The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #111301   Message #2343379
Posted By: CarolC
18-May-08 - 12:53 AM
Thread Name: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
beardedbruce, we have no way of knowing if it is a fair estimate or not. You can pick a number you like and run with it if you want, but I choose not to.

I also dispute the idea that all of the Jews who fled the Arab countries did so exclusively because of the actions of Muslims.   We know that Israel engaged in acts of terrorism in Arab countries in order to create an untenable situation for the Jews in those countries so they would have to leave. There's no way to know how many would have stayed had Israel not done these things, but Israel bears a lot of responsibility for its influx of refugees, so it's not at all correct to try to make comparisons about which country resettled more refugees.

If Israel was responsible for the non-Jewish Palestinian refugees, and it was also responsible for many of the Jewish refugees, it bears a much greater responsibility for making sure that those refugees are settled. And on top of that, it is against international law for a country to not allow refugees to return to their homes after a war has ended, so all of the refugees from what is now Israel have a legal right to return to their homes according to international law.

You have asserted that the governments of the Arab countries from which Jews fled ought to allow them to return, but you have not been able to provide any information about whether or not any of those Jews has expressed a desire to return to their countries of origin, so I think that assertion is just a distraction. The governments of those other countries don't have a responsibility to repatriate anyone if there is no one who wants to be repatriated.