RSS
The ‘Right of Return’ Isn’t a Right — It’s a Means to Attack Israel
Palestinians pass by the gate of an UNRWA-run school in Nablus in the West Bank. Photo: Reuters/Abed Omar Qusini.
In the wake of the October 7th massacre and the war Hamas launched from Gaza, one might expect that Western democracies would take a moment to reassess their assumptions about the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict. Instead, countries like Ireland, Spain, Norway, and Canada are rushing to unilaterally “recognize” a Palestinian Arab state — a move they claim is a step toward peace.
But there is a fatal contradiction at the core of this effort, one that goes almost entirely unexamined: the Palestinian demand for a “right of return.” It is this demand — not settlements, not borders, not Jerusalem — that has repeatedly scuttled any possibility of a negotiated peace.
That’s because this so-called “right” is not a call for compromise. It is a weaponized fantasy, one designed to eliminate the world’s only Jewish state through a back-door diplomatic conquest. It is not about coexistence — it is about replacement. And in backing a Palestinian “state” whose leadership still strenuously clings to this demand, Western governments are not promoting peace. They are underwriting the continuation of war by other means.
In the obsessive international discourse around the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict, “right of return” has become a sort of incantation. Palestinian officials brand it a moral imperative. NGOs declare it a human right. And diplomats in Brussels and Ottawa parrot it as a required ingredient for peace.
But this “right of return” is not about justice or reconciliation. It is not even about return. It is a carefully constructed euphemism for demographic warfare — a strategy to undo what conventional warfare failed to accomplish between 1947 and 1973.
It’s the idea that the Jewish State — the only one among the 195 nations on Earth — should agree to import millions of hostile foreign nationals, the descendants of refugees from a war started by five Arab armies and multiple Arab militias trying to destroy it. All while the actual Arab nations that initiated the war continue to hold most of these “refugees” in permanent limbo, denied citizenship and rights in their countries for more than 75 years.
This is not a peace plan. It’s the slow-motion implementation of the PLO’s 1964 charter, which never contemplated statehood beside Israel — but rather statehood instead of Israel.
The phrase “right of return” originates in UN General Assembly Resolution 194, passed in 1948 at the tail end of the first Arab war to annihilate Israel. That resolution was non-binding, conditional, and explicitly stated that refugees must “wish to live at peace with their neighbors” to be considered for return.
It was intended for individual refugees, not for their descendants, and certainly not as a vehicle to reverse Israel’s existence.
But for decades, Palestinian leaders have mutated this non-binding suggestion into an inherited, irrevocable, and universal “right” — not just for those displaced by a war the Arab League started in 1948, but for their grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and even great-great-grandchildren, most of whom have never seen Israel, never lived in Israel, and whose ancestors often fled at the behest of Arab leaders who promised Israel would soon be destroyed.
Their goal isn’t to return to homes that no longer exist. It is to settle in sovereign Israel, in places like Haifa, Jaffa, and Ashkelon — not Ramallah or Gaza — to end Israel’s Jewish majority and destroy the Jewish state from within.
Those who advocate for this demographic conquest often argue: “But Israel has a Law of Return. Why shouldn’t Palestinians?”
The comparison is not only false — it’s intentionally deceptive.
Israel’s Law of Return enables Jews, members of an indigenous people who were exiled, persecuted, and nearly annihilated over the course of two millennia, to return to their ancestral homeland.
Critically, Israel’s Law of Return does not seek to displace anyone. It does not call for Jews to “return” to Baghdad, Sana’a, or Warsaw. It does not challenge another state’s sovereignty. It merely provides a refuge and a home within Israel’s own borders.
The Palestinian “right of return” is the opposite: a demand that millions of non-citizens — people who are not from the State of Israel — be granted entry, not into a future Palestinian state, but into Israel itself.
The Palestinian “right of return” is often framed as if it conforms to international norms. But no such norm exists. Many countries, including Greece, Italy, Ireland, Germany, and Poland, have “right of return” laws — granting citizenship or immigration priority to descendants of former citizens or ethnic diasporas.
But all these programs apply to descendants returning to the current sovereign state. No Greek descendant has the “right to return” to Smyrna, now called Izmir in Turkey. No Italian has the right to “return” to Istria or Dalmatia, now part of Croatia and Slovenia. And no German refugee from Konigsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia) has the right to “return” and alter Russian demographics.
Only in the case of Israel is a concocted “right” weaponized to try and erase a sovereign country altogether.
Modern history is replete with population transfers: Hindus and Muslims displaced during the Partition of India; Greeks and Turks exchanged en masse after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, etc.
The descendants of these refugees do not claim a right to “return.” No international body insists that they should. And no one pretends that peace or even justice requires it.
