The Right of Return: the heart and soul of the Palestinian cause

By Khalid Amayreh in occupied East Jerusalem Sixty-one years ago, one of the greatest crimes in the annals of human history occurred when European Ashkenazi Jews, aided by western powers, took over Palestine and expelled and dispersed its native inhabitants to the four corners of the world. The barbarians committed widespread massacres, replaying and reenacting in Palestine some of the genocidal episodes that had been done in Europe a few years earlier. The criminal thieves created Israel, a manifestly racist and bellicose entity based on murderous ethnic cleansing, usurpation, dispossession and lies. The creation of the evil entity in Palestine was a brash act of rape; it will always be an act of rape no matter how many people continue to sing the hymns of Zionism and glorify the big lie Does a theft become lawful after the passage of 61 years, or even 500 years? Today, Israel is a well-established state from the materialistic view point. It is quite advanced in the realm of science and technology and has a horrendous war machine with which it constantly savages its Palestinian victims and threatens its neighbors, near and distant. The evil entity also exerts tremendous influence on the politics and policies of the United States to the extent that U.S. Congress has been described as “an Israeli occupied territory.” Moreover, the worldwide Zionist movement controls much of the western media which it utilizes to terrorize western politicians who often hasten to support Israel, right or wrong, lest they be haunted with the virulent canard of “anti-Semitism.” This is the reason the international community, which is controlled and led by the western bloc, has been utterly unable to dislodge Israel from its Nazi-like policies in the Middle East, including the frequent genocidal blitzes in Lebanon and Gaza. Likewise, this is also the reason why America and Europe nonchalantly watch Israel practice apartheid and “lebensraum” or territorial expansion at the expense of the Palestinian people, and refrain from making even a gesture of dissatisfaction toward Israel’s criminal racism. Indeed, had it not been for the enthusiastic embrace of evil Zionism by the Americans and Europeans, a just resolution of the Palestinian plight could have been reached a long time ago. Immoral entity Non the less, Israel will always be a state bereft of any moral foundation, an entity whose very existence is justified by nothing other than its military supremacy and brutal oppression of its victims. Hence, it is imperative that we continue to reject this entity as long as it continues to refuse to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and towns from which they were brutally uprooted 61 years ago. The Right of Return is the heart and soul of the Palestinian cause. This is an absolute and persistent truth that will never ever go away. Let us not forget that the question of Palestine didn’t start with the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem in 1967. The Palestinian question is not only about the so-called “occupied territories.” It is mainly about these wandering Palestinians, the five million people who were ethnically cleansed from their ancestral homeland because they were not members of the “holy tribe.” Needless to say, the right of these thoroughly-tormented victims of Zionism to return to their homeland transcends every other consideration. A basic human right, after all, overrides Israel’s “right” to be a Jewish state. Apartheid can’t be detestable in Apartheid-era South Africa but perfectly kosher in Israel. The Right of Return is not as often claimed impossible to implement. The land of Palestine can still accommodate many millions of people. Hence, that inalienable right can and must be implemented if the world is truly honest about finding durable peace and stability in the Middle East. In the final analysis, the right of the most consistently wronged people in the world to justice exceeds whatever “rights” newly-converted Jews in India and South America might have to settle on land that doesn’t belong to them or their ancestors. A theft is a theft is a theft even if dressed in a religious garment. Another point, the King of Jordan Abdullah is reported to have said recently that 57 Islamic countries would recognize Israel if the latter accepted the “Arab Peace Initiative.” Well, I don’t know if the leaders of these countries, many of them tyrannical dictators whose only legitimacy is the legitimacy of the status quo, have authorized the king to speak on their behalf. However, I am absolutely certain that the masses in all these countries will never recognize Israel as long as the Palestinian refugees continue to be denied the right to return home in what is now Israel. Besides, do Arab and Muslim states, the Palestinian Authority or even Hamas, have the right to sell out or compromise on the right of return? This is first and foremost a personal right and no person or party or state under the sun has the right to dispose of it. This is just to make things clear for those who might think that the right of return is subject to haggling in the market of power-politics. Finally, the enduring determination by the Palestinian people to uphold the right of return has nothing to do with any perceived hostility to the Jewish people. This is not an expression of anti-Semitism as the shipyard dogs of Zionism keep claiming. This is a matter of justice and morality that overrides Israel’s and Zionism’s whims to enjoy their “superiority complex.” Today, given existing geopolitical circumstances, the Palestinians are obviously unable to exercise their right to return to their motherland, the holy land of Palestine, now visibly corrupted by Zionist bloodshed and oppression. But when the wheel of history turns, and it undoubtedly will, Zionism cease to exist, and Jews duped by the seductiveness of the big lie will be overwhelmed by remorse. Sixty-one years are nothing in the ocean of history.