[popsicesHoupe]

Mike, surely the same criteria have been applied to the Jews who "returned" and continue to "return" to Israel?

Not really. There are different dynamics at work for each.

The Palestinian "right of return" is derived from international law and human rights agreements. The basic principles are widely agreed upon, but the bounds have - as previously noted - been much expanded in this application, which is a major sticking point. The Israeli "law of return", on the other hand, is grounded in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 (and the memorandum of 1922) establishing British Palestine (excluding Transjordan) as a Jewish national homeland.

One thing: in South Africa a common call/slogan during the struggle for liberation was "One Boer (i.e. white Afrikaner), one bullet". By no means everyone subscribed to this slogan, but it stirred up a lot of fear (as did the bombs and violence prevalent at the time, as well as the supposed "communist threat" from South Africa's neighboring countries).

That's one I hadn't heard (though, like I said, I'm not much up on what went on there). If that attitude had been widely taught to children in schools, it would be fairly parallel to the situation in the Palestinian territories.

The goal of the majority of Palestinians is not to "push the Jews into the ocean" as many people unfortunately believe; they simply want to be able to go from one side of a city to the next without having to pass through the checkpoints that serve as a daily reminder of occupation. The want to be able to raise their children in a free land that they can call Palestine. They want what everyone else in the world should have; their freedom and a country.

You can make a similar statement the other way. The majority of Jews have no desire to humiliate or oppress the Palestinians; they just want to be able to go to work or to the mall or to a friend's house without fear of being blown up.

Unfortunately, "normal" people don't make dramatic news, so the hotheads get the most airtime. The rest of us are left trying to puzzle out just how typical (or atypical) the Palestinian rock-throwers and Israeli firebrands really are. I worry more about the Palestinian side because anti-Semitism and the illegitimacy of Israel are taught in the schools, though whether that's because the sentiment really is widespread, or just because Fatah and then Hamas have been in charge, is an open question. It does seem that many who would love to live in peace with Israel are afraid to say so openly for fear of Hamas.

Also, I may be mistaken, but is Palestine not the only country in the world that in recent times actually has been wiped off the map?

Palestine was not really a "country" in recent times. It was part of the Ottoman Empire from the 1500s up through World War I, after which it became part of the British Mandate of Palestine (which actually included all of current Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and Jordan, though the latter was later excluded from the plan to create a Jewish homeland). The 1947 partition plan created by the UN would have created both a Jewish state and an Arab Palestine, but it was rejected by Palestinian Arab leaders (though, after looking at the map, I think the only reason the Jewish leaders accepted it was post-Holocaust desperation for a homeland - both territories looked like a set of Rorschach inkblots).

After the 1948 war, the armistice agreements partitioned out all land not held by Israel to Jordan (West Bank), Syria (part of the Golan Heights), and Egypt (Gaza). None of those lands were made independent between then and when Israel captured them in the 1967 war. So the current situation is really the closest Palestine has been in recent times to being an independant nation.

In Christ,
Mike