Israel Matzav

UN sponsors soccer tournament named for terrorist

Through UNRWA, the United Nations is sponsoring a soccer tournament in memory of a terrorist. The terrorist is Khalil el-Wazir better known to most of you as Abu Jihad, a close Arafat aid and co-founder of Fatah.

A soccer tournament sponsored by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency Women's Training Center and Faculty of Educational Sciences named a soccer tournament after a terrorist.

The tournament, played in Ramallah, was named the Shahid (martyr) Abu Jihad Tournament, after a founder of Fatah who planned terror attacks for twenty years which killed dozens of Israeli citizens.

But that leaves out the good part of the story.

Born on October 10, 1935; expelled in 1948 from Ramleh and fled to Gaza; became fedai in 1954; studied in Cairo in the 1950s; co-founder (with Arafat) of the first Fatah-cell in 1957; Fatah founding member in 1958/59; PLO/Fatah military chief since the 1960s; issued in Lebanon the clandestine Fatah magazine Filastinuna (January 1959); head of the first office opened by Fatah in Algeria, January 1963; played an instrumental role in the PLO's relations with a number of Arab states including Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia; godfather of and contact person for the resistance in the disputed territories); appointed official deputy of Arafat on Fatah's 1980 congress; Arafat's second and his closest ally; assassinated in his house in Tunis by Israelis on April 16, 1988.

The good part is that Abu Jihad is no longer with us.

Heh.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:31 AM