This past Tuesday morning, Palestinian Authority (PA) foreign minister Riad Malki announced on the Voice of Israel Radio that PA leader Mahmoud Abbas would meet with Jewish community representatives in New York during his trip to the United Nations at a special dinner hosted by the S, Daniel Abraham Middle East Foundation for Peace.

Guests included former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, and former US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer; Professor Alan Dershowitz, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard University; Wolf Blitzer, host of CNN’s The Situation Room; Congresswoman Nita Lowey; Rabbi Rick Jacobs, President of the Union for Reform Judaism; Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center; Nancy Kaufman, CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women; Peter Joseph, president of the Israel Policy Forum; Daniel Lubetsky, founder of OneVoice; Eli Broad, founder of the Broad Foundation; Professor Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize recipient; and Abby Joseph Cohen, board member of the Jewish Theological Seminary

That meeting provided a unique opportunity for Jews to ask probing questions of the veteran Palestinian Arab leader.

I forwarded the following suggested 10 questions for these Jews to pose to Abbas.

What a shame that they would not ask these questions.

• Question 1:

Ask Abbas about the new PA curriculum, which prepares the next generation to conquer all of ‘Palestine’. Most recently, the Center for Near East Policy Research dispatched a TV crew to follow the classrooms of PA schools and PA summer camps in UNRWA facilities, where the center filmed teachings which did not focus on peace or reconciliation.
Indeed, translations of the new PA school books yield the conclusion that they focused on a curriculum of “suspended war.” These films can be seen on the home page of www.IsraelBehindthenews.com

• Question 2:

Ask Abbas about the news output of the PBC (Palestine Broadcasting Corporation) radio and TV, which operates under the direct control of Abbas. Ask Abbas about the daily messages of violent Jihad conveyed by the PBC to the Palestinian Arab audience. Ask Abbas about the PBC adulation of Palestinians who committed suicide attacks, Ask Abbas about PBC news clips which laud attacks on Beersheba, Sderot, Ashkelon and Ashdod, which PBC terms “illegal Jewish settlements.” These Israeli cities, which have been subjected to missile fire, are situated on lands lost to the Arabs in 1948 – not in 1967.

• Question 3:

Ask Abbas why UNRWA continues to confine thousands of descendants of Arab refugees to UNRWA refugee facilities, where they languish under the premise and promise of the “Right of Return.” to villages that do not exist. Ask Abbas why the new Palestinian Authority city, Rawabi, built near teeming UNRWA ‘refugee’ facilities, will not allow UNRWA camp residents to live there.

• Question 4::
Ask Abbas about the popular Palestinian web-hosted computer program, PalestineRemembered.com, that operates throughout the PA, which helps Palestinians to locate the villages of their grandparents from 1948, even though these towns no longer exist, to prepare them for their “return”.

• Question 5:
Ask Abbas about PA-controlled mosques and about the Friday incendiary messages conveyed by the mosques that function with PA funding and are under PA control.

• Question 6:
Ask Abbas about new official maps published by the PA, which show all of Israel as part of any future Palestinian Arab state, where ‘Palestine’ actually replaces Israel, and where every Israeli city is transformed into a Palestinian Arab city.

• Question 7:
Ask Abbas about the PA Security Force. Following the expectation that the PA security force would be engaged to crush Hamas, ask Abbas about reports of extensive Hamas-PA cooperation..

• Question 8:
Ask Abbas why the the PA has enacted no laws against money laundering for terror groups – While doing that, ask Abbas about why the PA has enacted no statutes which define any group as a terrorist organization

• Question 9:

Ask Abbas whether he will remove his widely disseminated doctorate from the schools and libraries of the PA, since Abba’s thesis claims that Zionists worked together with the Nazis to murder Jews in World War II. Ask Abbas about his New Year’s speech in which he concludes his litany of praise for killers with a salute to the legacy of Hitler’s ally, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem.

• Question 10:

Ask Abbas about his recent speeches, in which he conveys consistent praise for Palestinians who have murdered Jewish civilians in cold blood.

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None of the above questions were posed to Abbas by the Jewish dinner participants.

Former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright did ask Abbas from the deis as to whether he would condemn the two recent Palestinian murders of Israeli soldiers which took place only the week before in Kalkilya and in Hebron.

Abbas responded in the affirmative and received an applause.

However, the official Arabic language Palestinian Authority media outlets: PBC TV, PBC Radio and the PA controlled newspapers: Al Quds, Al Ayyam and Al Hayat Al Jadida, made no mention whatsoever of the statement that Abbas gave in condemnation of the recent Palestinian murders in Kalkilya and in Hebron.

What counts in conflict resolution is what leaders communicate to their own people in their own language.

The consistent absence of PA declarations for peace and reconciliation with Israel n the Arabic language in any Arab language media outlets remains a consistent policy that Arafat and now Abbas have implemented during the 20 years of the Oslo process provides no evidence of any PLO/PA expression of interest in peace and reconciliation in the Arabic language.

In that context, our agency forwarded a query to the S. Daniel Abraham Center to ask if Abbas would issue his condemnation in the Arabic language, to Arabic language media outlets of the PA.

Mr. Sobel, director of research for the S. Daniel Abraham Center, confirm that he received my query.

However, the S. Daniel Abraham Center would not respond to the question.

After all, Abbas’s “condemnation” reached all of the media in Israel, even if the Palestinian media never heard these discouraging words from Abbas.

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David Bedein
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.

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