>But Israel is not their country of origin. They come
>from a part of Palestine that is now part of Israel.
>Wars lead to border being redrawn sometimes.
>
>Silesia was once part of Germany. It's now part of
>Poland. Silesian Germans should not have any legal
>entitlement to return to that part of Poland (whether
>they actually do or not under international law is not
>clear to me).
Of course they should. Why on earth would you insist that they should not be entitled to return to their home?
> > What we are seeing is basically a Jewish state in
>> which all others are
>> either second-class citizens
>
>Like pretty much every other nation-state on the
>planet. Ask a Turkish resident of Berlin. Ask any
>naturalized German citizen whose citizenship can be
>revoked for a variety of reasons, including "political
>extremism" or "opposition to the constitution."
>
>Born, "ethnic" Germans don't have to fear their
>citizenship being revoked, even if they are political
>"extremists" or "oppose" the constitution.
But imagine if "born Germans" could have their citizenship revoked, be expelled and rendered stateless, while immigrant citizens were immune to such treatment, if they were of the preferred ethnic origin.
Evidently emigrants to Germany are routinely denied the rights offered to German immigrants to other nations, but you are mistaken to believe that Geramny is very like "pretty much" every other nation-state. Perhaps Germany does infringe accepted human rights. That's nothing less than we would expect from Germany.
But it isn't quite the same as what is happening in Israel. Born Germans are not second-class citizens of Germany compared to immigrants, condemned to second-class housing in defined German ghettos with second-class education, qualified political representation, second class economic opportunities and so forth.
This isn't unique to Israel, in fact it was the situation here in Australia (from 1900) up until 1967 that Aboriginal Australians were disqualified from citizenship entirely. None were actually expelled physically at the point of a gun, but in many ways they were treated much worse than Palestinians. Nevertheless it is preposterous to argue that Israel treats Palestinians no worse than any other nation state treats its immigrants. It isn't true for one thing, Palestinians aren't immigrants for another thing (they don't have anywhere else to go and that makes a difference) and finally, you are wilfully averting your eyes from the evidence that this is Genocide.
You see, it is far worse to attempt to wipe out an existing ethnic group from a region, as the Israelis are certainly attempting to do, than it is to merely attempt to prevent any other ethnic group from settling within your borders. Lots of countries do the latter to some extent, out of some kind of perverted sense of preserving their own inherent ethnic purity.
But it an entirely different thing to actually try to cleanse your nation of minority ethnic groups who are already there. This is considered repulsive by civilised human being. Perhaps it is because you are German that you can't grasp that this is offensive, or that you somehow believe that merely trying to preserve a perverted notion of ethnic purity through controls on immigration is a different order of magnitude to actually committing genocide against a different ethnic group which already exists within your borders.
If you can't see the difference then you'll just have to trust me. Genocide - its not acceptable. Pretending that it is normal and that everyone does it, that's not acceptable either. So just stop it OK?
Look, we've talked to you Germans about this before. Don't make us have to keep repeating ourselves! ;-)
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas