In an Arabic-language article published last week, I argued that Israel's new campaign to artificially equate Palestinian refugees and Jews who either immigrated or fled to Israel from Arab states relies on a forced and false analogy. Zionist ideology contradicts the notion that these Israeli Jews are refugees, and six decades of Israeli policy demonstrate Israel's complete disregard for Palestinian refugee rights. Israel's manipulative strategy is part of a public relations campaign that is both cynical and hypocritical.
At the very core of Zionist ideology is the idea that Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people. If this is the case, and Jews living in Israel are citizens of their singular national homeland, then the state cannot consider them refugees -- they cannot be returnees to Israel and refugees from another homeland at the same time. Demanding that the international community treat Jewish immigrants as refugees is therefore an act of "dezionization." If, however, they are refugees and Israel is not their homeland, then their primary right is the right to return.
An article titled "Hitching a Ride on the Magic Carpet" in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz highlighted Jewish immigrants who have spoken out against the notion that they are refugees. Each one has indicated that an Israeli citizen cannot be both a refugee and a Zionist. The late Yisrael Yeshayu, a Yemeni-born former Knesset Speaker said, "We are not refugees. [Some of us] came to this country before the state was born. We had messianic aspirations." Shlomo Hillel, a government minister and an active Zionist from Iraq explained, "I don't regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because they wanted to, as Zionists." Former Knesset member Ran Cohen, who immigrated from Iraq, uses even more direct language: "I have to say: I am not a refugee." He added: "I came at the behest of Zionism, due to the pull that this land exerts, and due to the idea of redemption. No one is going to define me as a refugee."
The intention of Israel's campaign is not to protect the rights of Jews, nor to deliberately "dezionize" Israel, but rather to undermine the rights of the Palestinian refugees, whom it uprooted, dispossessed, and expelled from their homeland. Israel has since continued to deny Palestinians our rights as enshrined in international law and in successive United Nations resolutions, the foremost of which is the right of return.
Responses to my Arabic-language article accuse me of denying that Jews suffered targeted persecution in many states. I do not. Jews and others who were forced out of the countries they call home, and who consider themselves refugees, should be permitted to return. We Palestinians are unfortunately well acquainted with exile, and we stand in solidarity with all people who struggle to return to the countries from which they were expelled.
What we cannot tolerate is Israel denying the rights of those whom it has itself turned into refugees while demanding refugee recognition for some of its own citizens for the sake of compensation and undercutting the Palestinian right of return to homes and lands from which our people were forced out in 1948. In launching such a deceptive campaign, Israel is not fighting for the rights of its people; it is seeking to distort the Israeli-Palestinian struggle and deny rights to the Palestinians it ethnically cleansed 64 years ago.
Every child deserves to be loved and feel safe. The best way is to have the adult community decide their children's life is more important than continuing the hate.
It is a shame that Arab countries do not allow Jews to be full citizens in those countries. These Jews had ancestors live in these countries for thousands of years. Why they were kicked out of their land makes no sense except for those who want to rule a country by hate.
We pro-Israel people AGREE with you.
The PROBLEM is that every single leading Palestinian voice does NOT just want freedom for Palestinians. They want to wipe Israel out. They want to erase Israel from the map. They admit this every time they open their mouths.
So why is a Palestinian born in the West Bank still called a "refugee?"
Same with Gaza.
How about a "Palestinian" born in Syria, or Lebanon, or Egypt or Jordan? Why are they "refugees?" They are Arabs born in an Arab country.
The tension between whether Jews should work against anti-semitism in their native countries to further Jewish assimilation vs. establishing a Jewish State in Palestine has been the very basis for opposition to Zionism amongst Jews for over a hundred years.
For, contrary to Zionism's myths, "all" Jews, or even "most" Jews are NOT indigneous to Palestine.
This can be shown by their "right of return," which exists for any Jew (even an American one from Brooklyn who converted yesterday, with no past ties to the region whatsoever), who by dint of yesterday's conversion is deemed to be legally "returning" from an "absence" of over 2000 years.
How such people can be considered "indigneous" to Palestine simply beggars belief.
And, on top of that, to then claim that this "right of return" trumps that of its real indigenous persons, many still with the deeds and keys to the land from which they were displaced JUST 64 years ago? Really?
Whatever one may think about the claim Palestinian Arabs may have to Palestine, the Zionist claim that any Jew (even an American one from Brooklyn who converted yesterday) has a GREATER right to the land than these indigenous peoples is the height of ludicrousness.
It is one thing to IRNORE the Zionist Project's role in triggering the expulsions, but it is outrageous to use them to DEFEND the triggering cause in the first place.
Like every country on Earth, Israel has the right to set their own immigration standards. And via democracy, the majority of Israelis set the immigration standards.
I'm sorry that your side only controls 99 percent of the Middle East instead of 100 percent, but you're going to have to cry it out and walk it off.
Hanan Ashrawi's absurd "logic" in denying that actual Jewish refugees were refugees, yet the grandchildren of Palestinian refugees who were born in the "Palestinian" West Bank and Gaza ARE currently refugees, is literally insane, and absurdly dishonest.
It's honestly disgusting that people like Hanan Ashrawi are given a column here. Why do professional liars get a platform?
Also, like everyone else on the rabidly "pro-Palestinian" side, Hanan Ashrawi still seems to think that someday there will be a "return" of millions of Palestinians (99% of whom never lived in Israel) flooding into Israel. In other words, Hanan Ashrawi, like almost everyone else on the rabidly pro-Palestinian side, does not want peace with Israel. "She" wants to erase Israel as a Jewish state. That's her only goal.
In other words, people like Netanyahu are exactly CORRECT about the Palestinian side. They still don't want peace with Israel. They want to remove Israel from the map.
So, knowing this, why should Israel hand even one inch of West Bank land near Israel over to people who want to destroy Israel?
Anyone who disagrees with Zionism, Israel or Judaism must be attacked as viciously as possible.
You're lying.
An excellent summary of all of your comments.
Muslims who ran from India in 1949 and who were accepted in Pakistan because they were Muslims were still called "refugees". Ionian Greeks who were exiled from Turkey and accepted in Greece because the were Greek or Greek Orthodox were still called "refugees". Volga Germans who were chased out of Russia in 1945 but accepted by Germany, as Germans, even though they had never been there, were still called "refugees".
And so on. There can be both a push and a pull.
Ms, Ahsrawi seems to be saying that because the Zionist State was created, amongst other reasons, to give a place to persecuted people, those people had a place to go, therefore they didn't need a place to go, therefore there didn't have to be the Zionist State. That is not helpful reasoning.
"Moreover, as the report also documents, these massive human rights violations were not only the result of state-sanctioned patterns of oppression in each of the Arab countries, but they were reflective of a collusive blueprint, as embodied in the Draft Law of the Political Committee of the League of Arab States."
"This is a story that needs to be heard. It is a truth that must now be acknowledged."
For real life example see David Harris' HP article about his wife and her family who lived in Libya.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-harris/hanan-ashrawi-is-to-truth_b_1851044.html
Setting the record straight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww7jOpFsUWk
http://www.cija.ca/jerusalem/revisionism-rejectionism-and-arab-israeli-peace/
His reason for rejection-- the area had too many Israeli Arabs living there.
How is it remotely possible to have rational negotiations with a person of such cynicism and revanchism?
http://www.haaretz.com/news/abbas-olmert-offered-pa-land-equaling-100-of-west-bank-1.1747
In the Palestinian leaked papers we see that Tzipi Livni offered to have Palestinian towns cut in half by the green line under full Palestinian control to which Palestinian negotiators refused.
Abbas refused any territory with Israeli Arabs because it doesn't conform with his revanchist dogma.
No other reason.
Simple as that.
No rational negotiations are possible with such a person.
Fact: Kuwait summarily deported 300,000 Arabs from their country.
ONLY requirement used for deportation? At least one grandparent born in a British Mandate or Palestine province of Ottoman empire.
NOTHING can be more cynical and hypocritical.