I don't see a problem with Israel refusing the decendents of the arab refugees returning (cause that is what we're really talking about! The original refugees are less than a million, very old and dying off). No state can be asked to let in people that have stated that one of their goals would be the disbanding of the nation they enter.
Then there is of course the aspect of reciprocity, the Right of Return cuts both ways: if the arabs want to talk about the return of refugees, then they need to talk about all the refugees. That means all the jews that were chased out of the muslim and arab countries during the 20th century because they were jews. Remember that not all jews in Israel come from Europe, many -if not most- are from the middle-eastern Sefardi stock. That are the groups which in some cases had been living in middle eastern countries for longer than there were arabs present (like in Iraq and the Magreb) or longer than there was Islam (like in the Arab Peninsula). No arab country is about to take these people back, so why should Israel take in more arabs? The better way would be to do a population-exchange. Israel gets to keep their jews, the arab countries get the Palestinians (and the billions of dollars worth -adjusted for inflation and such- of wealth stolen from the jewish when they were chased away). More than a fair trade considering the Right of Return as expressed by the Arabs/Muslims is a non-starter.
There is of course the reality of Israel being a jewish state. It's the only one in the world, and for some reason many people take umbrage at the fact that Israel declares itself to be a jewish state (wether or not officially). Whereas there are dozens of islamic states of all sorts, and even a few christian states (where some form of christianity is the official state religion). Yet this does not seem to be a problem. Smacks of hypocrisy to me since there's no difference between the three (remember that both Islam and Christianity purport to be a global brotherhood, where all members of the religion are one. Islam calls it the Ummah, Christianity usually calls it the oecomene -sp?-)
ah, the case of the bombardments and its inevitable civilian casualties, and the quetion of who is responsible.
First we must know that Hamas (and Hezbollah) expressly places their stockpiles and military instalations in the midst of civilian infrastructure, with the intent of using these civilians -with or without their agreement!- as living shields. This in order to use the resulting casualties and pictures thereoff as a propaganda-tool against Israel. This activity (also used by Saddam and Milosevic to use a few others) is expressly forbidden by the Conventions. Since Hamas engages in this activity with a strategical and tactical goal in mind it alone is responsible for the victims of their choice.
The disconnect between what the muslims/arabs claim about the Israelis and reality. No one is really claiming the the Israelis are saints. Thaey can't be given their situation: a fight for the very existance of their state and people against an enemy that has more than once stated its intent for genocide (Hamas, Hezbollah, the PLO in ages back, various Arab states since '48 and of course Iran's President when talking about his nukes he says they're not making), a few million people surrounded by a sea of humans that hate the very guts of jews (and have it validated in their religious books too). However, various anti-Israeli sources regularly ascribe to the Israeli state and the IDF in particular methods and goals that can be summed up as holocaust and genocide. Often enough Israel itself is compared to Nazi-Deutschland, a favourite in the demonization war.
The reality is of course very different: if the goals and methods of Israel were really like those of the nazis we'd have, by now, a region devoid of arabs either through plain old murder or expulsion. We all know that there are now more arabs in the region than there have ever been before.
We also know that when arab states deal with opposition in their own states, they do this in most brutal fashions. Remember the Syrians and the city of Hama, remember the war against the GIA in Algeria, remember the Saudi response to Shia demands, remember Saddam, remember the Lebanese response to the terrorists hiding in Palestinian refugeecamps last year and in 2007! Their methods were high in destruction and bodycount. Excessive even in the case of Algeria and Hama in Syria.
As such we can only conclude that the Arabs ascribe to the Israelis methods and motives that are basically those of the Arabs. In the same way that authoritarian states cannot really believe that non-authoritarian regimes do work as advertised. So while the Israelis aren't saints they try to minimise the effects of warfare the Arabs are incapable of grasping this because they innately believe that their enemy is really the same as they are. Hence their spurious claimes about "Nazi-Israel".