So why is the world still entertaining the delusion that five generations of Palestinians — most born in Syria, Lebanon, or Jordan or North America or Brazil– must be able to “return” to Tel Aviv?
Palestinian leaders, from the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, to Mahmoud Abbas, have always viewed Israel as a temporary aberration, not a neighbor. Abbas has declared repeatedly: “I will never recognize the Jewishness of the State of Israel.”
This fantasy of return is how war that Haj Amin el-Husseini’s violent rejectionism lost in 1948 is kept alive in diplomatic lobbies and UN chambers.
That’s why Palestinian leaders rejected Ehud Barak’s peace offer in 2000 and Ehud Olmert’s in 2008. Both offered a contiguous Palestinian state in nearly all the so-called “West Bank” and Gaza. Both offered shared control of Jerusalem. And both were answered with “no”–because they required Palestinian leaders to give up the “right” to flood Israel with millions of non-citizens.
There is no “right” to undo another nation’s existence. There is no international principle that compels one people to surrender sovereignty so that their state can be destroyed (a state created because of a defensive war that they won).
Until the Palestinian leadership abandons this claimed “right of return” there will be no two-state solution — because the refusal to abandon this made-up “right” means they don’t want two states. It means they want one. And they want the Jewish state to vanish.
Pretending otherwise is not peacemaking. It’s dangerous enabling, designed to ensure the conflict never ends.
RSS
ADL Launches New Tool to Evaluate US State-Level Efforts to Combat Antisemitism
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, speaks during a press conference following a meeting between organizers of the 2023 March on Washington. Photo: Allison Bailey via Reuters Connect
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Friday launched the Jewish Policy Index (JPI), a “first interactive tool of its kind” for evaluating the efficacy of policies that US states have adopted to combat antisemitism.
“ADL has long been calling for a whole-of-government approach to fighting antisemitism, and the Jewish Policy Index fills a critical gap by providing a clear roadmap for states to support their Jewish communities,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement announcing the initiative. “With antisemitic incidents at record highs nationwide, we need more than rhetoric — we need real, measurable policy action.”
He added, “This tool offers us a comprehensive picture of where states are and what steps they can take to do better. We urge state lawmakers to take swift and decisive action to enact strong policies and laws that protect their Jewish communities.”
According to the ADL, JPI has already identified both positive and negative trends. Nine states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New York, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia — have all passed legislation to address a surge of antisemitic discrimination and violence across the country, earning a JPI designation as “Leading States.” But, the ADL noted, 41 other states failed to merit the distinction.
The distribution of the first JPI ratings forms a bell curve, with most states, 29, clustered in the middle, having been classified as “Progressing States” which have adopted “some key pieces of the policy agenda” the ADL recommends. Twelve received the poorest mark, “Limited Action States,” for showing “little systematic effort to address antisemitism through policy.”
The ADL and its partners say the JPI can facilitate democratic action which “empowers residents” to challenge their states to fight antisemitism with vigor.
“Jewish communities know that if we are to flourish through difficult times, we must mobilize to fight antisemitism,” Eric Fingerhut, chief executive officer of the Jewish Federations of North America, said in a statement. “The most important responsibility of government is keeping its citizens safe. The Jewish Policy Index is an important tool to help inform and advance how state governments respond to antisemitism and protect their Jewish communities.”
The advent of JPI comes on the heels of harrowing new FBI statistics which reveal the extent to which violent antisemitism has become a pervasive occurrence in American life.
While hate crimes against other demographic groups declined overall last year, those perpetrated against Jews increased by 5.8 percent in 2024 to 1,938, the largest total recorded in over 30 years of the FBI’s counting them. Jewish American groups noted that this surge, which included 178 assaults, is being experienced by a demographic group which constitutes just 2 percent of the US population.
Additionally, a striking 69 percent of all religion-based hate crimes that were reported to the FBI in 2024 targeted Jews, with 2,041 out of 2,942 total such incidents being antisemitic in nature. Muslims, the second most targeted religious group, were victims in 256 offenses, or about 9 percent of the total.
Antisemitic hate crimes kept federal and local law enforcement agents busy throughout 2024, as previously reported by The Algemeiner.
In November, for example, the US Department of Justice secured the conviction of a Massachusetts man, John Reardon, 59, who threatened to perpetrate mass killings of Jews. Over several months, Reardon called Jewish institutions across Massachusetts, proclaiming that he would kill Jewish men, women, and children in their houses of worship. His terroristic menacing included promises to plant bombs in synagogues in the cities of Sharon and Attleboro, as well as making 98 calls to the Israeli Consulate in Boston, a behavior which began on Oct. 7, 2023, and ended just days before his apprehension by law enforcement in January.
