Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast
Subject: Re: BILL CLINTON ON ISRAEL AND THE MIDDLE
From: rivk@ellis.uchicago.edu (nora gayle rivkis)
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 15:25:42 GMT
Reply-To: rivk@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations

In article <1992Aug21.083408.18787@cs.anu.edu.au> bdm@cs.anu.edu.au writes:
>In article 5946@usenet.ins.cwru.edu, bx573@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Alan H. Stein) writes:

>>Your parents apparently voluntarily left Haifa, 
>
>The fact is that most refugees anywhere leave "voluntarily".  

Granted. And it doesn't make them any less refugees. But it does make
them not "forced out".

>That doesn't 
>make them any the less refugees and it sure as hell does not remove their 
>right of return.  

What I haven't figured out yet is where any of you people, Jew or Arab,
are getting the concept of a right of return in the first place. It
seems to have been made up out of whole cloth especially for the Arab-
Israeli conflict; both sides use it, and neither has cited a reason.
Rights come from somewhere... the right to return to a place you left,
no matter why you left it, has never been recognized anywhere else in
the world and it does not have a source I can identify in any other
right that *is* recognized. So what in the hell makes anyone think 
that either Jews or Palestinians have a right to be anywhere in any
country whose government decides it does not want them there? If I
left the United States, for any reason whatsoever including fear for
my life, and either gave up citizenship while I was gone or had the
country undergo a revolution while I was away, so that U.S. citizen-
ship was not the sort that would get you access to this particular
piece of land anymore, I wouldn't expect to be allowed back in -- and
that's even if I *hadn't* been spending the time while I was abroad
working to tear down the new government.

>This is especially true since (even according to
>Zionist propaganda) most of the residents had every intention of 
>returning.  Any suggestion that they _abandoned_ their property, in the
>common English, or legal English, sense of the word is pure lie.

True in a technical sense, but you've left out the circumstances under
which they intended to return. If I leave something on the street, wait
around a corner, and plan to jump out and murder the person who tries
to pick it up so I can get it back from them, I have not abandoned the
property -- but neither do I have any legal or ethical right to demand
that they give it back voluntarily when my murder attempt fails.

>>and have no more right to
>>return their than my grandparents had to return to the Russia they fled for
>>their lives.
>
>If your grandparents fled Russia for their lives, they have every right
>to return there if they so wish.

And do I have such a right? My grandparents did indeed flee Russia for
their lives (well, two of them fled Russia, two of them fled Poland);
I and my parents were born here, but of their descent. Are we still
refugees? I still don't see where this "right" comes from -- the Russian
government certainly wouldn't recognize it, and nobody else in the
world seems to think this is unreasonable of them. It's only considered
unreasonable when it's Israel doing it. I think not.

>>---Alan H. Stein----stein@uconnvm.uconn.edu
>
>Brendan.

	-Nora

-- 
"Light one candle for those who are suffering pain we learned so long ago..."