Saturday, August 2, 2014

Dual Right of Return

Though unusual, the concession to Jewish persecution should well be a highly unusual constitutionally guaranteed Right of Return (for Jews, meaning any Jew can enter, as under Israel) as well as the demanded by many international laws of Right of Return for all Palestinian refugees and their descendants.  A dual right of return state would be the only one imaginable which would be reasonably fair to all parties, and still maintain an extraordinary status as a Jewish haven.  Israel is not Gaza, there are large quantities of unused land in Israel, enough for all of those with a right to be there.

I have come to believe that USA's legitimacy should come from the realization of the inscription on the Statue of Liberty.  European descendants, such as myself, were initially welcomed by Native Americans in many places.  It was only when the white man started monopolizing things that there was violent conflict.  Still, many agreements and treaties were reached with Native Americans in the 1800's.  Fighting was relatively isolated.  By 1924, 20 years before violent zionism (and palestinian resistance to ethnic cleansing), native americans had full US citizenship and also tribal citizenship from which might come other benefits.  They had largely agreed upon tribal lands, which have not been useless.  US history is not free of violent and unfair aggression, and more recently the US has not been a perfect steward, and that's terrible and should be fixed, but I believe the situation is far different than in Palestine, contrary to suggestions by hasbarats.

To not allow in the "huddled masses yearning to be free" we are pulling up the ladder after ourselves.  And in so doing, we destroy our own legitimacy, as long as we monopolize the resources the Native Americans were willing to share with us.

Likewise, legitimacy only comes to Israel/Palestine only when there is right of return for all palestinians, and a single state.  Then the great theft of a national homeland for the indigenous Palestinians has been reversed.

[Of course I understand the difficulty of the current situations, and it may be better to accept a reasonable two state solution now to end the historic and punishing war.  It is for the locals to decide, not me.  I only stand in judgement as to what seems more fair by my lights, and attempting to follow universal standards as much as possible.  I am not an activist leader, though I have participated in free Gaza demonstrations.  Certainly the 2000 proposals at Camp David were ridiculously unfair to the Palestinians even by two state standards.]


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