Belgium freezes Palestinian funding over terror incitement

Belgium is the latest European country to freeze its funding of Palestinian projects over incitement to terrorism.

Belgium has frozen funding of Palestinian Authority (PA) schools following the incitement to terrorism taught there, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), an organization that monitors Palestinian incitement, reported Monday.

PMW notified Belgium that a PA school it had funded was renamed for terrorist Dalal Mughrabi. PMW also sent the Belgian embassy in Tel Aviv a picture of the Belgian flag, which appears on a plaque announcing Belgium’s funding at the Dalal Mughrabi Elementary School.

Terrorist Dalal Mughrabi led the most lethal terror attack in Israel’s history, known as the Coastal Road massacre, in 1978, when she and other Fatah terrorists hijacked a bus on Israel’s Coastal Highway, killing 37 civilians, 12 of them children, and wounding over 70.

In its report, PMW quoted a Belgian Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying that the country “will put on hold any projects related to the construction or equipment of Palestinian schools.”

The ministry added Belgium was previously “unaware of this name change” at the school and is “awaiting a formal response” from the PA on the issue.

According to the Belgian Development Agency, Belgium has built 23 Palestinian schools since 2001 and had plans to construct 10 more.

The PA has named at least 28 schools after terrorists and at least three schools after Nazi collaborators. Significantly, the PA Ministry of Education is directly and solely responsible for the naming of schools.

Belgium is the latest European country to cancel its funding to the PA over its support of terrorism.

In June, Denmark canceled its funding to a Palestinian NGO and is demanding its money be returned in reaction to a Palestinian NGO’s naming of a youth and women’s center after a notorious female terrorist.

In May, the United Nations (UN) pulled its support from a women’s center in the Palestinian village of Burqa that was named after Mughrabi.

Norway, another financier of the project, slammed the PA for using Norwegian funds to glorify the notorious terrorist and demanded that the money they gave be returned.

“The glorification of terrorist attacks is completely unacceptable, and I deplore this decision in the strongest possible terms,” Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Børge Brende stated.

Neither Norway nor the UN were consulted in advance regarding the naming of the center, nor were they invited to the opening ceremony.

This incident was the latest show of Palestinian incitement to terror in accordance with the Palestinian Authority’s policy of presenting terrorists as role models for Palestinian youth.

By: World Israel News Staff