Your interview with UNRWA director general Pierre Krähenbühl (“UNRWA HEAD tells ‘Post’: You can’t just wish away a people and then hope the problem goes away” (September 12), http://jpost.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx ) was flawed by questions that the interviewer neglected to ask.

Why did a Jerusalem Post interviewer fail to use the opportunity to ask fundamental questions in her interview? Examples:

  1. When Krähenbühl speaks proudly of the 526,000 pupils educated in the organization’s schools, why did the interviewer not ask about the UNRWA curriculum, which is dedicated to the “right of return by force of arms”?
  2. Why did the interviewer not ask why UNRWA textbooks delete maps of Israel, a member in good standing of the UN?
  3. Why did the interviewer not ask about UNRWA schoolbook maps that erase names of Israeli cities and substitute names of Arab villages?
  4. Why did the interviewer not ask about the Hamas takeover of the UNRWA workers union and UNRWA teachers union, a fact of life since 1999?
  5. Why did the interviewer not ask about the “Al Kutla” Hamas terrorist youth clubs that UNRWA lets operate in their schools?
  6. Regarding of UNRWA books that “deal with human rights,” why did the interviewer not ask about the fact that not one the UNRWA human rights school books, which we have examined, do not mention a single word about human rights for anyone except for the residents of the UNRWA refugee camps?
  7. Why did the interviewer not ask why Dalal al-Mughrabi – killed in a 1978 terrorist attack where she murdered 38 civilians, including 13 children – is glorified in four UNRWA schoolbooks, as a “heroine and martyr of Palestine”?

When only “softball” questions are asked in an interview, the value of that interview is greatly diminished.

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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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