The population of Israel is in large part a population of refugees. Since 1948, a sizable chunk of what is now Israel has gotten there after leaving Arab nations with lynch mobs and/or death squads more or less at their heels. It's undeniable that the "crimes of the Jews" as conceived by much of the Arab world justify the killing -- or at the very least disposession -- of any Jew, anywhere (the "resistance" organization Hizbullah, for example, has gone so far as to "resist" Jews in Argentina); and it's equally undeniable that Western leftists have such a deep ideological commitment to Islamic extremists that they're incapable of doing anything but nodding yes, yes, yes master, yes in response to whatever demands, threats, killings, and bizarre distortions of fact happen to be on today's menu.
That being the case, it's easy to see why the right of Sephardic Jews to return to their confiscated homes in Arab nations is not "on the table", so to speak (not that anybody wants the right to return to be murdered in a medieval dictatorship). Neither is anybody talking about returning their confistcated assets.
Their very existence, after all, is a criminal act. Some refugees have rights, but not them. They, we're told, don't even have a right to stay where they've fled to.
While we're here, let's examine one of the most startling examples of pure mendacity (that means he's lying) these old eyes have recently witnessed:
It further states that the "live at peace" phrase is important, since it would require Palestinians to "accept Israel's right to exist, something
that very few of them, even today, seem truly willing to do." That this is not necessarily true is unimportant, apparently. Whatever the
veracity of "very few of them," there is no requirement of acknowledgment of one's right to exist needed to live peaceably. Admittedly,
without that acknowledgment the potential for conflict is increased (and the conflict from both sides has made any "relations" issue
thorny, at best), but the criticism is really more distraction from the issue.
"Distraction", indeed. The problem here is that the denial of Israel's right to exist has consistently, for the past fifty-odd years, taken the form of insisting on a right to kill Israeli citizens. The odd statement I quote implies two possible interpretations of this fact: That killing Israelis is not inherently un-peaceful, or that killing in general is not inherently un-peaceful. Either that, or we're being asked to undergo a temporary (but quite thorough!) episode of total withdrawal from reality, just for the purposes of taking the argument seriously. Well, okay, there's a fourth option, too: It may well be that reality is not considered relevant. After all, if the "the potential for conflict is increased" only to, say, a mere 99.99% likelihood, that's not quite an absolute certainty, is it? I mean, you can at least imagine it not happening, right? If you try real hard? So, really, it can safely be disregarded (as long as you're not one of the people who'll be killed, anyway, and as long as the people who will be killed have safely been defined as Je^H^Hnogoodniks).
We advise our gentle readers to pay some attention to the polls taken in the Palestinian Authority. None of this is secret or mysterious, and, yes, it is necessarily true. The simple fact is that we are talking about a population in large part committed to destroying the state of Israel by violent means. They may or may not be justified; that's another issue. The fact that it's very unfortunate is another issue also, because right now, we're not discussing reality: We're discussing "international law". So: What we're really looking at here, far from being "a distraction", seems pretty central to this whole legal matter: The "international law" in question is either misquoted, or explicitly states that it doesn't apply in this case.
Pick one.
Of course, the whole discussion is idiotic. "International law" is gibberish. The UN doesn't establish peace. It sends unarmed soldiers in funny white hats to get shot at. Peace in this modern world of ours gets established the same way it always did: People shoot at each other until they reach a compromise they're both willing (however grudgingly) to live with. "Peace" established any other way is a temporary and meaningless joke.