Norman Finkelstein's claim that right of return is "complicated"
No, it is not true. I have debunked this ‘it’s complicated’ (or ‘not practical’) notion in two articles: here (pdf) and here. The only thing that makes people say that right of return for the Palestinian refugees is ‘complicated’ is the fact that if lots of the refugees returned then there might not be a majority of Jews inside the green line and this would essentially make it impossible for the Zionists to continue referring to the territory inside the green line as a Jewish state, unless they were to openly admit that their Jewish state is a state of only a minority of the population and risk disapproval of everybody in the world who supports the idea of democracy. In other words, what makes right of return ‘complicated’ is that it is incompatible with the existence of a Jewish state in Palestine—a state that is officially a state of the Jewish people and not a state of all its inhabitants (or even of all its citizens) equally.
For anybody who says, ‘There should not be a Jewish state in Palestine,’ it is very easy and uncomplicated to call for the unconditional right of return of every single Palestinian refugee. As my second linked article above discusses in some detail, there is no economic or political reason why all the refugees should not be allowed to return and be fully compensated for all the property that Zionists stole from them.
If Norman Finkelstein would agree that there should not be a Jewish state in Palestine, then he would be calling for the right of return, and he would be an anti-Zionist. Instead, however, he joins the Zionists in his refusal to say there should not be a Jewish state in Palestine, and he follows the logic of that refusal by saying that he doesn’t call for the right of return because it is ‘complicated.’
In the debate between Finkelstein and the former Israeli foreign minister (see the link above to Finkelstein’s webpage for this debate) the overtly Zionist foreign minister and Finkelstein agreed on the fact that the Palestinians, under international law, had a right of return. Asserting this fact does not make one an anti-Zionist. Calling for the right of return does make one an anti-Zionist. The very essence of Zionism is denying the right of return, no matter what the particular Zionist’s excuse is for denying that right, be it ‘God gave the land to the Jews’ or ‘Jews can only be safe in a state that ethnically cleanses most of the non-Jews because non-Jews are innately anti-semitic’ or ‘The UN gave the land to the Jews’ or ‘Might makes right’ or even ‘It’s complicated.’ I wish Norman Finkelstein were an anti-Zionist.

2 Comments:
Nice article, thanks for the information.
Same goes for Chomsky & to Abraham Burg, all their arguments makes sense until the issue comes to the Palestinian right of return.
I came to the conclusion that liberal Jews do such a a thing for few reasons & none of them has to do with common sense or facts:
The first reason is that they don't wanna cut off the last thread they have with the Jewish community? Especially their relatives? If they do; that will be a BIG price to pay.
The second reason that they thing that they owe something to other Jews because of the Holocaust,
The third reason is that they still need to be employed and they don't wanna piss off many people. In that regard you can add many well known Palestinian professors and thinkers to name one of them is Prof. Rashid Khalidi. If you see his interviews with Charlie Rose
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