In New York City, meanwhile, the Jewish community in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn endured a violent series of robberies and other attacks. In one instance, three masked men attempted to rob a Hasidic man after stalking him through the neighborhood. Before then, two men beat a middle-aged Hasidic man after he refused to surrender his cell phone in compliance with what appears to have been an attempted robbery. Additionally, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily Jewish neighborhood, and less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face.
The wave of hatred has not relented in 2025.
In June, a gunman murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, while they exited an event at the Capital Jewish Museum hosted by the American Jewish Committee. The suspect charged for the double murder, 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, yelled “Free Palestine” while being arrested by police after the shooting, according to video of the incident. The FBI affidavit supporting the criminal charges against Rodriguez stated that he told law enforcement he “did it for Gaza.”
Less than two weeks later, a man firebombed a crowd of people who were participating in a demonstration to raise awareness of the Israeli hostages who remain imprisoned by Hamas in Gaza. A victim of the attack, Karen Diamond, 82, later died, having sustained severe, fatal injuries.
“Leaders of every kind — teachers, law enforcement officers, government officials, business owners, university presidents — must confront antisemitism head-on,” Ted Deutch, chief executive officer of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), said in a statement responding to the FBI data. “Jews are being targeted not just out of hate, but because some wrongly believe that violence or intimidation is justified by global events.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
RSS
Jewish LGBTQ+ Group Reinvited to Join Montreal Pride Parade After Initial Exclusion Due to Israel War
The 2023 Pride Parade in Montreal. Photo: Francois Nadeau / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
Organizers of Montreal’s 2025 Pride Parade reversed their decision to exclude two Jewish groups from the event on Sunday and apologized for banning their participation after receiving widespread condemnation.
In a statement on Tuesday, organizers expressed remorse “to the Jewish communities and specially to Jewish members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community,” for excluding them from the parade, which marks the conclusion of The Fierté Montréal Festival that started on July 31.
“Fierté Montréal has always stood firmly against all forms of violence inflicted on marginalized populations or groups, including antisemitism, and remains committed to doing so,” said Marlot Marleau, president of the Fierté Montréal Festival. “As 2SLGBTQIA+ rights continue to erode around the world, we have a responsibility to provide an inclusive and safe gathering space for all participants, regardless of their religious or cultural background. This is a commitment we will continue to uphold in collaboration with all organizations taking part in our events.”
Ga’ava (which in Hebrew means “pride”) is Canada’s oldest and largest Jewish LGBTQ+ group. It participated in the Montreal Pride Parade last year. Ga’ava and its partner organization, the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), said they were informed on July 31 that they were banned from attending the parade on Sunday.
Explaining the decision, but without mentioning the name of either group, festival organizers said they received complaints about statements made by the organizations that were perceived as “hateful.”
“To ensure that the Fierté Montréal Festival remains a safe and celebratory space for everyone, the Board of Directors of Fierté Montréal has made the decision to deny participation in the Pride Parade to organizations spreading hateful discourse,” they explained. “This measure is taken in the context of a complex geopolitical situation and stems from our commitment to preserving the emotional and physical safety of our communities. We refuse to allow the spaces of the Fierté Montréal to be instrumentalized in the context of a conflict that involves major violations of fundamental human rights.”
In the same statement, festival organizers condemned what they claimed is “genocide” taking place in the Gaza Strip. They also expressed solidarity with the Palestinian people “and their opposition to genocide.”
Ga’ava said Montreal Pride representatives received anonymous complaints by people who accused the Jewish group of making hateful comments during an interview about attempts to exclude pro-Israel groups from the annual pride parade. Ga’ava said “the terms ‘pro-terror’ or ‘pro-Hamas,’ which [Ga’ava] are accused of using, may offend those who have supported or celebrated terrorism, but they do not constitute hate speech.”
Carlos A. Godoy L., who has been the volunteer president of Ga’ava for a decade, said the “deeply discriminatory” decision to initially exclude them from the parade was based on “flimsy, politically motivated reasons decided behind closed doors under pressure from groups that hate Jews, deny Israel’s existence, and whose members celebrated the atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023.”
Eta Yudin, Quebec’s CIJA vice president, said, “Instead of standing together against hate, antisemitism, and homophobia, Montreal Pride has chosen to align with those who fuel hatred, seek to divide our society, and attack the shared Quebec values with this antisemitic decision.”
The parade’s ban against the Jewish groups resulted in resignations of a festival committee member – who called the decision “discriminatory and indefensible” — and its chairman of the board. An executive director of the festival took leave because of the decision, according to The Canadian Jewish News. The decision was additionally condemned by several Canadian politicians, including a group which penned a letter to festival organizers about the “unacceptable” move.
