Working for the creation of a rainbow nation rather than the continuation of the Israeli apartheid state sounds perfectly legitimate to me.

Omar Barghouti's comments are quoted here by the writer, as follows....

“Note that a 'right of return' is demanded not just for the limited number of 1948 refugees who are still alive but for all their descendants ad infinitum, who were born and have lived in other countries for their entire lives. Thus, somebody born and bred in Lebanon or Syria, who has never fled from anywhere, is considered to be a 'Palestinian refugee' if that person has, say, a grandfather or great grandfather who was a 1948 refugee. “

How is that different to a Jew, Mr. Wertheim? There is not a Jew living in any part of the world that would not be accepted into what is currently Israel on application and also paid substantial sums to do so as part of ‘Eretz Israel,’ to squeeze out yet another a Palestinian. It would be very safe to say that the majority of Jews in this country, particularly members of the Jewish Board of Deputies see themselves as Jews first, part Australians second and who enjoy the anomaly of two passports,. So where do they belong?.

Your argument is hypocritical. So it is acceptable for a Jew to do what he likes, maintain his connection to what he sees as “his” country, even with a separate passport, but certainly not for a Palestinian to have such a privilege?

Let us not be accused of being anti-semitic, although in most parts of the world where the inhumane activities of Israel lend the phrase a sense of honour, but the circumstances are the same. Once a Palestinian, robbed of his birthright by a cruel and evil conqueror should remain a Palestinian and will, if the world accepts the UN Resolution in September. All they have against that is the veto of the US, compromised beyond belief with all the bribe monies that Israel has directed over the years to weaken the sense of justice in the Congress.

It will be needed on that day.

Your hypocrisy and lack of humanity is showing, Mr. Wertheim. Only to be expected, I suppose

Yes the hypocrisy is amazing. Peter Wertheim states "Thus, somebody born and bred in Lebanon or Syria, who has never fled from anywhere, is considered to be a 'Palestinian refugee' if that person has, say, a grandfather or great grandfather who was a 1948 refugee."
This is exactly the policy of Israel. Just change "Palestinian" to "Jew".
Likewise your fear for Jews becoming the "disempowered and vulnerable minority." You seem to have no problem with disempowered and vulnerable minorities, provided they are Palestinian.
The Palestinians for the most part support a two state solution. However, many of them must be giving up all hope of this coming to pass after 44 years of military occupation.
Rather than criticising the proponents of BDS, you should be pressuring the government of Israel to negotiate a two state solution, or pretty soon the only option left will be a one state solution.

The three earlier correspondents are all part of the powerful pro-Palestinian lobby. In contrast, I think Peter is spot on. The most offensive part of Barghouti's article is his open assertion that the national rights of the Palestinians should take absolute precedence over the rights of what he calls euphemistically the “other inhabitants of the land”. Barghouti simply does not recognize the Jewish right to national self-determination in Israel. This makes him at best a chauvinistic nationalist, and at worst an advocate of ethnic hierarchies.

The author seems to fail to distinguish of the aims of a movement (BDS) and
the individual views of its members (which might well vary on an issue such as
supporting a one-state or a two-state solution, for example).

And one's views on one-state versus two-state solution might well sensibly
depend on how a proposed two-state solution deals with the Palestinian refugees.

As for the authors' remarks about inheritance of refugee status - doesn't the
justification for Jews having a privileged position in regard to immigration
into Israel depend on inheritance via (presumed) ancestry going back thousands
of years?

Lev Bronstein accuses myself and fellow posters of being part of a "powerful pro-Palestinian lobby". This is patently ridiculous. If there is any powerful lobby in the Israel Palestinian conflict it is the Jewish one. If there was a powerful pro-Palestinian lobby then there would already be a Palestinian state and the military occupation would have ended decades ago.
He accuses Barghouti of failing to recognise the Jewish right to "national self determination in Israel". How about the rights of the Palestinians to "national self determination in Palestine?"
If only Israel were to show the same respect for Palestinian aspirations as they demand for their own then this conflict would have long ago been resolved. It is this racist hypocrisy that is at the heart of conflict.

Rhys: you obviously haven't been reading very widely. Try putting a viewpoint in favour of two states in New Matilda (better known as New Palestine), Overland Magazine or Crikey.Com, or in activities associated with the Sydney University Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies or the NSW Greens or various unions such as the NSW Teachers Federation - all journals and institutions captured by the pro-Palestinian lobby which exclude any view defending Israel's existence.

The outcomes in the Middle East reflect a range of factors on which the strength of lobbies in Australia rates very low.

Try considering the political culture of the region which rejects any compromise or win-win solutions. The Palestinians could have negotiated a state in 2000 or early 2001 without all the tragic deaths on both sides associated with the extremist second intifada, but chose instead to push for absolute rather than partial justice.

All part of ther sayanims game, Rhys.

