Return - Part 2

Anyone taking on the legal and historical issues behind "Right of Return" must, by necessity, fall into a trap laid by those who advocate this formula for a settlement of the refugee problem. For when groups like the Somerville Divestment Project (SDP) claim right of return is backed by international law, they are not actually making a legal argument. Rather, they are stating this as if it were a known fact that all must agree to, much like referring to Israel's presence in the West Bank and Gaza as an "illegal occupation" is meant to end a legal debate, rather than start one.

Pointing out that a legal argument for this alleged "right of return" rests on fairly shaky ground (as I did here last week) can make one look like a legal nitpicker, especially when proponents of this alleged right strut around as if they had presented a closed case (when, in fact, they have presented no case at all). Even with the risks associated with playing in someone else's field by someone else's rules, it's been my experience that the truth - laid out clearly and given enough time to reach open minds - tends to win the argument over time.

That being the case (and now that we have dealt with the legal case for this dubious right), it's time to move on to the historical argument. As a starting point, here is the text the SDP has put onto the ballot in the Middlesex 27^th:

"Shall the State Representative from this district be instructed to vote in favor of a nonbinding resolution calling on the federal government to support the right of all refugees, including Palestinian refugees, to return to their land of origin ?"

Since this is the organization's own choice of words, presumably they are making the claim that not just Palestinian refugees, but all refugees have this inalienable, irrevocable right of return defined (at least for the Palestinians) as the right of a refugee and all of his or her descendents to immediately return to their country, town and house of origin with no preconditions - indeed without any conditions - on the exercise of those rights.

If the SC-SPD is making their call on behalf of all refugees, and not just Palestinians, then it must be the case that (1) other refugee groups have historically exercised this right of return, a right uniquely denied to the Palestinians; or (2) groups like SDP are fighting on behalf of all refugees who have not yet been able to exercise their own right of return, whatever their nation of origin.

Historically speaking, it's clear that this right of return has not been an option for most, if any, refugees throughout human history. After the disintegration of British ruled India, for example, the creation of two new nations: India and Pakistan created a million Hindu and Muslim refugees who found themselves on one side of the new border or the other. Yet this enormous refugee crisis was solved by a population transfer with Muslims resettling in the newly created Muslim state of Pakistan and Hindu's settling in India. While such transfers are not pretty (indeed, they are incredibly wrenching and led to the deaths of thousands), they are precedented (in fact, sadly common) throughout history.

The fate of Germans who had lived in Poland for centuries after World War II is also illustrative. After Germany's defeat in the war, ethnic Germans were kicked out of not just Poland, but a number of Eastern European countries, uprooted from their homes and villages and sent back to Germany, never to return. Again, this population transfer was wrenching and bloody. And yet this chapter in European history has been largely closed.

In each of these cases, and indeed in countless more, a right of return has never been posited as a solution to an historic grievance of Indians, Pakistanis, Germans or others longing for the long-lost villages and houses of their grandfathers. Looking at the Palestinian refugee story, it seems to most resemble the German case given that the Palestinian Arabs, like German Poles, contributed to and took part in a war that contributed in large part to their refugee status in the first place. And yet, as noted above, the German refugee issue is a footnote in history, while the Palestinian refugee crisis has been allowed to fester for generation upon generation.

So if a "right of return" is non-historical, might it be that groups like the SDP, with their boundless concern for refugees of all races, nationalities and religions is advocating for this right for not just Palestinians, but for Germans, Indians, Pakistanis, Tibetans, Kurds, Afghans, Jews, indeed anyone who has ever been a refugee or has a refugee as a parent or grandparent?

Such a position would lead to some interesting consequences. For example, two of the most significant examples of refugees returning to their homes in the last half century would be Afghanistan and Iraq. In both cases, American attacks on those countries were followed by mass returns of hundreds of thousands of refugees to nations they had long fled when under the rule of leaders like the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. And even within these countries, the post-war situation allowed internal refugees (notably the Kurds) to return to their homes and regions. Call me crazy, but I don't see the right-of-return crowd lining up to hail the American wars of the last five years as facilitating the actual exercise of right of return by hundreds of thousands of people whose only shortcoming seems to be that they are not Palestinian.

Now it may be unfair to lay responsibility for advocating on behalf of Afghans, Tibetans and others at the feet of the SPD. For all I know, members of this organization spend most of their time fighting on behalf of beleaguered people throughout the world, so much so that they can only perform their divestment/Palestinian right of return work in the evenings and on weekends. Yet there is one part of the world where members of SC-SPD have spoken out on a refugee crisis outside of the Levant that provides an interesting point of reference.

If one were list the greatest human rights catastrophe of the last decade (in a crowded field to be sure), one would have to pick the Sudan. In one bloody war between the Islamist government and Christian and animist black tribes in South Sudan, two million people have been killed and countless more made homeless, raped, mutilated or sold into slavery. And just as that war began to settle, a new crisis in Sudan's Darfur region has led to hundreds of thousands of more deaths and even more refugees.

Here is a part of the world where many people need not a right of return, but a right to not be kicked out of their homes in the first place, not to mention a right not to be killed, not to have their families killed in front of them, and not be sold as a slave in Khartoum.

And how have those champions of refugees everywhere, those SDP advocates who insist they be given the high moral ground immediately and unconditionally on any human rights subject, acted on the Sudan/Darfur crisis? By condemning those who criticize the Sudanese government for its responsibility for this humanitarian catastrophe. And why such insensitivity when millions of refugees cry out for help? Apparently, because a number of Jewish organizations and synagogues have begun to join Christian churches and African American institutions to advocate for American intervention in Darfur. To some of the loudest members of SPD, this is proof enough that the entire issue is a Zionist plot, designed to bring down the Sudanese government and - for good measure -steal Sudan's oil.

Given all of this, we are left with an obvious conclusion. Return is not a historical right exercised freely by other refugee groups but denied to the Palestinians. Nor do those who advocate such a right for the Palestinians advocate for (or even care about) other refugee groups throughout the world. In the extreme case of Sudan, they even ally with the oppressors who are creating new refugees on a daily basis.

Thus the right of return begins to look not so much like a noble cause, but another example of weaponizing the vocabulary of human rights to support the militant political interests of one side in a very specific conflict. Fore shame.