Daniel Radomski, director of global strategy for the World Jewish Congress, believes that Palestinians expelled in 1948 and their descendants should not be allowed to return to Israel – as this would threaten its status as an ethno-state.
“Allowing mass immigration of the descendants of Palestinians who left Israel after 1948 is a death blow to the world’s only Jewish state”, he argues.
In a recent op-ed in the Bonnier-owned Expressen newspaper, liberal commentator Fredrik Segerfeldt argued that Israel is effectively a Jewish ethnostate in a land stolen from the Arabs, and that peace can only be achieved if Israelis abandon the idea of an “ethnically defined state”.
Daniel Radomski of the World Jewish Congress, however, disagrees with this analysis – arguing that Segerfeldt ignores, among other things, the “deep historical and cultural ties of the Jews to Israel” that supposedly go back thousands of years.
He points out that the world community has supported a state of Israel since its creation, and that the UN’s two-state partition plan was accepted by the Jews – but not by the Arabs.
“The Jews accepted the plan. The Arab leaders rejected it and attacked Israel. Since then, Israel has sought coexistence through a two-state solution, as in the Oslo process in 1993. But the Palestinian side has consistently rejected these attempts”, he writes.
Not up to date
Radomski acknowledges that 700,000 Palestinians fled the area in 1948, but argues that this was largely “at the behest of Arab leaders who promised to return after the promised victory and destruction of the Jewish state”.
“At the same time, more than 800,000 Jews were expelled from Muslim countries where they had been rooted for centuries. They found refuge in Israel and helped build the country. The Israeli population is therefore diverse, with a significant Arab minority, including Muslims, Christians and Druze”, he says.
Allowing Palestinian refugees or their descendants to return to the area from which they were expelled is not an option, according to Mr. Radomski – on the contrary, it allegedly threatens the very existence of the nation.
“Allowing mass immigration of the descendants of Palestinians who left Israel after 1948, as Segerfeldt indirectly suggests, is a death blow to the world’s only Jewish state alongside 57 Muslim countries”, the lobbyist said.
“Currently, Arabs make up about 20% of Israel’s population. With the return of 5 million Palestinians, they would quickly become a majority. It would be like Sweden absorbing 5 million immigrants from different cultural and political backgrounds overnight, causing huge demographic and social changes”, he continues.
“Becoming a minority”
The Jewish lobbyist also believes that “5 million Palestinians who do not recognize Israel’s 3,000-year-old Jewish connection make Jews a minority and put them at risk of oppression and violence”.
Palestinians are also singled out as particularly difficult to integrate into Israeli society, and a majority of them are said to support Hamas.
Finally, Radomski rejects the idea of allowing displaced Palestinians and their descendants to return, arguing that this would make Jews “a minority among a majority that wants to destroy them”.
The World Jewish Congress is heavily involved in lobbying and advocacy in a number of Western countries – including Sweden, where it has long worked to combat anti-immigrant and nationalist movements.
Just last year, the organization’s president, Ronald Lauder, said he was “very concerned” about the Conservative Party’s cooperation with the Sweden Democrats – because of the SD’s alleged “Nazi roots”.