Israeli Hypocrisy About Right of Return Exposes Their Lack of Moral Backbone

A year or two ago an old college friend of mine died. He was Palestinian. He died in his fifties and I don't believe he was ever able to return to Palestine. Like most Palestinians he wanted a free Palestine. It didn't matter. He lived his life and died a homeless person. Just one of millions of Palestinians, you know the folks that every Zionist used to insist didn't even exist.

It was a period when the Palestinians struggled to be recognized with an armed struggle because decades of peaceful means of gaining their rights had failed. A pro Israeli lobby and U. S. Imperialism dismissed this struggle of the Palestinians as nothing but terrorism for many more decades, even until today.

Of course millions of affluent and privileged Jews travel to and from Israel without restriction. The overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews have no historic roots in Palestine during the last few centuries. Of course, some Zionists claim that God gave them this land millenia ago. So a religious myth justifies (in the minds of the true believer) a Jewish right of return while American weapons and money have guaranteed to the settlers "rights" that are denied the aboriginal population.

Palestinians are not allowed to live in most of Palestine and their lives are made a living hell if they live in the occupied territories. American protection and sponsorship of Israeli crimes makes this so easy. Israel retains the "right" to wipe out and expel the native Palestinians in order to deny the real natives of Palestine a right of return.

Where are rights for the Palestinians? Where is their "right of return"? Most indigenous Palestinians have historic roots in Palestine that go back centuries. The European invaders of the Jewish faith proclaim their "right to return" to the land they seized from the Palestinians only a few decades ago. The Rabbis and Israeli politicians all too often do not believe that Palestinians should have the same rights they reserve for Jews, the right to return to their homeland. Different rights for different folks based upon their race and bloodline, sounds like apartheid to me!

In short, we are supposed to believe that Jews from the Bronx or Europe have a right to return to Israel despite a lack of political, cultural or historical continuity in that area for thousands of years!

I don't have a right to steal your house because I have no house. The Israelis say Palestine is their house, because god told them so thousands of years ago, but everyone knows it is a stolen house. It is just using a little knowledge about the ancient past to justify modern day thievery.
After all their were many different Jewish states, not just an Israel. Prophetic arguments justifying the oppression of the Palestinians are simply expressions of personal or group prejudice masked as faith. This is not unique to the Jews.

Maybe the Israelis will get to keep the house they stole but can't they at least let the original owners come live there too? The Rabbis and rank and file Jews are not being confronted with these questions. They don't want to think about it, but we all might benefit if they did.

The European invaders summarized their colonization of Palestine as "a land without a people for a people without a land." Palestinians have had to wage a tireless struggle even to be recognized by the world community. The United States and Israel alone ignore Palestinians to this day.

Of course the Palestinians deserve our support and worldwide coordinated events could focus on the demand that Palestinians be guaranteed their human rights by their occupiers, the Israelis. The dates of these educational events and rallies could correspond to historic dates in the Palestinian struggle as well as historic events during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

In a sense Gaza is a new Warsaw Ghetto. In fact, those who compare todays Zionist tyranny with that of the white supremacists in South Africa should also consider examining possible similarities between Israeli policies directed against the Palestinians and Nazi policies directed at the Jews, Gypsies, gays, etc..

Didn't the Nazis wall off the Ghetto? Isn't Israel walling off the West Bank and Gaza? Were not the Jews a captive population in the Ghetto? Are not the Palestinians a captive population in places like Gaza and bantustan-like patches of Palestinian territory on the West Bank?

Wasn't electricity and just about all goods and commerce into and out of the Warsaw Ghetto stopped by the Nazis? Isn't that what is happening in Gaza today? A handful of the Warsaw Ghetto prisoners fought the Nazis. Today a handful of Palestinians fight the Israelis. Didn't the glorious rebels of the Warsaw Ghetto seek revenge and justice at the point of a gun even though their struggle was a short one? Today the Israeli and American leaders tend to label similar efforts by the Palestinian prisoners of Gaza as despicable "terrorism".

Of course it may be objected that while the Nazis created the Ghetto to exterminate Jews that the Israelis have not created Palestinian ghettos to exterminate Palestinians, just to exterminate Palestine. I agree that this is an important difference, but it may not be as significant as we would like to believe. If Israel ever uses its vast arsenal of nuclear destruction millions could be killed within an hour's time. Peace with and justice for the Palestinians seems like a much more practical idea and a better moral choice. You don't have to be a special religious teacher to see that.

Real progressives, real liberationists, real leftists, real liberals and real revolutionaries must stand with the oppressed and dispossessed regardless of their imperfections. Many Jews, of course, will agree with most if not all of what I am saying here. Certainly oppressors are more imperfect and more guilty of wrong conduct than the oppressed. This is particularly obvious as more than a million Palestinians desperately try to survive the Israeli strangulation of Gaza.

Whatever the liberation struggle, when it comes to personal and group sacrifice it is better to die for the people than to live for the oppressor and the oppressor classes, oppressor castes, oppressive groups and exploitative individuals.

I call this hierarchy of oppressions explooitation :).

When the oppressed struggle to be free who are we to do anything but do our best to stand with their just demands such as the Palestinian right to return. Of course the human rights of the Palestinians and of all of us must be struggled for wherever they are not guaranteed. The struggle for human rights in Palestine is a just struggle, no? Oui!