Sadly, any point of view that contradicts the dictates of the Jews automatically means you are a supporter and spokesman for Palestine.
It is all part of the familiar guilt promotion by Jews who have dined out on Holocaust marketing, for 65 years, well funded, well orchestrated and their favourite being the anti-semitic accusation, both of which have passed their use-by-date. However, not before stifling honest comment and free speech such as the Anti -Discrimination League in the US, an ananachronism as are so many of the Zionist tenets.

From Robert Weltsch Correspondent for German Zionist Weekly in 1925 and later for Haaretz.......
"We may be a people without a home but alas this is not a country without a people as 700,000 Palestinians have lived for centuries in Palestine.
We can only prosper if the newcomers such we are, arrive with honest and sincere determination to live together on the basis of mutual respect.
The realisation of Zionism is unthinkable if we do not succeed in integrating our movement into the ever stronger nationalist awakening of the neighbouring people”

And by way of a distinct ontrast..... Ben Gurion

"The one great concern that should govern our thought and work is the conquest of the land and building it up through extensive immigration, our central problem. We are conquerors facing an iron wall and we have to break through it. Zionism is the most profound thing in Judaism and I think we should act according to Zionist considerations and not merely Jewish considerations.
This will be revenge for what they did to our forefathers during biblical times".

Makes it easy to see where the psychotic hatred comes from and the contrasts from a decent Jew to a rabid Zionist.
Sadly, it is passed on from one generation to the next.

They know no better

The BDS movement is a ploy by the far left and mohammedans to destroy Israel. The first because it is a democracy and the second because it is an insult to their religion for a Jew to better them and to control any part of "moslem" lands. The war is religious, not political or territorial. Jews are a people; history, archeology, genetics, language and religion define them. "Palestinians" were invented for political reasons to oppose Jews. A great many of the "ancient indigenous" Arabs migrated to the Palestinian mandate when Jewish enterprise pulled it from the Ottoman backwaters. And just as "Palestinian" peoplehood is an invention, so is the myth of occupation: there never was a "Palestine". The whole "Palestinian" narrative is an invention to counter and mirror Jewish history and rights. It is a political con job by the followers of Hitler's ally Haj al-Husseini. And to the eternal shame of the left, it supports the jihad against the Jewish state.

The local Arabs are more concerned to deny Jewish self-determination than for statehood; each Jewish concession has been met by aggression and deceit. Israel respects land title, but the Arabs claim that state land is their property. All of their baseless claims and myths, like Jordanian terms for lands illegally occupied - the Western part of Jerusalem or Judea and Samaria which they called the West Bank, are supported by the left and countries who want to benefit by trade and oil and neither Jewish deaths nor suffering matter. But Czechoslovakia didn't matter and the world got WW2 and 50m dead. Islamofacism which drives the war against the Jewish state, has designs on the "enlightened" West which its leaders ignore, as much as it has on its own people who want to depart from the savagery and backwardness of 7th century Arabia.

And what of the Jewish people worldwide and “all their descendents ad infinitum, who were born and have lived in other countries for their entire lives” who are granted instant Israeli citizenship?

Peter Wertheim fails to acknowledge that the Palestinian refugees and their descendents have suffered six decades of being STATELESS because the state that was created in what was THEIR HOMELAND denies them their right of return.

This is the single most relevant factor that calls into question the legitimacy of establishing an EXCLUSIVE Jewish state in Palestine - it was done at the expense of the indigenous Arab inhabitants, who were the majority population with a centuries long attachment to the land.

An exclusive “Jewish state” could not have been created in Palestine without the ethnic cleansing and the accompanying dispossession of three-quarters of the Palestinian Arab population. This was and continues to be the injustice that needs to be addressed.

Well said, Dora Q

For a state that started out as a collection of displaced peoples from all over the world, with the passionate support of the world, rightly so, it has now come to this; a pariah state, full of hatred and hated by that same world, a state that sees any action by anyone, anywhere, as trying to bring them down. The well-known persecution complex , now grown into a malignant psychosis.

What this embedded attitude has done over time is to degenerate to a stage that there is nothing endearing in the character any more where once I could say that the cultured, pleasant, worldly qualities that were resident in most Jews has now totally dissipated replaced by all the tried and true phrases from the 'Oh, woe is me' purveyors thick on the ground in Tel Aviv. The new dictates of Zionism.

A lack of empathy to suffering will blind a human being to justice, liberty, decency, and personal discernment, rendering them virtually soulless. Such is Zionism.

All we can do is hope that in the coming generation through better understanding, an element of decency is created that raises itself well above all that has now been developed by the hated militarists, cruel, inhumane police, the mass murderers of Shatila and Sabra and hopefully who can see that one life is just as important as another.

