Talking Point Combat: Beating the "Right" of Return

Now that the fighting between Israel and the Palestinians has eased off slightly, the Palestinian propagandists have returned to one of their demands, the so called "right" of return. With the recognition of the "State of Palestine" last November, though, it's easier than ever to form a logical argument beating this demand.

Before we begin, make sure your opponent is aware of what the Palestinian "right" of return demands: Free passage into Israel for all Palestinians who fled during the 1948 war and their descendants. In other words, every single person who identifies as a Palestinian must be allowed to move to Israel whether Israel wants them or not.

1. Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The first step in any argument about this is to demand a citation from your opponent as to why they believe the Palestinians even have a right of return to anywhere. One citation is the 4th Geneva Convention, which we'll get to later, but another is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The UDHR states quite clearly that:

"[e]veryone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.""

Pretty straightforward right? There's only one problem: Israel is not the Palestinians' country. That is literally all you have to say. The Palestinians' country at the time of partition was the British Mandate of Palestine, and that doesn't exist anymore. The Palestinians are not Israelis, they don't hold Israeli citizenship, they have never lived in the state of Israel, and they don't even consider themselves to be Israelis. In fact they claim to be a proud, noble nation of "Palestinians" that has exited for 1,400 years. How can anyone make the legal argument that Israel is now the Palestinians' "country"?

If you want to get technical, the UDHR is also a General Assembly resolution and therefore not legally binding.

2. Living in Palestine, still a refugee

What is a refugee? A refugee is, according to international law,

"individuals who:

• are outside their country of nationality or habitual residence;

• have a well-founded fear of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion; and

• are unable or unwilling to avail themselves of the protection of that country, or to return there, for fear of persecution."

What is the Palestinians' country of nationality? Ever since November of 2012, it's clearly Palestine! It's right there in the name: "Palestinian." So all Palestinians living in "Palestine," the West Bank and Gaza Strip, are in fact living INSIDE the country of their nationality. For a Palestinian apologist to make the case Palestinians are even refugees, much less a return of return to some other country besides their own, they need to legally prove Palestinians are not Palestinian. Good luck with that. Furthermore, their place of habitual residence has been the West Bank and Gaza for going on forty years now, so even if you claim that Palestinians are actually Israelis, it doesn't matter.

Keeping that in mind, there is a plethora of refugee law that could help the Palestinians "return" somewhere, but none of it is applicable because they aren't legally refugees.

And don't worry if UNRWA and the UN still considers them to be refugees, that just shows how biased and corrupt the UN is. Nor are the opinions of UNRWA legally binding.

3. Principle of states "getting" the population on them when they form

Some Palestinian propagandists will claim that when one state dissolves and another takes its place, that state "gets" the population of the first state automatically. There is nothing in international law that I have found to support this, but even if it's true, when the state of Palestine was created in November 2012, by that same principle it should get the population in the territory it controls. After all, we wouldn't expect Palestine to have different standards of behavior than Israel, right?

Furthermore, the Palestinians rejected the creation of Israel with violence. There is not the slightest indication, even today, that they consider themselves to be citizens of Israel who just want to return to the State of Israel.

4. Law of "state succession"

Other propagandists recently have attempted the claim that the law of "state succession" applies and that is why the Palestinians have a right of return. There is a Wiki article about state succession, and there is an international convention about it, but Israel has not signed onto the convention. Without clearly stated international law that applies to Israel, this argument has no legs.

5. Geneva Convention

A favorite of those making the case for the RoR is the 4th Geneva Convention. But the Geneva Convention has never been applied to any other group of people like this, so there is legal precedent set. The GCs were signed after the Palestinians became "refugees," so Israel cannot be expected to obey an ex post facto law.

But here's what the GC actually says:

"Article 49, which allows a “belligerent occupant” to temporarily evacuate occupied areas but requires that the evacuees:... be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased."

If this is the article that the Palestinians are trying to use, then first of all hostilities in the area have not ceased. Second, they would not be considered refugees, they would be considered evacuees. Third, "evacuee" status does not transfer to descendants, so only the people who were evacuated by Israel, not the ones who ran away, not the ones who are their descendants have a right of return. Not good enough.

But even if the Geneva Conventions applied, the Palestinians are the last people to be demanding someone else follow them, since they themselves have treated the Geneva Convention like toilet paper since day one. Nor have they even signed up to the Geneva Convention, so have no legal right to demand its protection.

At the end of the day, Israel simply won't allow the Palestinians back in, no matter what international law says. There's a higher law in effect, the law of survival, that Israel has to follow first. But it's nice to take down these arguments anyway and deflate the haters' sense of self-righteousness.

Anti-Semitism Report Released, HuffPost Releases Anti-Semites

The Huffington Post covered the news of the annual report on anti-Semitism worldwide released by the  US State Department. You would expect the progressive human rights advocates of the Huffington Post to be dismayed that the report concluded anti-Semitism is increasing worldwide, and indeed some of them were. But lots of others were far more interested in attacking Israel and whining about "the Jews" "using" anti-Semitism to get away with their "crimes." Here's some comments:

We'll keep an eye on the thread and update this post as necessary.

HuffPosters Laugh at Struggling Israelis

The Huffington Post covered a story about lower-class Israelis who are finding it difficult to make a living. You may be aware that Israel is hardly the only country in which poor people exist, but apparently this is news to the Huffington Post readership. So they proceeded to laugh and sneer at Israel, a perfect mirror of the faux sympathy they would engage in if it was an Arab people who were poor:

As always, Huffignton Post approved.