Elisabeth Prass, the Quebec Liberal Party’s only Jewish parliamentarian, said, “No discrimination of any kind should take place during an event meant to promote diversity and inclusion. Antisemitism has no place in the face of acceptance of Jewish members of the LGBTQ+ community.” Quebec’s Minister of International Relations Martine Biron called the move ” counterproductive to the mission of inclusion of Montreal Pride.”
On Tuesday, Fierté Montréal Festival organizers acknowledged that their actions were “perceived by the Jewish community in Québec (and especially by Jewish members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community) as a way to exclude them from its events.”
“This does not reflect the inclusive values that guide Fierté Montréal’s actions,” they added. “The organization is committed to improving its internal complaint management processes to ensure that a situation like this one does not happen again and that no communities feel left out from its future festivities. The organization has reached out to representatives of the Jewish community, including CIJA, to clarify the situation and to ensure a space that is inclusive and safe for everyone, especially for Jewish members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community who wish to take part in the Parade. These discussions have helped clarify each party’s stance and reaffirm a shared commitment to Fierté Montréal’s values of inclusion and respect.”
Festival organizers changed their decision about one month after the research division of the Combat Antisemitism Movement released a report detailing incidents of hate against Jews which took place in June during demonstrations in celebration of LGBTQ+ rights and identity.
Also in June, the nonprofit A Wider Bridge outlined in its own report how anti-Israel activists in the LGBTQ+ community are subjecting Zionist Jews to extreme levels of discrimination, including expulsions from major progressive groups and even physical assault.
RSS
UK Police Arrest Two Men for Spraying Jewish People With Water in Viral Online Video
Two men sprayed water guns at Jewish pedestrians in a viral video taken in the UK. Photo: Screenshot
Authorities arrested two men in the United Kingdom on Thursday for squirting specifically Jewish pedestrians with water guns, as seen in a video that has gone viral on social media, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said.
The men, ages 26 and 36, were arrested in Farnworth, Bolton, and remain in custody for questioning on suspicion of racially aggravated common assault, police added. Authorities have also seized a vehicle and water pistol suspected to have been used in the incident.
“We are treating this incident with the utmost seriousness and have acted swiftly to make arrests,” said Chief Inspector Simon Ashcroft, of GMP’s Salford district. He noted that GMP has a “zero-tolerance approach to hate crime in any form,” and police are “committed to ensuring our communities feel safe and supported.”
“We continue to work closely with our partners to provide reassurance and encourage anyone affected to come forward,” he added. “We are also aware from other footage that there may be further victims, and we urge anyone who believes they have been targeted to contact GMP or the Community Security Trust (CST).” Police encourage anyone with information about the incident to contact authorities or file a report online.
The viral video – which was shared earlier this month on social media and has since been deleted — showed two men in a vehicle in Greater Manchester laughing and smiling as they sprayed water at Orthodox Jewish pedestrians, including children. The two men targeted Jewish people as the traditional Jewish song “Hava Nagila” played in the background.
The video was posted on social media by a Polish rap group called KONSP1RA, whose members include a YouTuber and UK resident named Kamil Galanty and his friend Mati. Both men are featured in the water gun prank video. KONSP1RA has posted similar water prank videos on social media, but the most recent was the first to specifically target only Jewish people. However, the group has targeted Jews in other prank videos, including one filmed in an airport and another in a supermarket.
CST, the UK’s Jewish security organization, condemned the “appalling antisemitic video” on Wednesday. The British charity Campaign Against Antisemitism said the pranksters behaved “like playground bullies” by harassing Jewish people and added that the incident “is not a prank but antisemitic abuse, and doing so from the comfort of your car is particularly cowardly.”
In response to backlash over the clip, KONSP1RA insisted in a statement on social media that they are not antisemitic. They claimed they “respect all races, all religions, and all people.”
“We strongly reject any form of hate, racism, or discrimination,” they wrote. “Our channel is based entirely on humor, entertainment, and light-hearted pranks. Our goal is to make people laugh – never to hurt or offend … If anyone interpreted our video in a harmful or offensive way – we are truly sorry. That was never our intention.”
KONSP1RA said they are being “wrongfully attacked” and labeled antisemitic — “something that does not represent us or our content in any way.” They said accusations made against the group are “extremely hurtful and unfair.”
“Let’s not spread hate where there was never any intention of it,” they stated in conclusion. “Peace and respect to all.”
Photo: Facebook
This week’s arrests came one day after CST published a new report detailing antisemitic incidents recorded during the first half of this year. CST recorded 1,521 antisemitic incidents in the UK from January to June, marking the second-highest total of incidents ever recorded by the nonprofit security group in the first six months of any year.
This year’s total was only surpassed by the first half of 2024, in which 2,019 antisemitic incidents were recorded in the aftermath of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel.