For the better part of 21 years, ever since the launch of negotiations between Israel and the PLO, the Jewish media, as a matter of a policy of negligent reporting, have played down what the PLO, the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA communicate in the Arabic language to the Palestinian people.

The following link reflects some of the pieces that our agency has produced over the past 11 years:

http://www.cfnepr.com/205640/Articles%2Dand%2Dessays

Finding out what the other side conveys to their people is not a rocket science. There are daily memos that emanate from all PA offices. There are three PA controlled newspapers. And the PA runs the PBC TV and radio stations, 24/7. Most importantly, there are tens of diligent Palestinian journalists who can be retained, full time, or part time, to provide the news media with clear, honest reports from the scene of the action. The courage of Palestinian reporters who stand up against the authoritarian rule of the PA and Hamas remains an unwritten story.

However, the Jewish media prefers to cover the story without hiring Palestinian reporters and without following their news outlets, allowing news stories to be filtered through editors who want to report to their readers that some kind of peace process is ensuing.

Our news operation acts differently. We work with Palestinian reporters and with Israeli journalists who know Arabic on a PHD level.

Over the past six years, we have been filming Palestinian education in the UNRWA camps that serve the descendants of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war. We have also acquired and commissioned translations of the new Palestinian school books published by the PA with funding from the US and other nations, and we have provided our coverage for media outlets in all nations that currently fund the PA and UNRWA.

In that context, our agency has just released a new film, UNRWA GOES TO WAR, shot on location in UNRWA facilities near Gaza,.Ramallah and Jenín, filmed by Palestinian TV crews who literally took their lives in their hands.

This film will be screened at the US Congress and for 12 other legislative bodies that fund UNRWA in the near future.

We have asked to screen 15 minutes of “UNRWA GOES TO WAR” at the forthcoming session of the American Jewish Press Association annual conference that will take place in Maryland, at the session designed for Jewish journalists to share their special projects.

Yet AJPA has so far said no to the screening. We appeal that decision.

To agree to such a decision would be to accept the unstated policy of the Jewish media refusing to hear and see what Palestinians and their allies in UNRWA openly communicate.

This open letter represents a formal appeal to fellow members of the American Jewish Press Association to reconsider that AJPA restriction and to lend the floor of the conference to another form of news coverage.

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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.