"Israel's refusal to let them back to their villages argues that the intention of the original attacks was ethnic cleansing. "

I don't think that is a reasonable conclusion. I think that the reason Jews didn't let the former residents return was fear, reasonable fear, based on history.

It is also true that the intent of the two wars in 47-48 on the part of the Arab communities and states, was to ethnically cleanse.

And, in clear violation of international law as well.

The nakba was a great tragedy, and did come at the hands of Zionists (some much more than others).

And, a similar great tragedy was averted by the Zionists at that time, as difficult as that is to hear.

I've never been in a fight to death, and I highly suspect that you've never either. I am NOT equipped to judge good from bad in a to the death (or to the exclusion) fight.

To hear only of the nakba is to hear half a reality, and if justice is your goal, half a reality amounts to no reality.

Please be careful that when you use the term "nakba" you are referring to the same phenomena as those that reported at the Columbia presentation.

I regard the nakba as a description of a tragedy, "a catastrophe". That is different than an evil, though it might be.

If the right of return involves allowing those with murderous intent to return, then better that that not happen.

If people are consistently ready to move on from the resentment, then the right of return is a possibility.

If not, if polemic and hatred is the primary communication, then war remains, and is as likely to result in permanent dislocation rather than the temporary that reconciliation-seeking Zionists propose.

Its untested on both sides.

There was an article in today's times describing the dilemma that Israeli policy-makers grapple with.

That is that the wall and the road blocks have apparently resulted in significantly lowered "success" rates of terror incidents, from something 130 deaths in 2002, to 1 in 2007.

And, that conflicts with the objective of seeking genuine peace which requires removal of the roadblocks, easy cross-border travel, removal or green line relocation of the wall.

And, its not an incidental dilemma, and not a no-brainer for a progressive even.

Don't be ridiculous man!!! Europe, that is the people of Europe, are NOT turning against the Palestinians and their aspirations for a Palestinian state. Perhaps what we're seeing is a flexing of the economic resources of European Jewry in supporting candidates who support their "homeland", wrong or right.

The only thing you got right is that NOBODY voted for your conservative buddy in London primarily for his pro-Israel beliefs.

Get a grip, and keep praying that Europe becomes more like America. I'll give you my prediction, which is that the opposite is happening. The Americans, because of the free and brave like Phil, are getting their glued eyes surgically opened, and they aren't going to like what they will see when the blinders come off… especially since they bankroll it!!!!

PM

Unwilling to stand idly by
By Tzafi Saar
Tags: Women in black

"It's too bad Hitler didn't finish the job," a passerby shouted at the women who took part in a Women in Black protest in Haifa. Among them was a woman of about 80, a Holocaust survivor with a number tattooed on her arm. "You don't scare me," the old woman replied. "'Specialists' scared me."

NEVER AGAIN means it. The self-affirming Jewish community will never again be subordinated in Europe, sharia states (they're still scared there), communist states, neo-fascist fantasies of America.

to anybody means it. The self-affirming humanists (the Jewish ones) will never again watch while others suffer in Zionist state, Europe, Africa, sharia states, communist states.

(not by my hand) means it. The ethical humanists (the Jewish humanist ones) will never again willingly harm others by their own direct or indirect actions.

But there is an order to the sequence.

http://pedulipalestina.blogspot.com/2007_02_18_archive.html

There was indeed a massacre of Jews in Hebron. Tom Segev saw as the direct cause for this the fact that the Jews had put up some fence to separate men and women at the Western wall of Jerusalem, something that was regarded by the Arabs as tampering with a holy site. But of course the deeper cause was Arab anxiety about Jewish immigration and the Jewish project for ultimate domination.

Moreover as the Dutch-Jewish poet Jacob Israel de Haan, who was in 1924 murdered by the Haganah, has testified, the Arabs were often treated like sh.. by the Jews.

There is one aspect of the Hebron case that Bar-Kochba chose not to emphasize. According to Segev most of Hebron's Jews "were saved because Arabs hid them in their homes".

One would have loved to read such a thing about Deir Yassin – one small glimpse of humanity among the murderers. Alas, neither there nor elsewhere the Zionist thugs have ever given us this consolation.