Friday, February 6, 2009

Deconstructing Israel's 'Right to Exist'

By Rannie Amiri
Palestine Chronicle

""There was no such thing as Palestinians ... They did not exist." - Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (The Sunday Times, 15 June 1969)......

But, if acknowledging Israel’s ‘right to exist’ means accepting that anyone who is Jewish can automatically become a citizen of Israel and then live on the very land, and in some cases, in the very home, of a Palestinian family who has lived there for generations; if it means relinquishing the right to say “this was my land and my home before you took it away from me”; if it means forsaking the right to return to Palestine with deed and keys in hand, demanding to know what entitles the newly arrived family from England, Russia, Morocco or Ethiopia to live on the property of those who were forcibly expelled; if it means denying the very existence of Palestine and Palestinians—as Golda Meir tried to do—by erasing their history, culture, and collective memoryThen no. Israel has no ‘right to exist’. "

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