The Australian government has announced that it will double to its aid to UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which the UN created as a “temporary” entity in the wake of the Israel War of Independence, to help half a million Arabs displaced as a result of these hostilities.

Seventy-three years later, in texts taught in the UNRWA schools, Israel does not exist and is replaced by an entity known as “Palestine.”

In its defense, UNRWA claims that it has a robust system in place to ensure that the education it delivers in its classroom, including through the use of textbooks, is in line with UN values and principles.

As a journalist who has commissioned experts to examine 1000 books used in UNRWA schools in the West Bank and Gaza since their first appearance in 2000, I beg to differ.

UNRWA “education” is instead based on:

  1. De-legitimization of both the existence of the State of Israel and the Jews’ very presence in the country. Israel does not appear on the map and is replaced by Palestine as the sovereign state in the region. The Jews are presented as colonialist settlers and their cities — including Tel Aviv — do not appear on the map as well. The Jews’ holy places in the country are not recognized as such but rather presented as Muslim holy places usurped by the Jews (the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem).
  2. Massive demonization of both Israel and the Jews, with the latter being presented as enemies of Islam since its very beginning. Israel is depicted as an entirely evil entity with exclusive responsibility for the conflict while the Palestinians are portrayed as the ultimate victim. No objective information is given by UNRWA about Israel and the Jews that would balance this picture even slightly. Nor is there any reference in the books to Jewish-Israeli individuals as ordinary human beings. Rather, they are dealt with as a group, with the accompanying connotations of alienation and existential threat to the Palestinians.
  3. Absence of education for peace and coexistence with Israel. Instead, the books feature a call for a violent struggle for “the liberation of Palestine”.

All this begs the question: Will UNRWA continue to confine millions of these descendents of 1948 refugees to the indignity of life in 59 “temporary” refugee facilities for yet another 70 years?

While UNRWA acts under the aegis of the UN General Assembly, which will never allow a change in the UNRWA mandate to keep Arab refugees in refugee perpetuity, nothing prevents UNRWA donors such as the US from adopting policies that would solve the plight of five million people confined to the indignity of refugee life for perpetuity. In that context, the US could lead the 67 UNRWA donations to make the following reasonable conditions to renew aid to UNRWA:

  1. Cancel the new UNRWA curriculum, based on Jihad, martyrdom and the “right of return by force of arms”, which have no place in UN education, whose theme is “Peace Begins Here”. UNRWA contracts for exclusive use of Palestinian Authority schoolbooks in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and Gaza. Like all UN agencies, UNRWA is supposed to run schools based on the UN slogan “Peace Begins Here.” PA education, however, runs schools based on the ideology of the Palestine Liberation Organization: Conquest of Palestine by force of arms. The time has come for UNRWA donor nations, beginning with the US, ask for a cancelation of that UNRWA-PA contract.
  2. Cease paramilitary training in all UNRWA schools, an absurdity that our news agency and think tank has filmed and documented and shared with all UNRWA donor nations.
  3. Insist that UNRWA dismiss employees affiliated with Hamas- in accordance with laws on the books in western nations that forbid aid to any agency that employs members of a terrorist organization.
  4. Demand that UNRWA advance resettlement of fourth and fifth generation refugees from the 1948 war, who have spent seven decades relegated to the indignity of refugee status, passed down from one generation to another.
  5. Facilitate an audit of $1.5 billion donor funds that emanate from 67 nations, much of it in cash, which has resulted in wasted resources, duplication of services and an undesired flow of cash to the UNRWA-based terror groups that have dominated UNRWA operations for years.

*DAVID BEDEIN HAS COVERED UNRWA, SINCE HE PIONEERED AN INDEPENDENT NEWS AGENCY AND THINK TANK IN JERUSALEM IN DECEMBER 1987.

WITH UNRWA AS HIS NEWS FOCUS, DAVID HAS PRODUCED 24 FILMS SHOT ON LOCATION IN THE UNRWA REFUGEE CAMPS, AUTHORED TWO BOOKS ALONG WITH HUNDREDS OF IN-DEPTH ARTICLES THAT APPEAR ON HIS WEBSITES, UNRWA-MONITOR.COM AND ISRAELBEHINDTHENEWS.COM

HOLDING A MASTER’S DEGREE IN COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION SOCIAL WORK FROM YESHIVA UNIVERSITY, IN 1980, DAVID HAS MADE NUMEROUS PRESENTATIONS ABOUT UNRWA FOR THE US CONGRESS, THE CANADIAN PARLIAMENT, THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT, THE SWEDISH PARLIAMENT AND THE GERMAN BUNDESTAG, WITH ONE PURPOSE IN MIND: UNRWA POLICY REFORM. https://israelbehindthenews.com/2018/02/06/david-bedein-leading-fight-unrwa-reform-initiative/

David is now producing  a  new movie about UNRWA policy, shot on location at UNRWA refugee  facilities in Jerusalem and in Gaza, for presentation  at the UN, at the Knesset and at the Parliaments of  leading UNRWA donor nations. 

Funds needed to produce and promote the new UNRWA documentary. 

Donations can be contributed in any currency towards that goal. https://israelbehindthenews.com/donations/

 

*ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Bedein, who grew up in Philadelphia and moved to Israel in 1970 at the age of 20, is an MSW community organizer by profession and an investigative journalist by avocation. In 1987 David established the Israel Resource News Agency, with offices at the Beit Agron Int’l Press Center in Jerusalem, where he also serves as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research. In 1991, Bedein was the special CNN middle east radio correspondent. Since 2001, Bedein has contributed features to the newspaper Makor Rishon. In 2006, Bedein became the foreign correspondent for the Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. He is the author of ” The Genesis of the Palestinian Authority” and “ROADBLOCK TO PEACE- How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict: UNRWA policies reconsidered” and has produces twenty  short films about UNRWA policy- shot on location- which can be viewed at: http://tinyurl.com/lxc6xvs

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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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