Today on ESPN Skip Bayless said the difference between Andy Pettitte and Barry Bonds is Andy Pettitte apologized for using human growth hormone. We got past it. Today Osama bin Laden's driver apologized to the American people. I like that. I had an argument this week with a friend about the right of return. He was getting into the impossibility of the right of return, how it would overwhelm Israel, etc. This has never been the issue to me. The issue is that a grave injustice was dealt the Palestinian people more than 60 years ago, when hundreds were massacred (yes Jews also were massacred, but fewer), and hundreds of thousands expelled, and their homes taken away from them. They were literally forced into the sea in two great cities of Palestinian life, Haifa and Jaffa. (Forced into the sea; but who do we always hear could be forced into the sea?) Their fields and homes were taken from them. As they are being taken now. And there has never been an apology, let alone reparations. They have been in the equivalent of D.P. camps for more than 60 years, not dissimilar to the DP camps that after a mere two years caused Harry Truman to see an urgency, in 1947, of creating a Jewish state. Yes, the Arab world bears some responsibility. But consider:
I have an old family friend, a Jew, who lives in Germany now, Berlin, with his wife and child. They love Germany. Germany apologized a long time ago.
The responsibility is overwhelmingly with the colonialists, not the arabs.
And your friend is right, fixing it requires much more than apologies. Those arabs need to be able to go home.
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"Germany apologized a long time ago."
Indeed she did. On the other hand, it still rankles most of Asia that Japan "regrets" its military aggression of the 1930s and 1940s, but finds various euphemisms to avoid actually declaring "We're sorry."
It's worth remembering in early August that the U.S. is the biggest non-apologizer of all. Here is Ralph Raico, quoting nuclear physicist Leo Szilard:
"If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/raico/raico22.html
Americans do not see the nuking of a couple of hundred thousand Japanese civilians as a war crime, and do not EVER intend to apologize for it. Thus the moral complacency about mowing down even larger numbers of Iraqi civilians in a war of aggression.
The International Criminal Court only prosecutes Third World despots, not rich-country toffs like Henry and Tony and George. Ah, the sweet smell of impunity! At least if you're a plutocrat, or owned by one.
The Arab world does not bear responsibility for the refugee problem. Responsibility lies with the people who expelled the Palestinians, not with the neighboring Arab countries who refused to make permanent the expulsion by assimilating the refugees.
What could be more damning than a nation officially giving every Jew a right of return to a land they were nearly all absent from for thousands of years, if they were ever there at all, and at the expense of most of the people who had lived there for thousands of years? And then demanding the latter people recognize the Jewish claim of right, which ignores the claim of right of those they've booted out?
And America has supported this to the max…
Bin Ladens driver apologised to the american people. I know nothing of his story, but after 6 years in jail I'd gladly apologise to the American people and to Bush & Rumsfeld and anyone else, the whole 6 years had to be a mind f***.@keating: "And America has supported this to the max..". You mean America and its media did what it was told.
morris: To be an informed citizen, one must be given all the facts; both sides of any dispute have to be heard fully to toss off spin–the elite count on most average Åmericans not having sufficient free time to delve into these matters–even when they do, they only get one side of the P-I history at best in the MSM.
All we have is C-SPAN.
Kudos to Phil, for his comments on the Right of Return of the Palestinians.
He recognizes that failure to deal with this issue in a way that attempts at seeing that Justice is done, just won't hack it.
However, I must say that apology, won't do either. What is needed is land and compensation,(just how much and from whom,
to be negotiated.) In my opinion, it should not come from the pockets of American or European tax payers…
Which leaves the Jewish billionaire oligarchs,who are as responsible as any one in the Jewish Community for the Zionist creed,to contribute the lion's share…
p.s.If they wish to tack on an apology,that would be fine too
himeankin–I agree with your assessment. But in the end, as in the subprime mortgage business, the fast shrinking American middle class will be the ignorant funders. The goy Court, and its modern day Court Jews, will keep the usual cycle going for their benefit.
Nothing really changes.