On the day Jaffa’s refugees return

by on March 10, 2010 15
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The following video was made by Zochrot, an Israeli organization that educates Israeli Jews about the Nakba and the Palestinian right of return:

About Adam Horowitz

Adam Horowitz is Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Israel/Palestine

{ 15 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. Citizen says:
    March 10, 2010 at 10:42 am

    Thanks, Adam. I am glad to see most of the Israelis depicted realize the conundrum of refugees and right of return. On a joke note–the Germans have been long abused for the gutteral sound of their language–but, Hebrew? It sounds like someone gagging or choking
    continually on food. LOL

  2. Koshiro says:
    March 10, 2010 at 10:56 am

    Thanks for posting this. Very interesting and often thoughtful responses, notably not in sync with what the staunch “Israel is always right” faction in the media and on the internet tells us. Even the young guy with the Kippa at least had the advantage of not being hypocritical.

    One thing slightly shocked me, though, and I’m interested if others have seen it. It’s about the juice seller. After they started asking the question on the Palestinian refugees, he seemed to be a different person. I can’t put my finger anything specific, but his manner of speech, his face and his stance had all changed to something markedly different. Anybody else notice that?

  3. Chaos4700 says:
    March 10, 2010 at 11:06 am

    It was promising to see that the younger people’s answers, generally, didn’t flip when the question changed from being about Africans, to being about Palestinians. Unfortunately, widespread Israeli support for the atrocities in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank leave me wondering just how small a minority those young people are.

    • Shmuel says:
      March 10, 2010 at 11:25 am

      Young people at hip cafes and restaurants in Jaffa are hardly representative, although a pleasure to listen to. BTW, I’m pretty sure the young man with the close-cropped hair is a Palestinian.

      • Shmuel says:
        March 10, 2010 at 11:30 am

        And welcome back Adam. I hope the twins are doing well :-)

      • Chaos4700 says:
        March 10, 2010 at 11:36 am

        OK, yeah. I wasn’t sure who in the video would have been Palestinian or not. As far as I could tell, they were all speaking Hebrew (but that’s not a language I have any functional familiarity with). I mean, some I recognized as of Caucasian ancestry, obviously. And one identified as a Moroccan Jew. What he had to say was… not surprising, because I’ve known Moroccans, but I guess I was a bit surprised that he was honest about it.

        Also, congrats Adam :)

      • Avi says:
        March 10, 2010 at 2:00 pm

        The young man with the buzz cut is Palestinian based on his accent. The barber is a Palestinian too and the lady with the books in the background and the purple framed glasses sounds like she might be, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

        Some observations:

        The juice seller reflects many of the views often heard in North America, “it’s complicated”, he said. The Palestinian right of return is “a whole different issue”, he said when asked to compare between the African refugees and Palestinians.

        Then of course there’s the shop owner who acknowledges that the store in which he currently sits belongs to Palestinians, but he refuses to give it back.

        As for the guy who’s father is from Bulgaria, what do the Palestinians have anything to do with Bulgaria? Nothing.

        • Shmuel says:
          March 10, 2010 at 2:34 pm

          I agree about buzz-cut, although his Hebrew and mannerisms are pretty Tel-Aviv, disagree about the barber, and also thought book-lady might be (her Hebrew’s definitely not native), but her reactions didn’t fit.

          Bulgaria-guy was obviously caught off guard by the question regarding his grandad’s hypothetical right of return and tried to be consistent for the sake of his feelings regarding the Palestinians, but didn’t seem very convinced.

  4. annie says:
    March 10, 2010 at 12:31 pm

    what a hopeful video. maybe there are more isralis than we know about who support the right of return.

  6. seafoid says:
    March 10, 2010 at 4:40 pm

    The guy with the shaved head is definitely Palestinian. He came across as someone who was delighted to get his point of view across. At last a Hebrew interlocutor talking sense. I can’t imagine it goes down well with most of his fellow citizens who would prefer to bomb Gaza back to the stone age.

  7. javs says:
    March 11, 2010 at 12:54 am

    Its only ok for the people that are originally from the usa and eastern europe, a place called khazar to do and say and kill and steal as they please with the taxes from the place they have already began to put into a downward spiral the usa. Too many things such as the two”so called muslim con- verts (hence the word CON) and the media which allow the blatten racist idiology of things that are not supported by muslims to keep on spewing the hatered in New York, they are israeli and should be in Gitmo. As for the right of return yes all the original people will one day return to their homes in what is a usa, zionist, & british colony. The crusades have never ended, the people of the world have been dumbed down to the point of ignorance. This is not bliss, but disgust. Germania’s sibling solomon which has been proven along with the protocols of the elders of zion, as a piece of the jigsaw puzzle, that is the U.S. government. So why don’t they all realize they will never ever have a place that is truely their own anywhere and get back to where they came from in eastern europe. They are hatered filled and as they did Rachel Corrie and used her own parents taxes to murder her, they will eventually do the same to the entire world and are on the path to just that, by means of positions in all important governments everywhere to take over and malign, kill and steal. May these people get their just rewards for the supporting and maligning of their backrounds. If so one spreads bad things in your name and you allow it, your obviously part of the problem. There will never be a two state just the one called Palestine which as history tells us will return from the ruble of hatred impossed upon her.

  8. Psychopathic god says:
    March 11, 2010 at 1:20 am

    Since the 1979 revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran has hosted the largest refugee population in the world. The Iranian experience with hosting, maintaining, and repatriating this large refugee population represents a significant position in the region …
    no other country in the world is more familiarly aware of the challenges of confronting great number of refugee flows as Iran. During the past 20 years, Iran has hosted the largest refugee population in the world, primarily rooted in the influx of over
    2.6 million Afghans following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979,
    and including 1.2 million Iraqis who left Iraq during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War and the 1990-1991 Gulf War.

    Refugees in Iran numbered approximately 4.5 million at the peak of their presence in 1991-92 (out of a global 17.5 million),

    1.9 million in 1998 (out of a global 13.5 million),

    3.2 million by the end of 2001, and

    985,000 by the end of 2004 (out of a global refugee total of 9.7 million).

    To date, those numbers have remained largely unchanged.

    By way of comparison, if the United States had hosted the same proportion of refugees to its population and size, the numbers would have roughly amount to

    20 million in 1991 and 9 million in 1996.

    link to allacademic.com

  9. Pingback: Steinhardt and Khouri agree: it’s not about borders, it’s about refugees

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