What do you mean by “actual refugees”. According to the the UN, all the those in the camps are refugees. Regardless of how many generations removed they are from Israel.
And no, there’s little evidence of this tie to their homeland will disappear anytime soon.
I got that and didnt mean to snark. I am not fully informed about all this and can be confused if things are not grammatical. I wanted to put up a good argument for Israel and see if some truth can come out of it. I think there is more to this story than noble natives and conquering imperialists. The honesty or sincerity of Arabs is not an issue for me that I know of. If there are ingrained prejudices in what I say, I’m here to find out.
Well, personally, I think that’s really stupid. An “actual” refugee is one who fled when the war happened. Their descendant’s current “real” nationality is certainly not Israeli, and apparently not Jordanian or Egyptian either, so they are stateless, in that there is no country that encompasses the West Bank and Gaza.
How long does this heritance last? Are the British citizens who are descended from Huguenot refugees “French refugees” after some six hundred years?
Yep. Only for Palestinians. For all other refugees, if you’re born outside the country, you’re not a refugee anymore. But hey - the Jooos.
To be fair to the Palestinians though, part of that is because a lot of the countries the refugee camps are in treat the Palestinians like shit and won’t let them out to assimilate, partly because they don’t want a bunch of new Palestinian immigrants, and partly because they can use those camps as part of a propaganda war against Israel to help distract their people from the failures of their governments.
It’s the UNRWA that makes such decisions and they’ve decided the descendants of the Nakba are refugees. They have not made such a decision regarding the descendants of French Hugenots.
The UNRWA can decide they’re unicorns, too. Doesn’t mean I have to agree with it.
(Of course the UNRWA considers them refugees - if it didn’t, the organization would have no justification for its own existence. Thousands of paychecks are on the line.)
The threat looms, a worldwide shortage of refugees?
UNRWAis responsible solely for treating Palestinian refugees. All other refugees are handled by the UNHCR; they’re obviously less deserving of an organization of their own.
Face it, man - you’re out of your depth.
How about a non-White South African born and raised under Apartheid? Seriously, Apartheid wasn’t ever as bad as, say, Rhodesia at the same time. Or Cultural Revolution China. Or Pol Pot-era Cambodia. Or Biafra. Or Ethiopia. Or Mozambique. Or large chunks of Central America at the same time.
Numbers killed, tortured or forced to flee their country all seem like reasonable standards.
My understanding is that it is intended to be heritable.
I’m looking for examples of this.
This may help:
In sum: Jews and non-Jews alike on occasion use the term “Jewish lobby”. However, what is meant by that term varies with the speaker. When Jews use the term, they tend to mean activism on behalf of an Jews as an ethnic or religious group in a neutral sense: a “Jewish lobby” as an equivalent to a “Catholic lobby” or whatever. Some, however, use the term in a perjorative sense: as a replacement for the “pro-Israel lobby”, tapping into fears of exaggerated Jewish influence (a common anti-semitic trope), and as an accusation of double loyalties.
For other examples of terms used in one ethnic community (but best left alone by members of others because of widespread perceptions that they are coded terms for bigotry) see “thug life”.
Well, I mean, I guess I should have been clear, but yeah of course people use “Jewish lobby” pejoratively. I was more looking for examples of academics disparaging the real loyalty of jews, and of academics holding israel to different standards than other nations.
But the person you quoted didn’t specify academics.
I don’t think there is any doubt that Israel is held to different standards than other nations, and that there are academics who support this. After all, is there any other nation subject to such intensive boycotting by academic organizations? Yest Israel is plainly not the worst human-rights abuser in the world.
What is in doubt is the motivation for such double standards. For example, in this thread, people have alleged that what motivates such double standards is, in essence, that Israel (being a First-World nation) is more likely to be suceptible to such pressure as lobbying; or that ‘more is expected’ of ‘Jews’ because of the Holocaust. That sort of thing.
The “double loyalty” thing is rarely outright stated - except by hardcore old-style anti-semites (just as there are few who expressly state that Blacks are racially inferior these days). It is more a matter of using coded terms - like the “Jewish lobby” used perjoratively where “pro-Israel lobby” would be a better fit.
As I pointed to on page 1, Terr himself believes that Jews should be voting based on candidates’ position on Israel. I don’t think he’s the only Jew out there that thinks Israel is more “Important” than the country they live in.
If there is a reasonable criterion for separating one target from another then it’s not a double standard. The phrase “double standard” implies the lack of such criterion.
These “divestment” programs are pretty weird. they seem to be based upon the idea that somehow, Israel can be harmed by selling your stocks (in firms that do business in or with Israel).
In the first place, this probably hurts people who have nothing to do with Israel or its policies.
Second, the firms who do business with/in Israel are unlikely to be affected if some shares change hands.
Plus, since most stocks are now owned by mutual funds, who really cares about who owns the stocks?
It makes about as much sense as people forcing Harvard University to divest itself of oil and coal company stocks-why not force Harvard to sell its share in tobacco companies as well?
Oh I see what you are saying.
I don’t equate having Palestinian return to what is now Israel with the “destruction of Israel” It may change Israel’s character as a Jewish state (bordering on theocracy these days).
The right of return should give Palestinians a choice between monetary compensation or the right to reclaim land that was confiscated from them. I keep hearing how Israel didn’t steal/confiscate land from the Palestinians so I assume that there will be very little displacement resulting from return of land to Palestinians.
If Israel did in fact steal/confiscate significant amounts of Palestinian land then we have an entirely different discussion.
We can have international arbitrators determine who is entitled to what land and offer a choice between reasonable compensation for the land or the return of the land itself.