah movement, representing a faction completely at tribal-sectarian-ideological odds with Hamas, attacked the university in 2006 and 2007 with mortars and guns, accusing it of being a base for terrorists. A special Fatah force raided the university in 2007, confiscating two thousand AK-47 assault rifles, hundreds of RPG launchers and ammunition.

It was reported in the Israeli press that same year that Israeli soldier Corporal Gilad Shalit was being held  at the university for several months of his years of captivity.

This is the United Nations and its member-bodies doing what comes naturally to them, expressing their sympathies and extending their hand in friendship and undivided support to some of the worst human-rights and violence-expounding entities and nations in the world. 

The International Criminal Court has an outstanding warrant for Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir, charged with committing genocide in Darfur.  Yet African nations have bid to place Sudan on the UN Human Rights Council.  This is the self-perpetuating perspective of the United Nations and its cronies.