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Anyway, it is fair (or at least, was it fair up to, say, 1990) to compare the Palestinian "right of return" to Israel with the German "right of return" to Eastern Europe?
After all, both ethnic Germans and Palestinian Arabs got expelled (in the mid-1940s and/or late 1940s) from areas where they and their families had often/mostly lived for centuries as a result of their side losing a war.
Also, for the record, I would like to point out that my parents are the ones who first introduced me to this comparison back when I asked them about the Palestinian demand for a "right of return" to Israel. Their response to me was that it is unfair to expect Israel to agree to this Palestinian demand as long as countries such as the Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, and Lithuania refuse to allow the ethnic Germans who lived there before World War II, as well as the descendants of these ethnic Germans, to move back there.
Anyway, it is fair (or at least, was it fair up to, say, 1990) to compare the Palestinian "right of return" to Israel with the German "right of return" to Eastern Europe?
After all, both ethnic Germans and Palestinian Arabs got expelled (in the mid-1940s and/or late 1940s) from areas where they and their families had often/mostly lived for centuries as a result of their side losing a war.
Also, for the record, I would like to point out that my parents are the ones who first introduced me to this comparison back when I asked them about the Palestinian demand for a "right of return" to Israel. Their response to me was that it is unfair to expect Israel to agree to this Palestinian demand as long as countries such as the Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, and Lithuania refuse to allow the ethnic Germans who lived there before World War II, as well as the descendants of these ethnic Germans, to move back there.
Thoughts on this? Is this a valid analogy?
Yes and no.
There was about the same number of Palestinian and Jewish refugees in 1948 (about 600 - 650 thousand on both sides). The Jewish refugees came from other Middle Eastern countries where they lived since the Roman times.
The Jews had absorbed every single Jewish refugee and gave them full citizenship.
The Arabs put Palestinians in guarded refugee camps and refused to give them citizenship. From 1948 to 1967 these camps were administered by Arab governments, so they had plenty of time to absorb Arab refuges. They didn't.
You can't talk about right of return for Palestinians without considering the fate of Jewish refugees.
There isn't and never will be a right of return for the Jews - they obviously can't expect anything but death if they are crazy enough to return to Iraq or Egypt.
At any rate, you can't take a country with several million Jews, flood it with 2-3 million Palestinians who hate them more than anything in the world and spent the last 70 years dancing in the streets every time some terrorist blows up a pizza parlor full of four-five year old kids, and expect anything but a civil war. Just look at what the Arab nationalists and religious fanatics did to Lebanon, not that long ago considered the jewel of the Middle East.
About 70% of the land that was supposed to become a Palestinian Arab state is now part of Jordan. Jordan occupied it, annexed it, killed about 10,000 Palestinians in one weekend and expelled the rest, yet nobody is asking for them to return that land, nobody is calling the Jordanian ruling family "war criminals", nobody is talking about "divestment" from Jordan, and nobody is talking about "right of return" to Jordan even though Jordan is basically the same population.
The "right of return" is just another method to apply pressure to Israel. It has neither the moral nor practical base.
I wasn't aware of the German side of it. I wish you would have explained further.
To the best of my knowledge, a large part of the Palestinians were people who actually left because they were warned of an imminent attack on Israel. It seems to me that if you leave under those conditions, you forfeit the right to favors.
I'm short on time, but I took a quick peek at Wikipedia which seemed to imply that all that happened with Germany in the 1940s was that Nazi laws were revoked.
I wasn't aware of the German side of it. I wish you would have explained further.
What exactly do you want me to explain here?
Yes, 12-15 million Germans were expelled from their homes in Eastern Europe after the end of World War II so that the territory that they were living on could be given (or returned) to Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Soviet Union, and Lithuania.
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To the best of my knowledge, a large part of the Palestinians were people who actually left because they were warned of an imminent attack on Israel. It seems to me that if you leave under those conditions, you forfeit the right to favors.
At the same time, though, one can argue that the creation of Israel itself in 1948 was a violation of self-determination to some extent. After all, in a free and fair sovereignty plebiscite, the Negev would have very likely voted to join Palestine, rather than Israel, in 1948.
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I'm short on time, but I took a quick peek at Wikipedia which seemed to imply that all that happened with Germany in the 1940s was that Nazi laws were revoked.
Interesting question.
Please see what I wrote right above in regards to this and then get back to me on this.
Yes, 12-15 million Germans were expelled from their homes in Eastern Europe after the end of World War II so that the territory that they were living on could be given (or returned) to Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Soviet Union, and Lithuania.
At the same time, though, one can argue that the creation of Israel itself in 1948 was a violation of self-determination to some extent. After all, in a free and fair sovereignty plebiscite, the Negev would have very likely voted to join Palestine, rather than Israel, in 1948.
Please see what I wrote right above in regards to this and then get back to me on this.
There could not be a free or fair plebiscite in the conditions of 1948, with Arabs and Jews constantly fighting for years prior to it. It was not the time for plebiscites anyway, it's a folly to project our current standards on the conditions of 1948. Actually, it's not even a current standard either, although it does happen sometimes.
There could not be a free or fair plebiscite in the conditions of 1948, with Arabs and Jews constantly fighting for years prior to it. It was not the time for plebiscites anyway, it's a folly to project our current standards on the conditions of 1948. Actually, it's not even a current standard either, although it does happen sometimes.
There were already several plebiscites before 1948, though, such as shortly after WWI and in 1935.
However, my point about the Negev was based on the fact that, as far as I know, its population was overwhelmingly Arab-majority back it 1948. Thus, I find it unlikely that the inhabitants of the Negev would have preferred to join Israel rather than Palestine back in 1948.
There were already several plebiscites before 1948, though, such as shortly after WWI and in 1935.
However, my point about the Negev was based on the fact that, as far as I know, its population was overwhelmingly Arab-majority back it 1948. Thus, I find it unlikely that the inhabitants of the Negev would have preferred to join Israel rather than Palestine back in 1948.
Actually, as far as I know, the Jews initially agreed to a smaller country that they ended up getting after the war of 1948. So if the Arabs agreed to the proposed division, they would keep much more of Arab-majority territory. Since they've rejected the agreement and chose to attack instead (which made perfect sense given that they had regular armies more or less well equipped with more or less modern arms, and the Jews had basically a ragtag guerilla force), the Jews got more territory than they initially agreed to. Not sure if that included Negev or not. And it is true that vast numbers of Arabs fled because the Arab propaganda was telling them to get out of the way of approaching Arab armies. It is also true that many villages were destroyed or driven away by Jewish armed groups, just like many Jews were killed or driven away by Arabs in Israel and in Arab countries. It was not a good-vs-evil, black-and-white, clear cut event. Just like Irish independence, or the Hungarian uprising of 1956, while I support these causes, I realize they were not angels.
Also, were the inhabitants of Negev primarily Arab or Bedouin ? The Bedouin may have chosen to stay in a Jewish state - their relationship with Arabs is not very good even today. From what I read, some Bedouin clans even took up arms in defense of Jewish kibbutzes in 1948. It's not that simple.
I wasn't aware of the German side of it. I wish you would have explained further.
To the best of my knowledge, a large part of the Palestinians were people who actually left because they were warned of an imminent attack on Israel. It seems to me that if you leave under those conditions, you forfeit the right to favors.
I'm short on time, but I took a quick peek at Wikipedia which seemed to imply that all that happened with Germany in the 1940s was that Nazi laws were revoked.
Interesting question.
I'm not sure where you looked on wikipedia but the expulsion of the Germans following WW2 was one of the biggest ethnic cleansings in history.
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