Wolfgang: "That's something completely different from the "right to return" Palestinians and German Neonazis mean: The right to throw out the occupants of the forefathers' houses and lands for whom since roughly sixty years this is home"

There is another factor. Many of these refugees still hold title deeds to their property and even keys to their front doors. If someone steals my car and manages to keep it for a number of years, that still does not entitle him to consider it his. If my grandson wanted to get it back, it would still be the property of my family, even if the thief had managed to hold onto it for a whole generation. I know this scenario sounds a bit extreme, but I hope it illustrates the point I am making. If we follow your line of reasoning, about offspring etc., we basically end up with a version of the law of the jungle: the dominance of the strongest over the weakest. In other words, what has been happening since the first tribe of cavmen hit their neighbours over the head, took their food, tools and women, and managed to haneg onto them. There was no redress for the victims. While this is often the reality, I thought we were supposed to be trying to 'evolve' beyond that?


Bbruce: as soon as I saw Steve Plaut going on about 'self-hating Jews' and 'anti-semites' (despite Arabs being Semites, too) I almost switched off. Oh no, I groaned, not yet another well-funded revisionist apologist for Israel's land grabs and disregard for the natives....

But I steeled myself and will go back and read it all the same when I have a quiet moment. But the gist of it (along with much other pro-zionist thought) seems to be as usual that 'might is right', and the Palestinians 'brought all this on themselves'. It reminds me of the logic occasionally employed by men who hit their wives 'it's your fault - you made me do it'. Logic and morality have been turned on their heads.

"The demand for a "right of return" by Palestinians to Israel is no doubt the most absurd political demand floating anywhere around the planet"

But the 'right of return' for Jews who have been living generations in other countries and are in no fear for their lives is beyond question somehow? If it's ok for the Jews, surely it must be ok too for their cousins, the Palestinians.