From Time Immemorial: A Salute to Joan Peters - by Nadav Shragai

A journalist, political commentator and – believe it or not – a pro-Palestinian human rights activist, Peters served as a special adviser to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on the Israeli-Arab conflict and signed a contract to write a book about the conflict. But as soon as she learned some basic facts that did not align with the politics of her employers, she returned the advance and freed herself from any contractual obligations. After seven years of researching the topic, digging through archives and interviewing hundreds of people, Peters dropped the bomb.

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
03 September '18..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/a-salute-to-joan-peters/

Joan Peters is sorely missed right now. Four years after her death and 34 years after the publication of her bestselling book "From Time Immemorial," the U.S. administration is recognizing her claims about so-called Palestinian refugeeism.

Through her thorough research, Peters was the first to expose the lie that is Palestinian refugeeism. Now, when UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, is trying to fool the world into believing there are 5.2 million Palestinian refugees, is the perfect time to return to Peters and her grand opus.

In her 1984 book, Peters exposed for the first time how the United Nations altered the criteria for Palestinians to gain refugee status, thereby exacerbating the problem far beyond its actual scope. She discovered that by changing the definition and allowing the descents of Palestinian refugees to inherit refugee status, Palestinian refugees in large part did not fit the U.N.'s own definition of who is a refugee.

Peters exposed the very document in which the U.N. decided to invent another form of refugeeism, one unlike anything else the world had ever known. She interpreted a series of data and by doing so convinced quite a few people that many of the Palestinians who were afforded refugee status were not residents of the country "from time immemorial," as they had claimed, but were, in fact, migrant workers who had recently arrived in the country. Others would follow in Peters' footsteps, and while they may have corrected her data a bit, she was still the first. Peters' groundbreaking research slaughtered a sacred cow the academic world had avoided at all costs.

A journalist, political commentator and – believe it or not – a pro-Palestinian human rights activist, Peters served as a special adviser to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on the Israeli-Arab conflict and signed a contract to write a book about the conflict. But as soon as she learned some basic facts that did not align with the politics of her employers, she returned the advance and freed herself from any contractual obligations. After seven years of researching the topic, digging through archives and interviewing hundreds of people, Peters dropped the bomb.

Long Past Time to Expose the Palestinian 'Refugee' Scam - by Richard Goldberg and Jonathan Schanzer

...The inability of Palestinian leaders to detach from this 70-year-old story raises real concerns about whether peace is possible. But if Mr. Trump is committed, he can send a clear message to the millions living in UNRWA camps: Your leaders want to keep you in squalor, while America wants you to prosper. It's the most pro-Palestinian step an American president could take.

Richard Goldberg/Jonathan Schanzer..
Pundicity/Wall Street Journal..
06 July '18..
Link: http://schanzer.pundicity.com/21357/expose-the-palestinian-refugee-scam

If President Trump wants to promote peace in the Middle East, his first step should be to declassify a key State Department report that would end the myth of Palestinian "refugees."

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency is singularly devoted to the Palestinian refugee issue. Unrwa labels more than five million Palestinians "refugees"—an impossible figure. The first Arab-Israeli war, in 1948, yielded roughly 800,000 Palestinian Arab refugees. Perhaps 30,000 remain alive today, but UNRWA has kept the refugee issue alive by labeling their descendants—in some cases great-great-grandchildren—as "refugees," who insist on the "right of return" to their ancestors' homes. Israel categorically rejects this demand.

UNRWA's operations run counter to the broader mission of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which is to resettle those displaced by war. UNRWA's mission, on the other hand, keeps the conflict's embers glowing by refusing to resettle Palestinians in neighboring countries or even in the Palestinian territories.

If Mr. Trump wants his peace plan to have a chance, he has to challenge false Palestinian narratives. He did this by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving the U.S. Embassy there. For decades, Palestinian leaders issued maximalist claims on Jerusalem. Mr. Trump's move sent the message that making peace requires accepting reality.

Mr. Trump can send the same message by declassifying one document. In 2012 Congress ordered the State Department to disclose how many Palestinians currently served by UNRWA fled the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and how many are merely their descendants. The Obama administration classified the report, citing national security—as if revealing foreign census data were a threat to America.

Palestinian refugees: How many are there?

Elder of Ziyon..
The Times of Israel..
26 June '12..





From the PA’s official WAFA news agency:

RAMALLAH, June 20, 2012 (WAFA) – Number of refugees registered in the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) totaled 5.1 million in 2012, according to a statistical review on the current status of the Palestinian refugees published Wednesday and prepared by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) on the eve of the International Day of Refugees.

UNRWA’s statistics this year say that there are 5,115,755 registered “persons,” but only 4,797,723 “refugees.” As a footnote states:

Recent digitisation of UNRWA’s registration records enables us to present more detailed beneficiary statistics. Other registered persons include those eligible to receive services.

Which means that UNRWA is providing services to 318,032 people that even UNRWA does not consider refugees.

But this is hardly the worst mis-characterization of the word “refugees” when applied to Palestinian Arabs who fled in 1948.

Abrams - How Many Palestinian Refugees?

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
211 June '12..

Today the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (or PCBS) commemorated World Refugee Day by releasing new statistics on Palestinian refugees. Therein lies a tale.

The PCBS reported that there are now 5.1 million Palestinian refugees. Here is what it said about their age:

The Palestinian Refugees are characterized as young population where 41.7% of them are under the age of 15 years for Palestinian refugees in Palestinian territory, 35.9% of Palestinian refugees in Jordan in 2007, and 33.1% for Palestinian refugees in Syria in 2009, while 30.4% for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon in 2010.

This means, for example, that more than a third of Palestinian “refugees” in Jordan were born after 1997. That is either thirty years (if after the 1967 war) or almost fifty years (if they fled when Israel was established in 1948) after their parents or more likely grandparents arrived in Jordan. Those in Jordan have full Jordanian citizenship and vote in Jordan, which means this: a young Jordanian of Palestinian origin, whose family has lived in Jordan for thirty years and who has himself or herself always lived in Jordan, is still considered a “refugee.”

Marquadt-Bigman - Leila Hilal’s bizarre defense of UNRWA

Petra Marquadt-Bigman..
The Warped Mirror..
07 June '12..



The question of who should qualify as a Palestinian refugee has recently received renewed attention due to an initiative by US Senator Mark Kirk (R-Illinois) that will require the State Department to report how many of the roughly five million Palestinians serviced by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) were actually displaced during the Arab war against Israel in 1948 and how many are descendants.

Alluding to the ensuing controversy, Zvika Krieger, Senior Vice President of The S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace and an Atlantic contributor, posted a tweet recommending a piece by Leila Hilal “on why UNWRA services refugee’s descendents .”

It is indeed useful to know Hilal’s views on the matter, because as a former legal adviser to the Palestinian Negotiations Department, she is now often quoted when the subject of Palestinian refugees comes up.

Given Hilal’s background, it is perhaps not surprising that the piece recommended by Krieger is entitled “Israeli Leader Wrongly Blames UN and Arab States for Palestinian Refugees.”

Hilal begins her piece with a somewhat lengthy attempt to discredit the Israeli leader mentioned in her title: Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon is described as a “Knesset member representing Yisrael Beitenieu [sic], an ultra-nationalist party” and Hilal claims misleadingly that Yisrael Beitenu “advocates the transfer of Palestinian citizens of Israel as part of a political settlement.” Presumably, this is meant as a reference to the so-called Lieberman Plan that envisages a land swap including populated areas – an idea that was first formulated in the mid-1990s by a left-wing researcher who, like many Israelis back then, mistakenly believed that all the rhetoric about how strongly Israel’s Arabs identified with their Palestinian brethren meant that they would be eager to become citizens of a Palestinian state.

Rubin - Refugee Definition Promotes Conflict

Michael Rubin..
Commentary/Contentions..
01 June '12..

The Washington Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo has been doing yeoman’s work covering Senator Mark Kirk’s efforts to force the State Department to define Palestinian refugees in the same manner that the international community defines non-Palestinian refugees.

