The Palestinians have destroyed the “right of return,” so why are people still fighting for it?
The more moderate sounding version of the non-Israeli side of the middle east conflict is that war will continue against Israel until the Palestinians get the right of return. This is the position stated by Hezbollah members when talking to westerners and also when talking among themselves.
I think it’s the default sentiment in all of the states that are holding Palestinians prisoner in camps, supposedly awaiting the day when Israel is gone and they can send those Palestinians back.
But it’s also completely obsolete. Consider that under Arafat and afterwards a couple of generations of Palestinians have been taught, completely successfully, that God wants them to kill the Jews. The have made suicide bombings into their national sport. They celebrate every slaughter.
It should be completely obvious that if Israel allowed millions of Palestinians who’ve been taught that God wants them to kill Jews into Israeli neighborhoods, that’s exactly what many of these Palestinians would do. The sectarian violence would rival the worst parts of Iraq.
Israelis should shoot their own children before letting murder-indocrinated Palestinians into their neighborhoods. Killing their own children would be more merciful than leaving them to the hatred of the Palestinians.
The theology that makes killing Jews a requirement, the theology that makes killing Jews a sacrement has killed “the right of return” more completely than any Zionist aspirations ever could. Jews will not put their people, their families, their children into that kind of danger. Palestinians can’t live with Jews. It’s not possible anymore.
Everyone in the middle east is close enough to that horror that they should be able to see that I’m right.
I want to say to everyone who demands the right of return, and especially those, like Hezbollah, who pledge war until this return happens, you demand the impossible. Have you never noticed the obvious, that the idiology of hatred has made your demand impossible years after it was first made? Or, perhaps if you’re honest with yourself, you will see that you are affected by the same mania of hatred that is spoiling Palestinian society. Perhaps hatred has made you need to see blood spilled without limit. Because that’s what the demand resolves to either way, either it’s a demand for limitless war, or for a living arrangement that can only cause limitless sectarian violence.
Look at the mass slaugher between shiites and sunnis in Iraq where hundeds die in a day. Could the right of return possibly create a situation different than that? Why does every muslim want to turn Israel into another Iraq?
Update: I notice that Aziz Poonawalla has been thinking along somewhat similar lines (over at Eteraz rather than at one of his usual sites)
November 12th, 2006 at 3:55 am
I can’t believe you actually accept and propagate this nonsense. Palestinians of either Muslim or Christian persuasion have no more been taught that G-d wants them to kill Jews than Jews have been instructed by G-d to kill Palestinians. What a load of hogwash and lies. It might make you feel better about justifying the denial of human rights to Palestinians, but its a load of crap. As for Iraq, the sectarian violence flared up as a direct result of US invasion - overwhelmingly egged on by Israel. Oh, and the Mossad black flag operations have kicked things a lot too. People aren’t stupid, and they won’t be taken in by your tripe. Or do you think gullible Jews and goyim accept bullshit?
November 12th, 2006 at 12:29 pm
Certainly the state of Palestinian society is so extraordinarily bad that I can understand that people find it hard to believe.
I’m really not looking forward to the extremely depressing task of documenting what’s going on, but I suppose I should so that people like you who would deny horror rather than face it have something to ponder.
Not this morning though.
November 12th, 2006 at 12:54 pm
I just noticed that you smear the Iraqi war on Israel.
I’m amused. I suppose there’s nothing that can’t be blamed on Israel after all.
December 1st, 2006 at 1:55 am
Absolutely right Alpha.
Cornelia’s own nonsense, crap, tripe, bullshit, hogwash and lies (if I may quote her) well illustrates the futility of trying to talk to such folk. In fact it pretty well illustrates the kind of obstacles that you rightly indicate stand in the way of any reasoned dialog.
December 6th, 2006 at 5:42 am
Unfortunately, everybody is paying the price for the palestinian cause in the Middle East. Ask a Lebanese… We had a civil war mainly due to them and now Hizbullah,Syria,Iran are in the process of destroying us also due to them…Whatever anyone’s argument, the palestinian-Israeli conflict needs an urgent solution otherwise wars and terrorism would be our daily norm here…
December 6th, 2006 at 1:46 pm
Nancy, I love your blog.
I think the problem is a culture that seeks war and revenge and promotes violence and hatred to each new generation instead of looking for ways to make life good to people. And I’m afraid that it’s mostly coming from the way Islam is being interpreted (by almost everyone in the middle east - it’s not just Shiites or just Sunnis).
And it’s only this insistence on violence that has made any solution impossible. I honestly believe that if the Palestinians could have been trusted to not be a danger, if they had been friendly, they could have gotten any agreement they wanted from the Jews.
Part of the problem is that no one in the middle east (apart from the Israelis) seems to understand the politics of democracy. If you want to win an issue in a democracy you do the same thing whether you’re a citizen or a neighbor - you get the public on your side. And to do that, you have to be on the public’s side. If you decide that the public is your enemy, then you’ve completely doomed your cause from the start.
Israel is a liberal country with a liberal press. Gandhi’s movement in India worked even though the British public was less liberal than the Israeli public. But it was liberal enough. And like the lawyer he was, he acted as if this was a trial and the British public was his jury. He got their sympathy and convinced them. His non-violence was an appeal to their common humanity, and it specifically recognized the humanity of the British.
That’s the problem with Muslim society. It does not even recognize the concept of a common humanity. Muslims have never even thought of touching the hearts of others, of respecting the lives of others, and Gandhi’s method, accepting pain while refusing to do harm is entirely foreign… But it’s those foreign methods are much more suited to a very modern world of free press and democratic government than promoting hatred and vendetta which dooms everyone.
And vendetta does doom everyone, because the other fact about our very modern world is that with modern arms you can kill everyone with a very fast and simple push of a button. The way of the middle east seems to be this archaic vendetta. And after WWII, where probably near a million civilians died when their cities were deliberately firebombed, no one should even consider teaching their children to want to war! No one should even consider teaching their children to hate! You can’t create wars that last forever anymore, because war isn’t swords anymore, and it will blow back to the parents, to the teachers, to the leaders and no one will be left alive!
This is not my wish. But I think you have to understand that wars only end in two ways. Either peace is made or the war continues until one side is destroyed. People just get angrier and angrier or more and more frightened. And when the weapons that kill everyone are just sitting by your side waiting to be used, the results are inevitable!
But to get back to the subject of the Palestinian conflict, if you go back through history, even to the beginning of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, at critical steps it was the fact that Palestinians wouldn’t guarantee peaceful coexistence that caused each catastrophe and destroyed each possible resolution.
Violence is self-defeating, but I get the impression that Muslims think that peace would be sinful - or just undesirable.
Muslims need voices of sanity explaining the problem, calling for peace, explaining the danger, the foolishness, explaining what empathy is, explaining what friendship is too. These voices need to be loud enough to drown out the Nasrallahs, the Ahmadinejads.
And you need laughter too. There’s no one funnier than a puffed up fascist spouting nonsense, if only people are brave enough to laugh.
But most importantly, Hezbollah must not be allowed to preach hatred and warfare to children!
By the way, I feel clumsy today. I hope my writing is clear enough, even if it doesn’t feel very, uhm, graceful.
Anyway, I think the solution has to be that Muslim culture changes so that people WANT peace, WANT life, that people prefer friendship or love over hatred and honor and war.
And the other problem is getting people to distinguish fact from exaggeration. Something about the religion, either the assumption that non-Muslims are evil or the feeling that hatred is pious makes people exaggerate whenever talking about outsiders… But no one seems to realize that everything they’ve ever been told has been an exaggeration, that they’ve never been given a fair account of history.
December 6th, 2006 at 2:44 pm
And I added you to my blogroll ^_^
December 9th, 2006 at 9:37 am
Josh,
I found your blog through Beirut springs. I have to say i read your post with some interest. I do agree that violence may not be the answer, however, you are ignoring some important issues.
First, the Israelis, while emigrating into an already existing state of Palestine and planning the theft of the land, based on the right to return, they systematically murdered Palestinians without prejudice. One of many examples is Deir Yassine.
Second, violence begets violence, and therefore, use of violence towards the Israelis, is a result of the years of violence towards the Palestinians (as is the result of the creation of Hezbollah, created as a result of the invasion of Lebanon by Israel). It is even now loudly said by Lieberman, the new addition to the Knesset that the Palestinians should all be killed, a sentiment that Sharon in his heyday repeated many times. Kill Palestinian children so they don’t grow up to be Palestinian adults.
The daily humiliation of a people by the Israeli army will incite hate towards the occupier. That’s right, Israelis are occupiers. I ask you Josh, how do the Palestinians lose the right to return while the Israelis, most of which are European, not of the area come to Palestine and steal, kill and humiliate the people based on this exact argument (the right to return).
And for anybody that is going to deny the facts, I would not be surprised. The problem is not the Jewish religion, but rather the Zionist ideology. Jews lived among arab in peace for hundreds of years in peace and even at one time fought side by side against the crusades. These are all documented facts.
Israel has one of the worst track record in the world with human rights violations (according to the Red Cross, UN, and B’tselem).
And as for Nancy, the fact of the matter is simple. The problem in the middle east will never go away until the Palestinian problem is resolved.
And as for the civil war (75-90), is not as cut and dry as you make it out to be. the Palestinians were not the source of the problem, it was the Syrians, as they are now. They told the American government that they could get rid of a whole people (the Palestinians) if they get the green light to go into Lebanon they are the ones that used the Palestinian issue and arming them and telling them to fight for their land and so on. Syria still does not recognize Lebanon as an independent country and still feel that Lebanon still belongs to Syrian and because of this, Syria has and always be a thorn in the Lebanese side. Now Syria is using the belligerent Hezbollah to try and get what they want, which hopefully they won’t succeed.
Chomsky, Lillienthal, Finklestein, Uri Aavnery and even Jimmy Carter have all cited that the Palestinian problem is due to the cruelty, and oppression by the Israeli state. and Jimmy Carter goes as far to say that this is worse than apartheid South Africa.
Please Josh, please get all the fact on all the issue before discounted the Palestinians right to return. And I’m still optimistic, they will go back to their land if only the Israelis are willing to work on the peace. And for those that will argue that they are, moving the Jews from Gaza only to reestablish them on more settlements in the west bank is not peace. Bulldozing peoples homes and building settlements on that land is not peace.
And josh, i did not see you mention Rachel Cory.
Peace
[Note, I reformatted Buckeye’s post, adding paragraph breaks and capital letters to make it readable - Alpha]
December 9th, 2006 at 11:38 pm
buckeye
I also found Josh blog through Beirut Spring. I hope that josh will correct your misunderstandings better then I can, however I have some remarks concerning your post..
1) Israeli emigrated but not to existing state of Palestine, there was no Palestinian state at that time. Look at any source,perhaps Wikipedia under Palestine.
2)You are right, violence begets violence, however the violence was used by Jews against Palestinians and Palestinans against the Jews. That was before the Israel became a state. Israel’s first war was initiated by its neighbours, not the other way round.
3) Jews lived in peace among arabs, true, but they were second class citizens, many jobs and certain clothes were prohibited to jews and christians but could be held or wore by muslims.
4) Israel has the worst track of human rights violation only because the journalist and people from UN/Amnesty can go more-or-less freely, that thing is impossible on the territories held by Hizbullah or in Egypt, Pakistan and many other countries. That’s why there is no track records of killing over there, as an example Have you heard of killing of thousands of baluchis by government of Pakistan during early 80-ties? I don’t think so.
5) If you take your view of history from Filkenstein as well as from Chomsky (who was a great linguist but poorly knows his politics), I am not surprised by your views. Try to read more balanced staff I think Avi Shlaim who is a good historian and so called revisionist but a wee bit less controversial would be the best start.
6) Regarding Palestinians right to return.
I am afraid that living as Palestinians did for the last 20 years, after return there would be a bloodbath. Palestinians live in Lebanon in terrible conditions, they live in Syria in bad conditions, they live in Egypt in awful condition. None of that countries gave them their citizenship so Palestinians are fed on the hatred to Israel.
Why Hamas control some of the refugee camps in Lebanon ?
Palestinians still live in refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria and Egypt. The only country who gave them citizenship is Jordan, others killed them, put them in refugee camps ( the biggest one in Lebanon is near Sidon, Ain al Hilweh) and forgot about them.
And you want them to return? Their children to return. Palestinians have a lot of children in these camps. Their children are also stateless refugees, although they have been born in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt. They and their children have been fed on hatred to Israel and to Jews, because that was convenient for the states where they got refugee status.
You think there would not be a bloodbath?