Kerry’s Right to Return
by Ahmed Amr
www.dissidentvoice.org
August 9, 2004



 

If John Kerry becomes the next president of the United States, he will be the first leader of the free world to instantly qualify for Israeli citizenship. Under the Law of Return, any individual with one Jewish grandparent can land in Tel Aviv and inform the immigration authorities that he intends to settle in the Holy Land for the rest of his life. Because both his paternal grandparents were Jewish, Kerry qualifies for the privilege twice over.

His brother, Cameron Kerry, doesn’t even have to depend on his ancestry. As a convert to Judaism, he can automatically become an Israeli national.  Both Kerry brothers can actually declare themselves candidates for the position of Israeli Prime Minister. We can only hope that Cameron would be an improvement on Ariel “Qibya” Sharon.

Now, you would think that Kerry would be happy enough to have the right of return to a land that his grand parents never set foot on. But the Democratic candidate wants more. He wants to deny the same privilege to Palestinian refugees, including Palestinian Americans.

In Kerry’s estimate, the idea of honoring the internationally recognized Palestinian right to return is a “non-starter”. Since he is so generous in dispensing with other people’s rights, perhaps the Democratic nominee should set an example by renouncing his own entitlement to “return” to Israel.

As a presidential candidate, Kerry has used his bully pulpit to declare that the Palestinian right of return should not be “open-ended”. He makes a point of noting that, after 56 years of exile, the forced expulsion of the Palestinians cannot be reversed.  No matter that his brother’s right of “repatriation” was open-ended for two thousand years -- on account of his conversion.   

Kerry, ever the elitist, doesn’t give a damn about the rights of other Americans. How else can we explain his bizarre belief that he is more entitled than a Palestinian-American to settle in Jerusalem or Haifa or the West Bank.   What makes his brother deserve such a privilege? This is ultimately an issue about the genetic rights of American Jews versus the legal rights of Palestinian-Americans.   

Kerry’s claim to Israeli citizenship is based on the genes he inherited from his father, a German-American who converted from Judaism to Catholicism. In Zionist mythology, Kerry’s paternal grandparents can claim ancestry from the ancient people of the Holy Land based on their faith tradition.  A little DNA testing would probably prove his father was as European as his maternal ancestors. Who doubts for a second that Kerry is one hundred percent European-American of the Catholic persuasion. If he is deranged enough to believe he is half Semitic, than we have the historical and hysterical precedent of two mental cases contesting the highest office in the land.

Contrast Kerry’s eugenic claims to a right of return against those of Palestinian-Americans. Palestinian refugees can actually document the exact towns and villages they called home prior to their expulsion in 1948. It is quite conceivable that Kerry is unaware that the rights of refugees to repatriation are guaranteed by international law. After all, as a Navy officer, he was ignorant of the Geneva Convention until after he committed his war crimes in Vietnam.

Besides, if Kerry is so keen on denying Palestinian exiles their legal rights, he should expound on whether other refugees should also be deprived of their entitlement. Why single out the Palestinians for such a dubious honor? Let him provide the American public with a list of which refugees should remain in exile so we can compare it with the Republican list.

John Kerry is not George Bush.  Kerry can quote obscure Zionist theologians and knows exactly what he is doing.  While Dumbya has Armageddon visions based on a literal interpretation of the bible, Kerry is just an old-fashioned ethnic cleanser who believes it was quite alright to displace millions of native Palestinians to make room for a land as Jewish as England is English.

Bush believes that every injustice inflicted on the Palestinians is pre-ordained by a higher power. But Kerry thinks he is that higher power. By virtue of ancestry, he insists on the right to exile Palestinians to make room for his brother. Bush is motivated by his faith, while Kerry is acting out his tribal loyalties. Both men know that they can enhance their political fortunes by applauding Sharon’s efforts to smash Palestinian skulls and bones. In that sense, they really do belong to one secret society with an alien agenda.

In his speech at the Democratic Convention, Kerry declared that he never wears his religion on his sleeve. But, he had no problem exploiting the religion on his brother’s sleeve when dispatching him as an emissary to Ariel Sharon. After being snubbed by Israel’s Prime Minister, he went begging for his endorsement. To appease the Israeli lobby, he went so far as to distance himself from earlier remarks about engaging Jimmy Carter or James Baker in a new American initiative to resolve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.  So, in effect, he cast aside a former American president to show favor to a foreign serial war criminal, Sharon of Sabra and Shatila.   

The bottom line is that John Kerry is a bigot who believes that genetics matter more than international law. While he claims to stand for America’s secular tradition, he wants to insure that Israel remains a Jewish majority state. Put aside the issue of the Palestinian refugees for a moment. If half of Israel’s population converted to Christianity, would Kerry advocate their expulsion to maintain the Jewish character of the state?

America’s population is more Christian than Israel’s population is Jewish. Does Kerry advocate legislation to insure that the United States remain a Christian majority state or a white majority state? We all know how Bush would answer that question. Would Kerry have a different answer? 

As Election Day gets closer, both the president and his challenger are trying to out bid each other to demonstrate who is best suited to screw the Palestinians. Kerry has matched Bush’s endorsement of the Palitentiary walls Israel is building to confiscate Palestinian lands and convert their villages and towns to open air internment camps. On that count, he is not only challenging the Palestinian right to return but their right to remain on what little is left of their native land. He has come out in favor of the daily arbitrary execution of Palestinians and has voiced no objection to Israel’s collective punishment policies, including house demolitions.

It remains a mystery why neither candidate sees any political advantage in relinquishing Costa Rican rights or allowing Australia to confiscate Polynesian land? Why stop with the Palestinians? Since both political parties see the wisdom of conducting American foreign policy on the basis of mythological eugenics, shouldn’t we apply the same logic to other troubled regions in the world?

At the end of the day, we still have an option to replace the Toxic Texan in the White House with a bigot from Boston. Same difference. Except that the new resident, John Kerry, will have the right to return.

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