Israel condemns UNESCO action

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JERUSALEM, July 12 (UPI) -- The Israeli government issued a statement expressing "shock and consternation" that UNESCO is establishing a chair at the Islamic University of Gaza.

"The Islamic University of Gaza is a known greenhouse and breeding ground for Hamas terrorists," the statement from the Foreign Ministry said. "Only last month, the University's dean of Koranic studies openly called for the Islamic conquest of the Vatican and of Spain."

The ministry said scientists and academics at the university double as "Hamas technocrats. The Islamic University serves as an employment program and intellectual retreat for Hamas leaders. The University conducts lectures on Hamas' radical ideology and concentrates on hostility to Israel; Hamas uses Gaza University laboratories to develop and produce explosives and rockets and has even run a course on explosive making."

The statement said the university "is a warehouse for weapons and a venue for secret meetings of military leaders."

UNESCO, a U.N. educational and cultural organization, further damages its reputation by establishing an academic chair linked to a terror organization, the statement said. "Hamas and the Islamic University believe in extremism, violence and terror -- not education, science and culture. That UNESCO should choose to establish a chair in such a university damages further UNESCO's reputation and it creates uncomfortable and inappropriate bedfellows."