The “right of return”

For me, not for thee:

(A) few days before (a group of elderly Jewish people of Egyptian origin) was due to arrive in Cairo, (the group’s organizer) was told by the Egyptian travel agent that their hotel reservation was cancelled (sic) and that no other hotel in Egypt wanted to receive them.

Many believe it is all down to the populist television presenter, Amr Adeeb, whose programme is widely watched here.

Mr Adeeb urged the authorities last week to prevent the trip from going ahead.

He said all the department stores that were established by Egyptian Jews at the turn of the past century were now the property of the people of Egypt.

Many peoples were displaced, evacuated or expelled from their homes during and after World War II – Jews from Poland, Poles from Germany, Germans from Eastern Europe. Somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million ethnic Germans are thought to have died during forced migrations after the war. And of course many – but by no means all – of the Arabs living in mandatory Palestine fled to neighboring countries after Israel’s creation.

Some 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled Israel, or were shoved out, and a proportional number of Jews fled or were expelled from Arab lands – 120,000 from Iraq alone. Most groups settled in and built lives even as they built their countries. One group was kept in poverty-stricken slums and concentration camps by their Arab “brothers.” Peoples who have proven, over the years, their willingness to fight to the last Palestinian.

And that has made all the difference.