For the past four years, adjacent to the UNRWA headquarters the AL Aida refugee facility in Bethlehem hosted a two ton key rested on top of the entrance to Al Aida, which is shaped in the likeness of a mammoth keyhole.

http://a7.org/Resizer.ashx?source=albums&image=28471&a=450&b=550

That mammoth key and key hole were erected at the entrance to the UNRWA Al Aida refugee facility during a celebration on May 15, 2008, to mark 60 years since the creation of Israel and the displacement of Arabs who consider themselves to be refugees who are entitled to the “right of return” to Arab villages which no longer exist, inside Israel.

This week, however, when a news crew visited the AL Aida refugee facility in Bethlehem, the journalists discovered that the massive two ton key was missing.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=01b1c724b6&view=att&th=137b7075c2dc3b4e&attid=0.1&disp=thd&realattid=f_h31e86xq0&zw

Rather than contact the UNRWA lost and found department, the reporters asked UNRWA residents about the whereabouts of the missing key. They had no idea.

The reporters asked UNRWA officials, who also said that they did not know.

Had there been sudden misgivings about the key to the right of return, the subject that forms the basis of UNRWA education?

Hardly.

A google search on the Arab media led to the discovery of the key’s whereabouts: The Palestinian Authority is taking the key on a tour of…Germany

Here is the link to an Arab media report about the tour of the key in Germany,

http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/05/10/213226.html

This key has been taken on a PLO public relations campaign to promote German support for the right of descendants of Arab refugees to take back 531 Arab villages that they claim from 1948, which have been replaced by Israeli towns, collective farms and woodlands- within Israel’s 1967 lines”

Germany’s role in any campaign to promote the “right of return” to homes from the 1940’s may be considered to be unusual, since nine million Germans who were forced out of their homes after World War II have never demanded the “right of return” to places like East Prussia and the Sudetanland.

However, Germany plays an important role in the promotion of tha Arab “right of return” to Arab villages from the 1940’s which no longer exist.

A case in point. A consistent aspect of cultural life in the UNRWA camps are film screenings in the UNRWA youth clubs which motivate descendants of Arab refugees to longing a Palestinian “right to return” to villages that they left in 1948,

These films are organized through the Cine Club, orchestrated under the framework of a group known as the Shaml and sponsored by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, which receives funds from the German government.

According to the Ebert Foundation’s website, its primary mission is “promoting peace and understanding between peoples”.

Yet UN article 194 is touted by the German sponsored Shaml as proof for an absolute “right of refugee” return.

That article states that: “Refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.”

Besides Shaml, the Ebert Foundation also aids PASSIA: the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs.

In 2004, PASSIA, a Palestinian Authority based academic organization, published a multicolored bulletin still in circulation titled “Palestinian Refugees”, offering facts and proofs to promote the “right of return”.

This publication highlights the German government funded Friedrich Ebert Foundation as the sole sponsor of this brochure.

When the President of Germany, Horst Kohler, visited the Israeli Knesset in January, 2005, an Israel Member of the Knesset, Gila Finkelstein, waved PASSIA “right of return” brochure at President Kohler and walked out of the Knesset in protest.

Finkelstein met with President Kohler, to personally express her outrage that Germany would fund an effort that supported the “right of return”, a code name for dismembering Israel.

Kohler promised to look into the matter.

In April, 2005, President Kohler wrote to MK Finkelstein that he relied on the professional judgment of the Fredrich Ebert Foundation and rejected MK Finkelstein’s protests.

Germany continues its the policy of promoting the Arab “right of return”, allowing the two ton key from the UNRWA AL Aida refugee facility in Bethlehem on a tour throughout Germany.

Perhaps Israel should launch a campaign to help Germans to return to East Prussia.

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David Bedein
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.