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On January 31, 1970, Philosopher and activist Bertrand Russell issued a statement which condemned Israeli aggression in the Middle East and called for Israeli withdrawal from territory occupied in 1967. The statement said that:
The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was "given" by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new state. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East. We are frequently told that we must sympathise with Israel because of the suffering of the Jews in Europe at the hands of the Nazis. [...] What Israel is doing today cannot be condoned, and to invoke the horrors of the past to justify those of the present is gross hypocrisy.
—Bertrand Russell, 31 January 1970
I am neither pro- nor anti-Semitic nor pro-or anti-Palestinian. I have never understood, knowing the history of the issue, why it is that Israel does not have more understanding for the situation that the Palestinians are in. I found the above quote while researching a completely different topic, but it seems to me the most clear-headed and rational way to look at the situation, even if it was written over thirty years ago.
I would be greatly interested to hear the reasons why Mr. Russell is incorrect in his summation of the problem.
