Yep, which is why the European Union, in a rare moment of wisdom, decided on July 25th that they could NOT support "Right of Return" for the Palestinians. What was done 50 or more years ago cannot be undone.
My maternal gradfather came from a town in Germany. His family had fled the Spanish inquisition more than four centuries earlies and settled there. In 1935 he was smart enough to see where the Nazis were going and took his family to Paris. Of course, the Nazis came there too. At the time he was in the French army (he had enlisted) and managed to be turned loose before he would have been deported back to Germany and his death. He ended up in the Resistance. My mother, a small child during the war, ended up as one of the "hidden children".
In the '90s my mother went back to visit her father's birthplace. She was in the town cemetary and an older woman came up to her and asked who she was looking for. She gave my grandfather's family name. The response (in German) was: "The Juden. We have no Juden here." That response sent a chill through my mothers spine. It was all so matter-of-fact.
My mother started to leave, but then the woman asked who she was. She said she was my grandfather's daughter. The woman then asked he to come to meet her husband, who, it turned out, knew my grandfather.
Still, imagine hearing: "We have no Jews here."
I hold no malice towards you. You certainly have done no wrong to me or my family. That was another generation, another time.
The point, which you make well, is that we have to go with the realities as they exist today, not as they existed 100 or more years ago. Besides, do the Palestinians want to go back to Turkish rule? That was the reality in the time they seem to glorify.
Israel is a nation of resettled refugees, from the oppression and pogroms of Eastern Europe in the last 19th and early 20th centuries, from the Holocaust, from oppression in the old Soviet Union, from the Arab countries who couldn't tolerate Jews in their midst afther Israel was created, from civil war and genocide in Ethiopa, and so on. Should they all go back where they came from? Well... go back far enough and we all came from Israel. Israel is the home of the Jewish people.
"My mother started to leave, but then the woman asked who she was. She said she was my grandfather's daughter. The woman then asked he to come to meet her husband, who, it turned out, knew my grandfather."
"Still, imagine hearing: "We have no Jews here."
"I hold no malice towards you. You certainly have done no wrong to me or my family. That was another generation, another time."
Agreed. But these stories are nonetheless important to remember, they are so instructive.
Many of us of German-American families cling with added loyalty to our dads and uncles who went quickly and willingly to fight Hitler in WWII. We kind of use it as an "honor preservative."
After my {Lutheran) grandparents came to the US (they left before WWII}, they moved to South Dakota, where they went to a Baptist revivalist meeting and "got saved." Unable to find a nearby Baptist church, they joined the Mennonites, who have many commonalities with the Baptists. But mennonites are also strong pacifists.
My uncles joined the US army already in 1940, even before the war began, which caused a horrible row and earned them excommunication from the church. One of them managed to patch things up after the war and ended up as a church elder, the other joined the Presbyterians.
My connection with the jews comes not only as an American and a christian of the type that is toward the hebraic side, but also because I managed to end up married to a wonderful young Moroccan jewish young lady who has lots of Israeli relatives. My uncles both arrived in Casablanca in 1942, as the Nazis were laying the groundwork to snatch the jews of morocco---including my wife's family. When my wofe was growing up in the 50's, she was pretty impressed with the American GI's that were still frequenting Morocco. "One day, I'm gonna get one of those," she said. And she did.
So life is what? ---pretty "educational" I guess.