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July 30, 2015|Doublestandards, Expelled Germans from Czechoslovakia, Israel, Palestinians

Israel and Double Standards: The Palestinian Refugees

by Mike Rappaport|

Israel is subject to all sorts of double standards. This happens over and over again. One area where this is the case involves Israel’s treatment of its non-Jewish citizens. Israel is said to be an apartheid regime, even though it confers equal rights on its non-Jewish citizens. The harsh treatment by Arab states of non-Muslims is often barely mentioned. Another area involves the UN’s special rule for refugees. Many Israeli critics don’t realize that Palestinian refugees would not be considered refugees if they were former residents of any other place in the world. But because the U.N discriminates against Israel, many more Palestinians are treated as refugees. As Wikipedia states:

Palestinian refugees from 1948 and their descendants do not come under the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees [which governs all other refugees], but under the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which created its own criteria for refugee classification. The great majority of Palestinian refugees have kept the refugee status for generations, under a special decree of the UN, and legally defined to include descendants of refugees, as well as others who might otherwise be considered internally displaced persons.

But perhaps the greatest double standard is the attention that the world—especially Europe, the Muslim world, and the Left in the United States—pays to Israeli actions. If there is a conflict in Israel, it is front page news. In the many other places throughout the world, not nearly as much. Usually, this attention is focused on criticisms of Israel.

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