The problem about definitions exists because the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) applies one definition of refugees around the world, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) applies a different definition only to Palestinian refugees. The State Department sides with UNRWA. In a 2006 article, University of Illinois economist Fred Gottheil explained the difference between the UNHCR and UNRWA approach:

The refugee population that UNHCR serves, at any time, is the number who fled their homelands minus those refugees repatriated or resettled. Because there was virtually no repatriation or resettlement among UNRWA’s refugee population, its size includes not only those who fled their homes but also during the course of over a half-century and in considerably larger numbers their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, regardless of where and under what social, political, and economic conditions they live. Another distinction between UNRWA and UNHCR on population counts is this: Palestinians who had fled their homes from one location within Palestine to another location within Palestine – say, from a village in what became Israel to a location in the West Bank – are nonetheless defined by UNRWA as refugees, even though they had not fled their homeland. By UNHCR reckoning, they are not refugees. And counted as well among the Palestinian refugees are descendants of refugees born, raised, and living elsewhere in the Middle East and abroad, who, never having seen the Palestinian homeland, are free nonetheless to return to it and to live there permanently but choose not to do so. Their decision to reject repatriation to the Palestinian homeland had nothing to do with the principles of non-refoulement since persecution of returnees was at no time a perceived threat. They do not satisfy UNHCR’s definition of refugee.

May - Whose Middle East Policy Is It, Anyway?

Clfford D. May..
Scripps Howard News Service..
31 May '12..

If we set up an organization to provide health care, over time more people should get well. If we set up an organization to assist the poor, over time more people should earn a living. If we set up an organization to resettle refugees, over time more displaced persons should find permanent homes, acquire citizenship, and cease being refugees.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency was set up in the late 1940s after Palestinian Arab forces, backed by the armies of five Arab nations, rejected a U.N. partition plan — what we now call a two-state solution — and launched a war to destroy the fledgling State of Israel. Initially, UNRWA's mission was to "reintegrate" Palestinian Arabs displaced during the fighting into the normal life of the Middle East.

That mission changed about 1960. In a paper soon to be published in The Middle East Quarterly, Steven J. Rosen, Washington director of the Middle East Forum, documents how UNRWA, for the past half-century, has sought not to diminish the Palestinian-refugee problem but to enlarge it — even while Israel was resettling hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled from Arab and other Muslim lands.

I first wrote about this a few weeks ago, noting Senator Mark Kirk's plan to cut not a dollar of American support for UNRWA but simply to stimulate an honest discussion based on reliable data. He has now done that: Last week the Senate Appropriations Committee, on a unanimous and bipartisan basis, approved legislation requiring the State Department to tell Congress how many of the 5 million Palestinians currently receiving assistance from UNRWA were among the approximately 750,000 individuals displaced during the war against Israel, and how many are their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

Greenfield - The Patriotism of Palestinianism

Daniel Greenfield..
Sultan Knish..
30 May '12..

Each century brings forth its own patriots. Once upon a time we had Patrick Henry, today we have Senator Patrick Leahy, who declared in the Senate that his opposition to an amendment that would distinguish how much of the UNRWA's funding goes to actual refugees versus fake refugees was a patriotic act.

"I always look at what is in the United States’ interest first and foremost, and this would hurt the United States’ interests,” Senator Leahy stated firmly. It is of course difficult to find as compelling a national interest as the UNRWA, a refugee agency created exclusively for the benefit of five million Arabs, approximately 30,000 of whom are actual refugees, but all of whom hate the United States.

Senator Leahy, who could not discover a national interest in the Balanced Budget Amendment, drilling for oil in ANWR or detaining Muslim terrorists, all of which he voted against; finally discovered a binding national interest 5,500 miles away in Jordan, where "refugee camps" like Baqa'a (pop. 80,000), which are virtually indistinguishable from local towns and cities, complete with block after block of residential homes, stores and markets, multi-story office buildings, schools, hospitals and assorted infrastructure, must not be looked at too closely.

As a city which will soon celebrate its 50 year anniversary, Baqa'a is older than many modern Israeli cities and is as much a refugee camp as any of them. The only difference between Baqa'a and Ariel, is that no one in Baqa'a does anything for themselves because they are all eternal refugees with an entire UN agency dedicated to wiping their bottoms for them. A unique and singular honor in a world full of authentic refugees who have been driven out by rape squads and genocide, without getting their own minders in blue.