Elder of Zyon, Dec. 4, 2019
“The Palestinian struggle today, therefore, must not waiver on the implementation of the Palestinian right of return, as this right is the legal key to undoing the Zionist conquest of Palestine in its entirety.”
Joseph Massad is professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University.
Even though he has written articles that are so antisemitic as to be indistinguishable from neo-Nazi literature, and even though he is a homophobe who accuses gay activists of colonialism and imperialism, he still gets respect. Which makes one wonder if it is possible for an Arab academic to ever say anything to outrageous for the Left to cheer him.
He just wrote an article for Middle East Eye where he uses his normal antisemitic rhetoric, claiming that Israel’s Law of Return is illegal and that Palestinian “right of return” is international law.
The irony is not one that Israel does not recognise the right of refugees to return to their homeland; rather, Israel recognises only the right of Jews – whom it claims, based on its religious and colonial myths, were refugees from Palestine who had lived in exile for 2,000 years – to “return”, while it denies that right to Palestinians, whom it recognises as having been displaced from Palestine.
Of course, no one claims that Jews returning to Israel is based on international law. It is based on Israel’s right to create its own immigration policy, as every other country has.