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December 07, 2006

We May Be Literally Too Stupid To Live

According to this story, there's been some minor bedwetting in Washington because the Iraq Study Group mentions the "right of return" in its section about Israel/Palestine, advocating:

"Sustainable negotiations leading to a final peace settlement along the lines of President Bush's two-state solution, which would address the key final status issues of borders, settlements, Jerusalem, the right of return and the end of conflict."

According to the article, the right of return is some way-out crazy scheme the Palestinians dreamed up on their own. Here are some representative quotes:

"This report is worrisome for Israel particularly because, for the first time, it mentions the question of the 'right of return' for the Palestinian refugees of 1948," said a senior Israeli official, who was reacting to the US policy report on condition he not be identified.

A Middle East analyst who was involved in the Iraq Study Group discussions but did not participate in drafting the report expressed surprise when the reference was pointed out to him by a reporter...

"'Right of return' is not in Oslo I or Oslo II, it's not in the Bush Rose Garden speech, it's not even in UN 181, the original partition resolution -- it's part of the Palestinian discourse," said the US analyst.

You'd expect this from an Israeli official, of course. You'd also expect the AP AFP to exhibit this type of blinkered philistine pig ignorance. But I am a little concerned that among this group of ISG "experts" there was one who didn't know:

1. It would be a little weird for 181, the original U.N. resolution calling for the partition of Palestine, to say that refugees who didn't yet exist had the right to return to homes they were already living in.

2. THIS WASN'T JUST MADE UP BY PALESTINIANS. While it's been ignored for the past 60 years and will surely never be implemented except in a symbolic way, the right of return is, of course, derived from UN resolution 194, from after the war.

Not knowing this is like being a "Mathematics analyst" on a fancy government panel who isn't aware two plus two equals four. On the other hand, maybe the "Middle East analyst" was just lying and expected the AP AFP reporter not to know the difference. That would be reassuring.

Posted at December 7, 2006 11:35 AM | TrackBack
Comments

JBO: your liberty link is broken. (Looks like
you forgot the 'y' in the source.)

Posted by: Bernard Chazelle at December 7, 2006 12:49 PM

The issue of the right of return was explicitly discussed at Camp David 2000 and was in fact one of the stumbling blocks. It's not "part of the Palestinian discourse." It's been on the table for a long time.

That US analyst is no analyst: he's a damn liar!

Posted by: Bernard Chazelle at December 7, 2006 12:56 PM

Sure, but article 11 of the resolution says that the "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours..." should be permitted to return. When have the Palestinians wanted to "live at peace" with the Zionist "sons of monkeys and pigs?" Palestine, from river to sea...sound like peace to you?

Posted by: donescobar at December 7, 2006 02:12 PM

I think you meant AFP, not AP. I've found AFP usually slightly better than AP and Reuters...but not by much.

Posted by: John Caruso at December 7, 2006 02:14 PM

It's not in permissible discourse. (Birthday hat tip to Noam Chomsky.)

Posted by: Nell at December 7, 2006 08:17 PM

We May Be Literally Too Stupid To Live

Frankly, I really do think it's about time for that asteroid to come along and do some good.

Posted by: Mike at December 7, 2006 09:07 PM

Want to see retarded? Check this out:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/12072006/frontback.htm

Posted by: Lloyd at December 7, 2006 09:58 PM

Sure, but article 11 of the resolution says that the "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours..." should be permitted to return. When have the Palestinians wanted to "live at peace" with the Zionist "sons of monkeys and pigs?" Palestine, from river to sea...sound like peace to you?


Before I even read the comments I knew damn well I'd have to hear the usual talmudic parsing of U.N. resolutions which invariably occurs. Extra points for working in some wierd islamophobic blather.

I'll ignore the idiocy of trying to work out some fucked up legalese for why you can run people into a garbage dump and steal all their property and bank accounts, but just to see if maybe there is a human underneath that screwed up zionist script have you thought about how you sound?

Say someone asked when Jews wanted to live in peace with "cockroaches" and threw in some choice quotes from the talmud. Wouldn't you instantly know you were talking to someone with a worm eaten brain? Why can't you understand what' wrong with you?

Posted by: Ed Marshall at December 7, 2006 10:25 PM

Sure, but article 11 of the resolution says that the "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours..." should be permitted to return. When have the Palestinians wanted to "live at peace" with the Zionist "sons of monkeys and pigs?" Palestine, from river to sea...sound like peace to you?

if you can prove that israel made an offer to the palestinians in these terms (that they could all return if they renounced violence(1)), then you have a point. but since you can't, you don't.

(1) perhaps you can also explain the pressing need to have the palestinians renounce violence in the period before the 73 war.

Posted by: snuh at December 7, 2006 10:31 PM

But say, just for the talmudic parsing fun of it, the Palestinians and their Arab brothers had accepted the initial UN partition, you'd have Israel behind the 1948 borders.
If you object to any Jewish state in the ME, the Zionist dream and the motivating circumstances notwithstanding, that I can understand. After the Holocaust, the Jews should have been given Austria, homeland of unser Fuehrer and ferocious anti-semitism. But the US and European white men
running the UN weren't about to do that. Dump those pesky Jews on the swarthy Arabs.
Too late. Now the Israelis are (almost) as nasty a bunch as the haters and intolerant God is great, God is on our side haters surrounding them.
Give the land to the Kurds, move the Jews to Shaker Heights and New Jersey and the Palestnians to Jordan. Ahhhhhh.

