I have long maintained that the GoI is ignoring Israel’s rights. It is also ignoring the rights of the Jewish refugees from Arab lands which outnumber their Arab counterparts.
There is a very important blog, Point of No return, which highlights their plight and provides information and links about the Middle East’s forgotten Jewish refugees
Anyone who follows developments in the Middle East will have found it hard to escape the latest fuss about the resurrected Saudi peace initiative .
This is the plan that demands a full withdrawal by Israel from the West Bank and East Jerusalem and ‘the right of return’ to Israel for Palestinian refugees – in exchange for ‘normalisation’ of relations between Israel and the Arab world.
While the Israeli government has rightly rejected the ‘right of return for Palestinians’ as asking Israel to commit demographic suicide, it is bizarre – and alarming – that neither the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, nor the Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, has even mentioned the rights of Jewish refugees.
Because Israel has not even tried to widen the agenda for discussion, it reinforces the Arab perception that they are the sole victims of injustice. By ignoring the Jewish refugees, Israel is doing nothing to prepare the Arab world for any demands for compensation, let alone admission of guilt for causing the Jewish exodus.
The concept of an ‘exchange of populations’ of roughly equal numbers of refugees has not even penetrated Arab consciousness.
And as long as the Arabs are shielded from feeling any responsibility for the flight of a million Jews, there is little chance of true reconciliation.
What would be the point? Israel can’t take in all those refugees, either Jewish or Arab muslim. The Arabs will never give land to Jews to hold as their own, that’s such a far-fetched fantasy as not to even be worth entertaining.
This is the same old song and dance. If Israel were to agree to pulling back to the ’67 borders, first the Arabs would swarm in and take over and then they would deny Israels right to exist and prepare to attack once again. Then Israel would have to fight the same wars all over again and take back what they’d given away. The Arab muslims will always lie to get what they want and their religion approves of doing so. In fact Islam encourages them to do so.
The only solution is to bomb the Arabs into oblivion. The alternative is for Israel to be bombed into oblivion. Ahh, the wonders and glories of Islam, religion of hatred.
Rastaman
http://www.islamanazi.com
I disagree with the writer that raising the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is the sole obligation of Israel. It is the obligation of all Jews.
It is right however to criticize Israel for not raising it as an issue, so long as that criticism is aimed also at all the major Jewish organizations including AIPAC in the states and equivilent organizations in other nations.
Getting the West to undergo an attitude adjustment and recognition that the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is a matter that must be raised in relation to any demand by Palestinians for repatriation to land that was never theirs, will require advocacy from all corners of the Jewish world.