Thursday, July 31, 2014

Finkelstein defending Right of Return (Great!)

Finkelstein defending Palestinian Right of Return (2010).

This is the best I've ever heard Finkelstein.  I can see from this he is a great teacher.

Funny his latest thing is that advocating the One-State-For-Palestinians-And-Jews is "historically criminal".  And full RoR makes many Israelis fear that they will be outnumbered…so no more Jewish supremacist state.  So then where is RoR

Finkelstein in this video does fully not address this issue.  Or he assumes that Palestinians can easily be compensated for lost property inside the 78% of the original Palestinian territory that Israel retains under existing law.  (What disconnected percentage do the Palestinians actually have now?  Nobody says, but on maps it's disconnected bantustans.  The UN, which had no rights to do this, gave Israel 55% even though Jews were 1/3 of the population, and owned less than 10% of the land.  Then by 1948 Israel had militarily taken 78%.)

I think he's right.  I think the Palestinians would mostly accept what conservative judges would consider reasonable compensation, even if it doesn't fully capture the actual hedonic loss as I might calculate it.  I think Israel under exceptionally leadership, the equivalent of FDR for USA, could accept and pay it, allowing a modest number to return, but retain Israel's desired Jewish majority.  And I think they will still retain the control they need if a small Arab majority arises in the distant future.  Jews have considerable impact in the USA with 2% of the population.  In South Africa rich whites are still rich whites who control everything, with a few rich blacks.

Of course as he says, it's not ours to say.  We both agree this fundamental rights including RoR must not be disclaimed before negotiation can start, as Israel has been doing for RoR, as well as the fake issue about recognizing Israel's "Right to Exist" (a nonexistent right for states…all states exist only conditionally to serve the rights of their populations and outsiders, if they fail to do those things, those populations may deserve to have the states remade differently).  All these things that Israel insists the Palestinians must do before negotiation will start are really just Israel deferring a diplomatic solution and seeking a military one: the physical and human destruction of non-Jewish Palestine.  Nobody should be fooled anymore.  BDS (if we ever get the S we need) is what Israel needs, not more US military hardware to crush Palestine.  Without BDS, they'll just keep doing what they are doing, and claiming it's "Self Defense."


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