1948 ARAB - ISRAELI WAR
"You can be sure, therefore, that when someone calls for ‘right of return’ and ‘ending the occupation’, they are talking about the ‘occupation’ of 1948, not 1967"
Source: Fresno Zionism
It’s a no-brainer that for the 4 to 5 million hostile Arabs, 99% of whom have never lived in Israel, who have grown up and been formed under the thumbs of the most radical terrorist factions in the ‘refugee’ camps of Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority (PA), to ‘return’ to pre-1967 Israel would be catastrophic.
Everyone knows this. How could it be otherwise? And yet, the ‘right of return’, a ‘right’ which doesn’t exist anywhere in international law, combined with a hereditary refugee status — something which no other class of refugees has ever been granted — is insisted upon by those who at the same time claim that their goal is ‘two states living side by side at peace’.
The premier example, of course, is the PA, which includes the ‘right of return’ as part of their definition of a ‘two-state solution’. We’ve been through this before: a state of ‘Palestine’ where Jews are not allowed, and what used to be Israel, which will be an Arab-majority state. Good luck to the Jews there!
Another example is the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, which holds the ‘right of return’ as one of its objectives. Thanks to friend-of-Obama Ali Abumimah for stating this clearly:
An overwhelming majority of organizations have endorsed Palestinian civil society’s two calls for boycott, divestment and sactions against Israel and for academic and cultural boycott of Israel — until it ceases to deny Palestinian history, ends the Occupation, ceases discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and permits displaced Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.
You can be sure, therefore, that when someone calls for ‘right of return’ and ‘ending the occupation’, they are talking about the ‘occupation’ of 1948, not 1967. The advocates of BDS make a big deal about how it is a non-violent strategy, but clearly the denouement will not be non-violent, not when the ‘returnees’ start to try to claim ‘their property’.
This provides a test to distinguish those who really do desire coexistence from those who want to throw the Jews into the sea (an expression perhaps originated by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Hassan al-Banna). Do they call for ‘right of return’? Do they support the BDS delegitimization strategy? If so, they fail the test.
Even J Street is careful to claim that they are opposed to BDS. ButJewish Voice for Peace, the only ‘Jewish’ organization on the ADL’s list of the top ten most anti-Israel groups in America, supports it.
Locally, Peace Fresno explicitly calls for right of return and supports BDS (as if anyone cares). The Fresno Center for Nonviolence does, too. Do they see a contradiction? Probably not.
