Einat Wilf on the West’s Indulgence of Palestinian Delusions

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2020

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The so-called “right of return” is one of the the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’s thorniest issues. During Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, as many as 700,000 Arabs fled or were driven from what had been mandatory Palestine. Since then, and unlike most of the world’s other refugee populations, the official number of Palestinian refugees has not declined, but exploded. The United Nations has decided that the refugee status of the Palestinians passes down from generation to generation, so that children born today are classified as refugees in the same way their grandparents were—an attitude that is contrary to its policy for all other displaced groups. And as a consequence, even when neighboring Arab countries make an effort to integrate Palestinians and their descendants, they are counted as refugees.

Why did this happen? In The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace, Einat Wilf and Adi Schwartz explain that the persistence of the Palestinian refugee problem is part of the broader Palestinian war—waged not only with rockets, knives, and bullets, but also through international bodies, NGOs, and the media—against the very existence of the Jewish state. They also show how Western indulgence of this manufactured problem has harmed the effort to achieve an end to the conflict.

This week, Jonathan Silver sits down with Einat Wilf, a former Knesset member, to discuss the roots of the refugee problem, the role it plays in the Palestinian war against Israel, and why peace will never be achieved until Palestinians abandon the dream of destroying the Jewish state.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble as well as “Ulterior” by Swan Production.

Transcript

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0:00.0	In discussions about normalizing relations with Israel and suing for peace,
0:12.7	Palestinian leaders insist that their refugees have a right of return, which entitles them to reclaim the lands and homes that the occupying Zionists caused them to flee in
0:22.3	1948. How many refugees are there from a war that was waged over 70 years ago? Turns out the number
0:28.4	has exploded over the decades, from several hundred thousand displaced Arabs to today more than
0:34.3	five million. Among the Palestinian refugees claiming the right of return are
0:38.4	women and men born in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, even North America, and throughout Europe,
0:43.9	claimed as the third and fourth generation as much as if they were the first, as refugees of the
0:49.2	war of 1948. The desire to return to the land of Israel as if 1948 never happened is a way of expressing
0:56.8	a wish that the birth of Israel never happened. It is not a demand for negotiating peace with
1:02.4	Israel. It is a frank acknowledgement that the Palestinians do not accept the reality of Israel.
1:07.9	The demand for a Palestinian right of return is a demand that NGOs, journalists, and
1:12.7	well-meaning political figures from throughout the West have indulged ever since. In that indulgence,
1:19.2	the West is complicit in keeping alive the Palestinian delusion that history can be undone,
1:24.2	that the defeated aggressors can yet emerge victorious, that the Jewish state can
1:29.1	be removed from the face of the earth. Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver.
1:35.1	That is the argument that is elaborated in a new book, The War of Return, how Western
1:39.5	indulgence of the Palestinian dream has obstructed the path to peace, written by Adi Schwartz and his co-author,
1:46.1	my guest today, former member of the Knesset, Enot Wilf.
1:50.1	If you enjoy this conversation, you can subscribe to the Tikva podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play,
1:55.7	and Spotify.
1:56.8	I hope you leave us a five-star review to help us grow this community of ideas.
2:00.8	I welcome your feedback on this or any of our other podcast episodes, at the podcast. I hope you leave us a five-star review to help us grow this community of ideas.
	...

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