Did the law to punish the villages that celebrate "Nakba Day" go into effect? Just wondering? What does the law do exactly? Isn't it funny they could be celebrating their 63rd anniversary like Israel. With a stable middle class people and possibly some sort of normal government. Instead they listened to their hateful leaders, and what has it gotten them. What blind hatred always brings, misery for those who feel it. Your problems, all of them, are self inflicted, how does it taste?

Today is 2011 but the arabs are dreaming about returning to 1948. After other group of people would be saying its been 63 years now the majority of the real refugees are dead so lets concentrate on the future rather than fantasize about returning to idilic little villages their grandparents and great grandparents lived in. How many of those idilic villages are still standing and out of the ones that are still around how many of the houses they have rusty old door keys to are still around. They seem to have some kind of wacky belief that Israel will give them a right of return and then move straight back to those villages and live happily ever after. My grandparents had to leave Austria leave behind everything during the war but what they did was put the past behind them and make new lives. They never talked about one day taking about the good old days in Austria before the war and dream of one day returning to their lovely house. Time for arabs to wake up and take in a little dose of reality of the 21st century

"mourning over the innception of the State of Israel" come on Ynet I got to check You on this one. I know, You know, we know nd Palestinians know, a large % of Pals. don't even ascribe to this diatribe. I am a Palestinian American, the estab. of the State of Israel was miraciuous and predicted. If You ask the average Palestinian their thoughts in Israel over the "inception of Israel" it will, the answer, waiver betweeen a span ten seconds a smile and I don't know. Human rights and equality are more of a problem than "mouring over Israel's inception"

Zionism is based on the historical claims of the Jewish people to Palestinian lands, but here you vilify the Palestinians for their far more recent historical connection to the land currently called Israel.

@2 What in the world are You talking about. Any diaspora Jew that returns to Israel should be happy, blisffull, gratefull as if their life, soul and body has found its geographical and spiritual place on the planet. Diaspora Jews always bring and keep the trash of their past coveting what can be shared, Zionist Foever, Palestinian people, What ever they are, whhoever they are, thhey have been in this country for a long time, there is no historical data for waves of people migrating from Arabia, and even as close the Jordan in some instances, You talk abut Your grandparents, leaving Austria, just answer me this, what about, lets see, what about 15 generations of Palestinian flesh on this land, and as for borders, the historical land demographics change almost every day leave it to Israel and the religious. Geographical borders of 48 thats a start but also talking about that alestinian flesh. You do have tha WRONG ANALOGY

Hypocritical? The connection of the Jewish people to the"Palestinian" lands has been there since before there was anything called Palestine by the Romans. There has always been a Jewish presence in this land and the state of Israel came from that. The original Palestinians were Hebrews. So learn the history before shooting off your mouth.

Zionism is based on the right of the Jewish people to exist as a State in their ancient homeland. It is the Jews that are the true Palestinians, as can readily be seen from records dating back to the Ottoman Era and to British mandate rule. The census records during the Ottoman Era are particularly telling -- Arabs are referred to either as Arabs or Bedouins; Jews are referred to as Palestinians. The British preserved the distinction, as well. Moreover, the ersatz "Palestinians" come largely from the Hejaz in the Western Arabian desert, and are relative newcomers. I suggest you work on that "recent historical connection" to which you refer. The ersatz "Palestinians" have none. What better proof than the fact that while Judea and Samaria were under Jordanian control, the Arabs resident there were perfectly content to be Jordanian; while Gaza was under Egyptian control, the Arabs resident there were perfectly happy to be Egyptian. That was the case until June 1967, when Israel acquired both non-sovereign territories in the course of fighting a defensive war. The Jews are the true Palestinians -- not the Arabs. You really need to acquire an education before making patently ridiculous assertions which have no basis in fact.

What on earth are you babbling about? In 1947, the Jews accepted partition; the Arabs did not. They chose to go to war instead, and one day after Israel's declaration of modern statehood, five Arab armies attacked the nascent Jewish state. They did not expect to lose; no one in the world expected them to lose .... but lose they did. Since the War of Independence there have been five additional wars, all started by the Arabs and won by Israel. In addition, factor in nearly seven decades of unrelenting Arab terror. You cannot put toothpaste back into the tube. The ersatz "Palestinians" need to accept the bad decisions they have made but, more importantly, they need to accept the fact that there are consequences to the decisions they have made. War has not worked; terrorism has not worked; now they are trying to galvanize world opinion into seeing them as victims and giving them a state, but that perverts international convention and statute, and should not be allowed to happen. The simple truth is that the ersatz "Palestinians" are not in the least bit interested in peaceful co-existence with Israel; they want to supplant Israel. They have had three separate and distinct opportunities to accept a two-state solution, and have rejected all three -- including, most recently, one which would have awarded them 90% of the West Bank and East Jerusalem as a capital. They rejected that in favor of starting the second intifada. That was yet another in a long, long line of stupid ersatz "Palestinian" decisions, but how is that the fault of Israel? Now, Fatah has a so-called "unity agreement" with Hamas, a known and internationally recognized terrorist organization. No, you can forget 1948 geographical borders; that is simply never going to happen. Israel has annexed East Jerusalem in order to unify Jerusalem; Israel has annexed the Golan Heights. Judea and Samaria will be annexed as well, and its Arab residents repatriated to Jordan, country of their citizenship or, if they wish, allowed to move to Gaza to help build an ersatz "Palestinian" state. They've had more than enough bites at the apple; all bets are off. Israel is not going to make any more concessions. To the victor belongs the spoil. That's just how the world works -- you cannot have one set of rules governing Israel and a different set of rules governing all other sovereign states. Your analogy is therefore no only inapposite, but nonsensical as well.

I beg to differ, the early Palestinians were not Hebrews, they the vast majority were Romans who indeed, did convert to the Hebrew faith such as Herod. A gentrification of the two, the Hebrews and these converted Romans did not work as seen in history, with all the religious conflicts and social disorder. Up unto to the destruction of the 2nd Temple... Standing Tall you are close, but if you study the time period of the destruction of the 1rst. Temple 586 B.C. the ethnic composition of the inhabitants objectively, to the time of Alexander the Great, his entrance into Jerusalem in the 3rd cent. B.C. and there after, you get an idea of Israel becoming nulti-ethnic some what. Entitlement to land and geographical migrations of peoples has always been bloody. Coveting something beyond nature has always been deadly, the Palestinians and the Israelis, both are in for a rude awakening if they can't or won't come to peace on this land of many spirits and the few ethnic groups who don't know or deny their origin.

And is Israel really Israel "this is the question"

Is this woman in Jr. high school?

What are you, a white European, doing in Australia? You have no claims to that land, it belongs to the native people who were there tens of thousands of years before the Europeans. The Jewish claim to Israel is not a fairy tale, but is based several thousand years of continuous Jewish habitation of this land. Yes, others conquered and settled it (Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Turks, Britain) but Jews always lived here and our Diaspora always turned to here in prayer never relinquishing our hope for reconstituting our national life here. So, when are YOU going back to Europe?