Wilson Center and 'Anti-Israel' propaganda--(Used program on UNRWA to attack Israel)

Are the Woodrow Wilson International Center’s programs on Israel so one-sided as to violate the center's congressional mandate for objective research?

The center held an April 24 panel discussion on the United Nations and the Palestinian refugees, and the role of the United Nations World Relief Agency (UNWRA), to "reflect on the contribution that the agency has made to the prosperity and stability of the Middle East."

This event ignored the view, held by members of Congress, among others, that the UNWRA prolongs the conflict by tolerating anti-Israel incitement in its schools and subsidizing "refugee" descendants.

The center's hijacked UNRWA program gave a platform to irrelevant, politically motivated, and incendiary anti-Israel comments.

"I challenge anyone here to come up with a legal or moral remedy that could support the claim that Israel makes to have a right to be a Jewish state," declared Ali Abunimah, creator of the virulently anti-Israel web site, Electronic Intifada.

Neither his fellow panelists, former U.S. ambassador Philip Wilcox Jr. who is now president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, and UNRWA Commissioner-General Karen Koning Abu Zayd, nor the moderator, the Wilson Center’s David Miller, did so.

When Abunimah ranted about "thousands of Palestinian political prisoners" in Israeli jails, "Israeli massacres" in the Gaza Strip and "indiscriminate Israeli fire," Wilcox, Abu Zayd and Miller sat mute.

Despite the ostensible topic, the role of UNRWA, the panel spent most of its time attacking Israel.

Abunimah, regularly calls Israel a "racist" state and claims that the Oslo accords set up an "apartheid regime." No authority on UNRWA, he repeated this slander at length and without challenge at the Wilson panel.

Wilcox, whose Foundation for Middle East Peace, focuses on settlements and other "wrong-doing" by Israel, headed the U.S. consulate in east Jerusalem, but is not an expert on UNRWA. He portrayed Israel as the obstacle to peace and argued for U.S. diplomatic engagement with Hamas, the Iranian-backed group designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization.

"The commitment to abide by previous agreements, to foreswear the use of violence and recognition of the adversary, these are novel conditions ..." Wilcox opined. In fact, previous American governments would not negotiate with the PLO until it agreed to meet those conditions. The relevancy of Wilcox's view regarding Hamas to UNRWA was never explored.

The one-sided event seemed to violate congressional standards for funding, including that the center remain a “neutral forum for… informed dialogue." It raised the question of vetting of program participants. Forums should feature speakers with relevant expertise, who inform, not propagandize.

Interestingly, Abu Zayd presented a different picture of Palestinian Arab refugees than is usually shown by news media, She stated that only a third of those still designated as refugees lived in camps and that even these were not "refugee camps" in the usual meaning, since residents were free to move elsewhere in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Jordan or Syria.

She said that people remained because these are neighborhoods in which their friends and relatives live. Virtually all of those designated as Palestinian refugees work and only six percent receive hardship funds.

He thanked UNWRA because, although his father had been able to return to his village after being displaced briefly in Israel's 1948 War of Independence, that displacement won him refugee classification and enabled him to attend college on an UNRWA scholarship.

Was this one-sided panel a one-time mistake? A May 11 program, "Breakthrough or Breakdown: The Obama Administration and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process," lacked an extremist like Abunimeh, but reiterated the one-side approach.

All speakers advocated the conventional wisdom that Israel was the problem and that concessions should not be demanded of the Palestinians. So unbalanced was the event that even one of the panelists observed that it would have been more interesting if there had been at least some disagreement among participants.

Substantive congressional oversight may be overdue to ensure that The Wilson Center complies with its mandate to be a neutral forum for serious policy debate.

Carol Greenwald is president of Potomac Investments and attended the Wilson Center's programs on UNRWA and Israel.

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That would be Ali Abunimah, close friend and confidant of Barak Hussein Obama days. When The One refers to his connection with the Muslim community he's talking about Ali, and the Nation of Islam, of course.

If Ali want's his question answered, this being partially a UN event, he could check out the UN library for the definitive documents on the issue. The British Mandate, setting aside today's Israel, Gaza, West Bank and Jordan as the Jewish homeland. Jordan later split off for the Hashemites who were thrown out of Arabia. And the post WWII UN partition, rejected by the Arabs, which established a Jewish State and an Arab State. Not just an Arab State. Facts are inconvenient, Ali.

The reality is 60 years ago there was a partition of the Palestine Mandate and an exchange of populations, triggered by the UN resolution for partition. It is a disgraceful human rights violation for the countries housing so-called "refugees" now in their third or fourth generation removed not to give them full status and citizenship. This is a stain on the illiberal and illegitimate UN and the international community.

The only reason this has not happened is the persistent antisemitism still present in the UN and world as a whole.

No need for all that. Just look in the Bible. I hear it even says in the Koran that the land of Israel is Jew-boy turf. So if a document that both sides consider valid grants the land of Israel to the Jews, and the Koran, which Muslims consider valid grants the land of Israel to the Jews, I challenge Ali to give a legal or moral justification for contesting the Jewish right to the land of Israel. Our land, our state.

They lost me on UNRWA’s contribution to the peace, prosperity and stability of the region—HAH! UNRWA is what we call in Yiddish a koch lefel (stirring spoon). It adds no taste, no nutrition, no nothing. But it does keep things stirred up.

If I were a Sephardic Jew, I’d thank G-d every day for keeping my parents/grandparents away from UNRWA’s “help.” Ditto a refugee from Gush Qatif.

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