Palestine Today reports that the Knesset passed a motion that any future peace deal with Arab countries include compensation for Jewish refugees.
Two Arab MKs, Talab El-Sana and Jamal Zahalka, objected - because they don't think there were any Jewish refugees from Arab countries!
Zahalka's argument is nonsensical. He claims that the word "refugee" refers only to people who are forced to leave their country against their will, and that they must want to return to that country. The only problem is that this is a complete fabrication, as the UN definition of "refugee" is "any person who is outside their country of origin and unable or unwilling to return there or to avail themselves of its protection, on account of a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular group, or political opinion."
It is not news when a politician lies, but to lie so egregiously seems to be the particular skill of Palestinian Arab politicians.
El-Sana said that by the UN's definition of the word "refugee" the Jews wouldn't qualify, because they weren't seeking asylum from persecution. This is news to the hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries whose lives turned into hell after 1948. It is also amusing to hear a Palestinian Arab try to talk about the definition of "refugee" when the real definition of "refugee" would exclude nearly all Palestinian Arabs alive today.
As the quoted article notes laconically that "For particular, political reasons, the Convention puts Palestinian refugees outside its scope..." So for El-Sana to quote the UN definition of refugees when his own people do not qualify is just another example of how, to Palestinian Arabs, laws are malleable to their own desires.
