If there had been no war in 1948 Israel, or if after that the refugees had been allowed to return home, Israel would be equally made up of Jews and non-Jews.

Today the suggestion that the refugees and their families should be allowed to return home is treated by Israel as a threat to its very existence, and as a totally unrealistic demand which indicates that those expressing it are not serious in wishing peace.

And obviously the same right of return should apply for Jews driven out from other countries. All countries in the region have been damaged by the loss of refugees in this insane process.

True enough, you can't turn back history and put it back on the right tracks, and it may be that an acceptance of the "ethnic cleansing" as something which cannot be significantly undone now is necessary. But it that "democracy" in the wake of this kind of thing is a very qualified sort of democracy, as it would have been in South Africa if the whole apartheid scenario of separate development and Bantustans had been carried out more thoroughly and consistently.