A United Nations-sponsored youth center near Ramallah has announced plans to name a youth football tournament after Wafa Idris, the first Palestinian female suicide bomber, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reports. It is the latest example of incitement to violence from Palestinian government officials, who have used government monies and UN aid to promote a pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic agenda.
"The administration of the Al-Amari youth center has announced its plans to launch a youth tournament to be named the "Shahida [Martyr] of Honor, Wafa Idris [tournament]," Palestinian daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadid reported. Idris became infamous in 2002, when she blew herself up in downtown Jerusalem after smuggling into the city as a volunteer on a Red Crescent ambulance. The attack killed an 81-year-old Israeli man and injured more than 100 people.
The event mirrored several others in honor of Idris, including a 2003 summer camp named after her that was sponsored by UNICEF. Palestinian-funded initiatives in her honor have included an honorary Fatah women's terrorist cell and an Al-Quds university course on "democracy and human rights" in 2002. She has also been the subject of several video tributes on Fatah-sponsored television and newspaper articles in major Palestinian dailies.
Palestinian government factions Fatah and Hamas, who have been strongly opposed to one another since the violent 2007 Hamas takeover of Gaza, also recently objected to the UNRWA's March 2011 push to teach about the Holocaust in UN-sponsored schools. Hamas called the move "a provocative act" and a "challenge to the feelings of the Palestinians," which "violates their culture and unchangeable values." The Hamas-controlled Ministry of Culture in the Gaza Strip advocated classes on Israeli racism instead, and said, "They want us to accept the tales and lies to win sympathy."
Fatah officials, even outside of Gaza, criticized the effort. Salah al-Wadiyeh, a Fatah representative in the West Bank, called the Holocaust a "big lie" and said the Palestinians "know more than any other people the history of their enemies and their false claims and lies."