HuffPost Brings the Al-Dura Bias

The Huffington Post covered a story about how Israel, 13 years too late, has debunked the Mohammad Al-Dura hoax and proved once and for all that al-Dura wasn't killed in the video and may have been killed at all. Naturally, the Huffington Post covered it in the most biased way possible:

I guess they subscribe to the theory that if you can't tell the truth, be as vague as possible and let your readership draw their own conclusions. As for the readership in question, few tried to actually prove that Mohammad Al-Dura was killed by the Israelis, possibly sensing that it was a futile battle. Instead, they tried to claim that Israel "kills kids" all the time, so it doesn't actually matter that the only example the Palestinians can find in 60 years of this turned out to be a lie. And, of course, there was anti-Semitism and even Holocaust denial that followed:

The Huffington Post: Classy as ever.

Diana Bletter on Diversity in Israel

[From HuffPostReligion.]

My friend Nasra Hussein just came back from a scientific conference in Austria where she met other scientists, from places like Saudi Arabia and South Africa, who were shocked to discover that she, a Muslim Arab, was living and working with Jews in Israel. Nasra, who just received her Ph.D. under the supervision of a Jewish advisor, explained that she works at Nahariya hospital (bombed by Hezbollah during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War). The hospital staff that consists of Ethiopian Jews, Druze, Muslims, Christians and Jews.

After my conversation with Nasra, a thought came to me. I've lived in New York City, London and Paris. In every city, there are different ethnic neighborhoods. Paris has its African neighborhoods; New York City has its Spanish and Asian neighborhoods; London has its Arab neighborhoods. On an average day in your town or city, how many people of other religions and races do you meet?

I live in Western Galilee, Israel, home to about 1 million people, split almost 50-50 among Arabs and Jews.

The other day -- an ordinary day -- I got up and brought my car over to the auto repair shop in our village, owned and operated by a Muslim man, Nasser. Nasser employs about 15 people in his shop, including my friend, Jasmine (more on her in a minute), several mechanics (Muslims and Jews) and a Rumanian Christian woman who, after meeting a Muslim man studying medicine in Bucharest, married him and moved to Israel.

From there, I went to Akko -- home to about 50,000 people, of whom 30 percent are Arab -- to visit my friend, Janan. She was the first Druze woman in Israel (if not in the entire Middle East) to receive her Ph.D. Janan is founder of Akko Vision, a dialogue group consisting of Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Druze women. (I'm a member of the group.) There is also a Baha'i woman. (Unlike in Iran, where the Baha'i are persecuted.) The group's lasts initiative was a visit of women from Bethlehem.

After meeting with Janan, I went to the market in the Old City of Akko where I walked through winding, ancient alleyways, Arabic music playing, incense burning, guys smoking water pipes, the smell of coriander and fresh pita bread. I stopped to buy blue ceramic dishes made by Armenian craftsmen from a Christian couple who own one of the largest tourist shops in the Old City. I learned that there's only one country in the Middle East with an increasing Christian population and that's Israel. (In Iraq, Lebanon and Libya, Christians have become victims of religious persecution. There has been a spike of attacks against Christians since the Muslim Brotherhood gained power in Egypt. In Gaza, Christians face attacks daily.)

Then I called Jasmine, Nasser's sister, who manages the auto repair shop and just found out she's pregnant. She will get full pre-natal care -- everything -- via Israel's National Insurance Program. If she'd been unable to get pregnant, she would have been able to receive treatments through government-sponsored facilities that serve all religious sectors in the country.

In the afternoon, I went to work at the Easy English Academy, where I teach English to Arab and Jewish students. One of my students is Nasra, working to polish her English. She is now furthering her research with another nurse from Ramallah, across the border in Palestine.

Finally, after dinner, I spoke to my unofficially adopted Ethiopian daughter, who has lived in Israel for about 20 years. She came to Israel with her family to avoid further religious persecution by the Ethiopian government. In Ethiopia, she knew it was time to go to school when the sun made a certain shadow off a tree and now works in an Israeli bank in computer security. She married a man whose parents are from Afghanistan and Rumania; their wedding was a wild celebration of distinct and vibrant cultures.

Diversity makes life rich. How many different people have you spoken to today?

HuffPost Continues to Milk Palestinian Victim Card, Doesn't Work

As our buddy Huff-Watcher spotted over the weekend, the Huffington Post's "World" section attempted to wring some more blood from the stone that is the Palestinian victimization industry:

Unfortunately what they forgot was that Palestinians are only of interest to the prejudiced Huffington Post readership when they are victims of Israel, not when someone else is mistreating them. So although the thread did get around 1,100 comments (many times more than if it was some other group being mistreated in Egypt) all of the top favorited ones were slamming the Arabs and rightfully so:

Amazing how rational the Huffington Post readership becomes once you take Israel out of the equation.

Sarah Hindman on Sderot Trauma, HPers Sneer, Whine, Insult

Sarah Hindman touched the real third rail at the Huffington Post, humanizing Israelis, when she wrote a blog post about the trauma suffered by Israelis in Sderot because of the rocket attacks. The essay is short, about her experiences traveling from an Episcopal school to Sderot to work with little girls on the trauma of living with rocket attacks through "theater therapy." A quick read, but worth checking out.

Naturally, those HPers that bothered to show up to the thread immediately attacked Hindman and/or justified the rocket attacks using one method or another. Here's the comments:

If you're wondering where the "liberal progressive" concern for "human rights" and "international law" in this thread is, stop wondering. It's not here.