Innocent victims or terror supporters: Do the EU and the UN know that they are supporting scholarships for the children of terrorists?

A promotional flier for a course run by an internationally funded Palestinian NGO shows how the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian NGOs abuse international donors, duping them into funding ostensibly worthy causes but at the same time are supporting terror.

While Palestinian Media Watch welcomes European Union and United Nations funding for training courses for Palestinians, the problem arises when the courses offer full scholarships to the children of terrorist prisoners and dead terrorists, thereby rewarding the terrorists for their crimes.

Posted by Fatah Central Committee Deputy Secretary Sabri Saidam, the former PA Minister of Education and current advisor for communications and information technology to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, a new flier is promoting a Digital Academy for Scientific Innovation (DASI) program run by the Palestinian NGO Al-Nayzak.

According to the flier, while the children of normative, law abiding Palestinian families are potentially entitled to a 65% discount for the course, the children of “Martyrs and prisoners” are entitled to a full scholarship. In other words, children of terrorists and murderers – be they imprisoned, released, or dead (so-called “Martyrs”) - are rewarded and can study for free.

Text on image: “Hurry to register at the following link:

Dasi.ps/register

With a possibility to receive a full scholarship for the children of Martyrs and prisoners

And a discount of up to 65% for the rest of the recipients”

[Facebook page of Fatah Central Committee Deputy Secretary Sabri Saidam, Sept. 18, 2021]

This means that Safa, the daughter of Abdullah Bargouhti, an imprisoned Palestinian terrorist convicted for the murder of 67 people in multiple terror attacks, and the children of Marwan Barghouti, convicted for his part in the murder of 5 people, are entitled to special privileges, simply because her father is a mass murderer. If you are the child of Marwan Al-Qawasmi and Amer Abu Aisheh, the two terrorists who kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teens in 2014, and were then killed during Israel’s attempted arrest – you too would get special privileges.

To put it succinctly, it pays to be the child of a terrorist.

While it is common knowledge that the PA spends hundreds of millions of shekels/dollars/euros every year paying salaries, allowances and providing special additional benefits to the terrorist prisoners and the families of the dead terrorists, it is less known that the EU and the UN participate in the provision of these benefits.

The course advertised by Abbas’ advisor Saidam is being run by the Palestinian NGO Al-Nayzak. The website of Al-Nayzak proudly shows that its donors include UNICEF (the United Nations agency responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide), UNRWA (the UN organization devoted solely to the Palestinian refugees), UNOPS (the UN organization dedicated to implementing projects for the United Nations System, international financial institutions, governments and other partners around the world), UNDP (The United Nations Development Programme that promotes technical and investment cooperation to help people build a better life for themselves), the EU and others.

This reality begs the question: Are the UN and the EU innocent and unknowing victims of the PA and the Palestinian NGO, or do they know that their money is being used to provide benefits to the children of terrorists, and thereby, albeit indirectly, helping to promote, incentivize, and reward Palestinian terror against Israel and Israelis?

In 2017 PMW exposed that the Palestinian NGO "Women's Affairs Technical Committee" (WTAC) had named a youth center for women after Dalal Mughrabi the terrorist murderer who led the most lethal attack in Israel's history and that the building of the center was a joint initiative of the NGO, the PA, the UN, and the Norwegian government.

On the day of PMW’s release of the report the Norwegian government demanded its money back and days later the UN condemned the actions of the NGO.

Since UN funding has already been misused by Palestinian NGOs, one would assume that the UN has since implemented stringent funding restrictions to avoid UN funds again being abused by NGOs for the purpose of promoting or glorifying terror and terrorists.

Starting financial year 2020, the EU added an elementary anti-terror ‎precondition to all of its external NGO funding. In order to be eligible for funding, ‎the grant beneficiaries are now required to ensure that EU funding does not ‎pass through them to EU designated terror organizations.

Following the adoption of this provision, PMW reported that at least one Palestinian NGO, DCI-Palestine – an organization with documented ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terror organization –has since rejected the EU anti-terror funding precondition and waived the EU aid.

Before releasing this report, PMW wrote to the UN Secretary General, the office of the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace, UNICEF, UNRWA, UNOPS, UNDP, and the EU and asked why they are supporting a Palestinian NGO that incites, promotes and rewards terror. None of those approached chose to respond.

Since they did not respond to our private correspondence, PMW is publically calling on the relevant UN organizations and the EU to publicly denounce the use of their funds to provide special privileges to the children of terrorists. While children are innocent and should not be punished for their parents’ terror, international bodies should not be sending a message to Palestinian society, that children of terrorists deserve preferential treatment above other children, specifically because the parents were terrorists. PMW further calls on the UN and the EU to immediately cease all donations to the Palestinian NGO Al-Nayzak.