Posted by: donescobar at December 7, 2006 11:31 PM

Within the partition plan you still wind up either physically expelling the (by far) majority population or at best you wind up with a mini-Jewish Apartheid state. No one sane would agree to have this imposed on them.

Posted by: Ed Marshall at December 7, 2006 11:39 PM

Yes, yes. But the UN did it, those cute Exodus Jews danced the Hora, and the whole area has been (mostly) one bloody shithole since.
If not partition then, what? Nobody had an answer then, nobody has one now. Exterminate the Jews now, another Holocaust. Expel the Palestinians, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Live together? You and I may wish, but even the Dean of Students at Yale wouldn't choose such roomies.
A rational, humane solution, acceptable to both sides? Knowing both sides, after more than half a century of bloodshed and hate, what?

Posted by: donescobar at December 7, 2006 11:49 PM

Everyone is wishing to live at peace with their neighbors.

Obviously those expelled have the right to come back. And then those who moved in from abroad and feel that living at peace with their neighbors is not possible should move back where they came from.

What's wrong with this solution?

Posted by: abb1 at December 8, 2006 05:25 AM

How is Israel keeping gas flowing into my 6,000 pound SUV?

Posted by: MarcLord at December 8, 2006 11:46 AM

The right of return isn't discussed because it effectively kills the state of Israel. The refugee population is now way more than it was in '48 - if they can all come back, the "Jewish" state is wiped out because of the "demographic problem". While Zionists aren't willing to accept that, it won't be on the table.

As to donescobar - why should we accept the Zionist premise to begin with? Or are you saying that the past is past and we should just deal with it (or not, since it's an "impossible problem")?

Posted by: saurabh at December 8, 2006 01:45 PM

I'm not asking you to "accept" the Zionist premise. But, can you understand it? Say you're a Jew in 1947, most of your family in Lithuania has been wiped out, 80% other side of the family in Hungary is gone as well. As the trains were rolling to the camps, none of the civilized countries were willing to take in the Jews still alive. (Recall the plight of the St. Louis, read "While Six Million died" etc) Now the war is over, the Poles, the Romanians,the Croats are still seething Jew-haters, the Allies are taking in a few Jews, you certainly aren't going to go to Germany or Austria...what was 'open" except the USA to some, Palestine (legally or not) to many more. Herzl's dream (or scheme, to others) may not have legitimacy (but then, can you name other countries founded on land already inhabited by others or simply "established" there....easy)and maybe you never wanted to live in a "Jewish" state, BUT...BUT...BUT. Why Palestine? Nobody, not the Jews, not the so-called "world community" came up with any other or better idea. And tossing the Jews back into those loving, gentle European societies so eager to kill them, or at least enjoy watching them disappear or die, that wasn't (then) acceptable. So, the UN did what the UN did. At the expense of the Palestinians, indeed.Again, I would have given them Austria, and the Austrians could have enjoyed the Second Anschluss to Germany.

Posted by: donescobar at December 8, 2006 02:12 PM

...what was 'open" except the USA to some, Palestine (legally or not) to many more.

That's a libel. Far, far more Jews emigrated to the U.S. than Palestine despite the best mechanizations of various zionist organizations who were administering DP camps.

Posted by: Ed Marshall at December 8, 2006 08:06 PM

Between 1939 and 1945 the USA accepted about 250,000 Jewish refugees.In terms of its size and population, that was__________. You choose the adjective.
Read the books about the attitude and response by the US government. Jews have done better here than anywhere else, but those years were not golden moments. Not unlike what Lowell did about admissions of Jews to Harvard when he was its president. Except that those rejected Jews could go to City College or Cornell. Not the fate that awaited the passengers, for example, of the St. Louis.

Posted by: donescobar at December 8, 2006 09:45 PM

The 1947 experiment didn't work, it failed, that's obvious, isn't it?

You could, I suppose, blame it on inhospitality of the locals, or, you could argue (much more convincingly IMO) that it's the responsibility of newcomers to fit into the new environment, and they blew it - but either way the installation has failed. Rollback.

Posted by: abb1 at December 9, 2006 02:33 AM

*or, you could argue (much more convincingly IMO) that it's the responsibility of newcomers to fit into the new environment, and they blew it*

Gosh, common theme amongst extremists to control immigrants. Learn our language or else.

Should we apply such learnings to Israelis? Like that would work.

Perhaps would the Israelis even try to meld in, peace might be achievable.

Posted by: Sky-Ho at December 9, 2006 08:56 PM

It was poorly stated, but the Israelis are everything immigrant bashers fear except they are real. Unlike the usual suspects who get beat on in the U.S. or Europe they did come there to take over, and they did.

Posted by: Ed Marshall at December 9, 2006 10:00 PM

It did start as immigration.

I don't care whose language it is.

Posted by: abb1 at December 10, 2006 05:22 AM

Good job!

Posted by: Markus at December 11, 2006 01:36 PM