Every country in the world would support such a transition in every way possible

What if the diaspora, on which Zionism and the Jewish right of return depends, were a myth?
A different telling of the story has it that the Romans were not known to disperse or transport peoples. In the case of the Jews of Biblical times, after the Jewish revolt in the first century, the Romans destroyed their Temple in Jerusalem, reduced them to peasantry and forced them to remain on the land to grow grain for the conquering Roman Legions.
This state of affairs continued until Islam swept thru the Middle East in the seventh century. Then a slow conversion of Jews to Islam began and accelerated during and after the 200 year reign of the Crusading Christians beginning in the very late 11th century.
This narrative makes the present day Palestinians the rightful heirs of the land we call Palestine, and the Zionists merely the latest crusading colonists to descend on that land from Europe.
The European Zionists are themselves probably the rightful heirs not of Palestine but of Khazaria, a Kingdom which used to straddle the area between the Black and Caspian Seas.

There is no 'Jewish right to national self-determination in Israel'.
Are American or Australian Jews who migrate to Israel donating their own properties to Palestinians whose properties the Israeli state has appropriated for them?
Do I have the right to go and expropriate property from some hapless family in Wales (possibly people descended from Jewish refugees from Tsarist pogroms) because my great great grandparents once lived there?
If Jews have a natural right to self-determination in Israel, does this mean that Australian Jews who have not made so-called Aliyah are living in a state of incompleteness as Jews? Is not their continued residence outside of Israel displaying contempt for Jewish 'self-determination'?
The whole thing is a joke, and yet we have educated people propagating this rubbish, worse, defiantly supporting ongoing ethnic cleansing against a subject people.
To date, the main impediment to a two-state 'solution' has been Israel itself. Succcessive Palestinian leaderships (including Hamas) have either accepted or have been prepared to negotiate around the 1967 borders. Bronstein's claim that Palestinians could have negotiated a state in 2000 or 2001 represents the usual diversion, as there was only hyperbole at both Camp David and Taba. Israel offered words, intending that nothing of substance would be given away.
When is Israel going to define its borders so that outsiders can know what the designation refers to?
The ongoing linguistic games by the Israel lobby demean all involved, not least the spokespersons of the lobby themselves.

Jews identify with Israel because it is the State of the Jewish people, but Jews but do NOT claim to be “refugees” from Israel just because our ancestors were made refugees by the Romans. If and when a State of Palestine is established, no-one will object if it opens its doors to people outside its borders who identify as Palestinians. This has got nothing to do with ethnic exclusivity. EVERY nation-State – Germany, France, Greece, Spain, Egypt, Syria etc etc – is the State of an ethnic majority whose language and culture is the official language and culture. Don’t pretend that a future State of Palestine would be any different. And I doubt it will give members of minority groups equal voting, legal and civil rights as Israel does

Re Vilmos
* 'Jews but do NOT claim to be “refugees” from Israel just because our ancestors were made refugees by the Romans'. Then why was a Jewish state forcibly created in this particular spot when a multi-ethnic community was already living there (necessitating, as intended from the start of the Zionist project, a project of ethnic cleansing)? And why do the expansionists refer to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria?
* Israel comparable to other countries? On the contrary.
Who is a Frenchman. A person of polyglot ethnicity who is a citizen of the state of France. And so on. Hitler had a preoccupation with conjoining purist notions of ethnicity and citizenship, but he is hardly a role model.
* Israel gives equal voting, legal and civil rights to non-Jews? hello? voting rights perhaps, but the equality ends there. For Non-Jewish Israelis - Property rights? Residency rights? Marriage rights? Educational and welfare rights? Rights deterring arbtirary arrest and detention? As for Residents of the Occupied Territories, they have no rights whatsoever.
Israel, by conception, creation and maintenance, is an apartheid state. Why not call a spade a spade?

In my post from last Thursday I failed to acknowledge where I first encountered the idea I discussed. If anyone is interested, the Israeli historian Shlomo Sand explores this idea in some detail in his book "The Invention of the Jewish People".

The mythical "Right of Return" is a fabrication. Anyone living outside the borders of Israel (as recognised by Arraffat in 1993) at the time the State of Israel was recognised by the Palestinian leadership, doesn't get to return (UN Resolution 181 - http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=4468). So be it, wishful thinking does not make the reality change.

Jews were forced out of some areas and let/forced Palestinian's out of others, so what, it was war. The fact the corrupt little toad sold out his people for a Nobel Prize shouldn't surprise anyone (even the PLA was embarrassed by the amount of money he had squirreled away in the end). The UN Resolution 181 calls for a two-State solution, that is in the process of being sorted out, but the Palestinian's have to make up their minds. The world is getting heartily sick of continued orchestrated violence in order to avoid accounting for where all the funds have gone, why no effort has been made to improve life.

The Palestinian's are about to suffer badly based upon public perception of the perfidious-Pakistani regime and Muslim nations in general. It isn't too hard, pictures of Palestinian's rejoicing after September 11 were distributed far and wide, they'll stick in peoples minds just like the protests about the death of Bin Laden now... Slow learners really, all through history the ability to play both ends against the middle has been a medium term proposition at best, sooner or later both ends turn on the middle.

Read the fine print of UN Resolution 181, a very good idea would be to encourage Israeli Muslims to vote in either the West Bank/Gaza elections. That would mean that they were subject to deportation at pleasure.