THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VI, Issue # 16, January 22, 2004
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
ISRAEL & THE PALESTINIAN REFUGEE ISSUE:
THE RIGHT OF RETURN
A BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEWED:
Naseer Arun (Editor), Palestinian Refugees: The Right of Return. London: Pluto Press, 2001. 294 pages. $69.95 ($22.50, paper). [1]
REVIEWER: Efraim Karsh
Few phrases have epitomized the Palestinian and Arab rejection of Israel's legitimacy more clearly than the "right of return." The
demand for the return of the 1948 refugees and their descendants to territory now part of the State of Israel, plus their financial
compensation for losses and suffering, is tantamount to advocating the destruction of Israel through demographic subversion.
In addressing non-Arab audiences, however, Palestinians have been less than genuine about their objectives, presenting this
"right" as humanitarian, as grounded in international law, and as a long-overdue redress of historical injustice.
Aruri's edited volume, based on papers presented at a conference held at Boston University Law School in April, 2000, makes for
depressing reading. Its main goal is to obstruct a two-state solution, an objective effectively repudiated by the terrorist war
launched by the Palestinians in September, 2000.
Notwithstanding the authors' euphemistic language aimed at garnering Western support for the "right of return," Palestinian
Refugees is a demeaning and dehumanizing collection that accords the adversary no rights whatsoever. Further, Aruri and
his contributors are not bothered by the facts, preferring to paint a picture of unblemished Israeli aggression and Palestinian
victimhood.
The opening section vividly demonstrates this bias. Michael Prior, a principal lecturer in Biblical Studies at the University of Surrey,
and Nur Masalha, a London-based Israeli-Arab, distort Jewish and Zionist history, presenting it as a predatory movement that
"demanded the expulsion of the indigenous non-Jewish population." Prior draws a direct line between the supposedly genocidal
nature of the biblical Exodus story and Zionist ideology and policies. Masalha brings together a tendentious string of quotes and
supposed facts from Zionist history to prove that "the Palestinian exodus of 1948 was the culmination of over half a century of
efforts, secret plans, and, in the end, brute force." Among his claims are some that have long been discredited by Palestinian
sources, notable examples being the widely inflated number of people said to have been killed during the battle for Deir Yasin
(April 9, 1948) and alleged atrocities (e.g., the raping of women) that never took place. Masalha also makes much of the bogus
Tantura massacre "discovered" by an Israeli research student.
Two articles draw a parallel between German reparations paid to Holocaust survivors and those supposedly owed to Palestinian
refugees. "It is easy to see that, if for ‘victims of Nazi persecution,' ‘victims of Zionist persecution' was substituted, a similar
situation should apply to the Palestinians," writes Atif Kubursi, Professor of Economics and Regional Studies at McMaster
University, Canada: "The German basis of compensation was all-inclusive and that is the precedent that is relevant here and
should form the basis of any estimate of Palestinian losses." Norman Finkelstein, of New York's City University, goes a step
further in this bogus analogy. "Jewish organizations misappropriated much of the moneys earmarked for the Jewish victims of
Nazi persecution," he patronizingly cautions. "It would be regrettable should moneys earmarked for the Palestinian victims of
Israel's establishment also end up in undeserving hands."
These are mind-boggling assertions, and are such not only because the Palestinian leadership during World War II was closely
aligned with the Nazis. The chapters on Palestinian refugees brazenly ignore the fact that the Palestinians and the Arab states
launched a war of annihilation against the Jewish community and the newly established State of Israel in 1948-1949, just a few
years after the Nazi extermination of European Jewry. They ignore the heavy casualties and devastation inflicted on Israel. They
also ignore the hundreds of thousands of innocent Jews who were driven from Arab lands with all their worldly goods seized. It
is as though a defeated Nazi Germany demanded reparations from Britain and the United States or from the surviving Jews.
End Note:
[1] Reviewed in Middle East Quarterly, September, 1999, p. 82.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Israeli-Arab Conflict
The Middle East & the Arabs
Radical Islam & Islamic Terrorism
More on Radical Islam & Islamic Terrorism
War & Peace in the Real World
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
January 20, 2004
The article which contained the foregoing book review appeared in the Middle East Quarterly (Fall, 2003) and can be found
on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum.
Efraim Karsh is a member of the faculty of King's College, University of London, London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland.
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