While President Bush and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hope to reach some kind of peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians by the end of the year that will also include a solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees and their right of return, yesterday the US House of Representatives made an historic decision calling for a solution to the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab countries, as part of any future peace agreement.

850,000 Jews were expelled from their homes in the Arab world when the State of Israel declared its independence, and the property of many was confiscated by the authorities in the Arab countries, without any pretense of compensation..

The US House resolution, recommends to the American mediators in the Middle East that they “guarantee that any decision about the matter of Palestinian refugees In the Middle East also include a similar reference to Jewish, Christian or other refugees from Arab countries.”

The initiators of the decision, legislators from both parties led by New York Congressman Gerald Nadler, welcomed the resolution. Nadler said on Tuesday: Today the House of Representatives has helped shed light on the suffering of Jewish refugees in the Middle East. Their suffering is real and should be recognized. The enforced exile of Jews from Arab countries must be part of the public dialogue in the peace process.”

A BLOW TO DECEPTIVE PROPAGANDA

The resolution by the American Congress, recognizing Jewish refugees from Arab countries in 1948 as absolutely equal to the Palestinian refugees from 1948, is an historic, precedent-setting and dramatic resolution.

From now on, in the diplomatic arena, there are not only “Palestinian refugees.”

The Jewish refugees who came to Israel were housed in temporary refugee camps. They called them transit camps. They underwent difficulties, but no one wished to make them eternal refugees.

However, the Arab refugees who left Israel were also housed in United Nations UNRWA refugee camps. But they were memorialized as an open and bleeding wound and left there, deliberately and on purpose.

[This ran in the April 4th, 2008 edition of the Phila. Bulletin at:
http://www.thebulletin.us/site/printerFriendly.cfm?brd=2737&dept_id=576361&newsid=19452836 ]

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David Bedein is an MSW community organizer and an investigative journalist.   In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies.   Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post, For four years, Mr. Bedein acted as the Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. Bedein has covered breaking Middle East negotiations in Oslo, Ottawa, Shepherdstown, The Wye Plantation, Annapolis, Geneva, Nicosia, Washington, D.C., London, Bonn, and Vienna. Bedein has overseen investigative studies of the Palestinian Authority, the Expulsion Process from Gush Katif and Samaria, The Peres Center for Peace, Peace Now, The International Center for Economic Cooperation of Yossi Beilin, the ISM, Adalah, and the New Israel Fund.   Since 2005, Bedein has also served as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.   A focus of the center's investigations is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In that context, Bedein authored Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict - UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, which caps Bedein's 28 years of investigations of UNRWA. The Center for Near East Policy Research has been instrumental in reaching elected officials, decision makers and journalists, commissioning studies, reports, news stories and films. In 2009, the center began decided to produce short movies, in addition to monographs, to film every aspect of UNRWA education in a clear and cogent fashion.   The center has so far produced seven short documentary pieces n UNRWA which have received international acclaim and recognition, showing how which UNRWA promotes anti-Semitism and incitement to violence in their education'   In sum, Bedein has pioneered The UNRWA Reform Initiative, a strategy which calls for donor nations to insist on reasonable reforms of UNRWA. Bedein and his team of experts provide timely briefings to members to legislative bodies world wide, bringing the results of his investigations to donor nations, while demanding reforms based on transparency, refugee resettlement and the demand that terrorists be removed from the UNRWA schools and UNRWA payroll.   Bedein's work can be found at: www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and www.cfnepr.com. A new site,unrwa-monitor.com, will be launched very soon.