OpinioNet Contributed Commentary

OpinioNet Contributed Commentary - Steven Plaut

February 11, 2002

Steven Plaut

It is Time to Accept the ’Right of Return’!!


To:  The Leaders of the European Union, and in particular the heads of France and the UK
From:  Israel
Re:  The Right of Return

After listening very carefully to your many years of lecturing us on inevitability and the importance of the "Right of Return", we have been convinced!

You are correct!

There really SHOULD be a "Right of Return".

Those displaced should be returned to their original habitations. All arguments against immediate reinstatement are false. No civilized person could oppose the need to restore the vanquished to their original homes. You are correct - it does not matter how much time has gone by. Justice is justice. There is no validity to the refusal to acknowledge the Right of Return.

And that is why we demand that the Right of Return be immediately applied to the Elgin Marbles stolen by the British from the Parthenon, to the Egyptian obelisk in the Place Concord, and to all antiquities that have been removed from Greece, Turkey, Egypt and elsewhere by Europeans. These objects must enjoy the Right of Return. You have yourselves explained to the world why!!

Surely, you do not wish to be perceived as hypocritical Philistines, demanding some sort of "Right of Return" for Palestinians to a non-existent Palestinian state that never existed in all of history, all this - while refusing to acknowledge a Right of Return for art and archeological objects to their homelands! Surely you do not think that such artifacts, which do not threaten anyone else’s existence, have less of a Right to live in their homelands than do Palestinians. And these marbles and obelisks do not already control 22 OTHER countries, in contrast with the Arabs.

Now we long ago gave up the idea that someday you might acknowledge that JEWS have some sort of right of return to THEIR homeland, a right that encompasses, among other things, the right to defend themselves against Arab nazism and fascism, including when such fascism is Sudetenized and dressed up in the red herring of Palestinian "self-determination" and "Right of Return".

But today we have far less dramatic expectations of you.

All we ask is that grant to the stolen art treasures of Europe precisely the same Right of Return that you suddenly think that Palestinians should enjoy. Enlighten us through your good example!

Recognize the Right of Return!! Recognize the Right of Return!!

Steven Plaut
University of Haifa


Read other commentaries by Steven Plaut.

You can e-mail Steven at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il.

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Copyright © 2002 by Steven Plaut
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