One of things I find baffling about the various conflicts that collectively make up what is called the Middle East conflicti is the Palestinians' insistence on the "right of return" of all "refugees". From the fact that several hundred thousand Arabs were displaced in the wars of 1948 and 1967, they not only claim a status of refugee for the displaced and their descendants but a "right to return" of both to "their ancestral homeland".

But if, somehow, being displaced creates a status of refugee, and if, somehow, this title is automatically handed down to the descendants of those originally displaced, and if the status of refugee, somehow, creates a "right to return", if all these premisses hold true, then why cannot Jews claim exactly the same for themselves? Many Jews were expelled after 70 CE and continuously later on from what since the 1920s has been called Palestine; their descendants are in that very sense "refugees", and so they likewise have a "right to return" to their "ancestral homeland". That is: If Palestinians can claim indigeneity and from that a right to the land, then so can the Jews.

So if Palestinians want a "right to return", they'll have to accept the presence of all Jews in the *same* land for the same very reasons.

And contrary, if Palestinians hdo not have a "right to return", if one's ancestors' indigeneity does not create a legitimate title over the land, then the Jews don't need to bother whether they have such a title legitimately or not. It suffices that in 1947 the U.N. General Assembly accepted the partition plan of the land for both people (Res. 181 (II)) which the Jews accepted and the Palestinians of their own choice rejected.

To say the Jews are "colonizers" is thus utter nonsense – unless one can give convincing criteria for how many generations must have passed until one's ancestors' indigeneity does not (or: no longer) establish a valid claim to the land by the descendants.

Good luck with that.

Ironically, it is the very Palestinian claims of indigeneity, displacement, and inherited refugee status that all the more confer validity to the Jewish claims on the Judea and Samaria Area.

#talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten