en-us https://www.intensedebate.com/users/1227530 Comments by dijeron http://bigjournalism.com/jpollak/2010/06/05/pollak-post/#IDComment78721859 There is nothing anti-semitic about what Helen Thomas said. When she said "they" should "go back to Germany and Poland", she was clearly talking about Jews who came from there in the past few decades, and not Jews whose immediate ancestors have been living in Palestine. What she said is right and makes sense. Jews from Germany and Poland have no more right to move to Israel/Palestine than Americans of German descent have to move to Germany, or American Catholics have to move to Italy, or Hindu American have to move to India. Citizenship is by immediate ancestry only, or pretty much everyone would be a citizen of pretty much everywhere. It's one thing if Jews move from Europe to Israel. It's quite another if they are allowed to do so while Israel still denies the right of return to the several hundred thousand Palestinians displaced in war. There is a right of return in international law and it refers to immediate blood descendants(children), NOT people of the same religion who claim a distant ancestral bond to a place. Indirect ancestry has zero standing in international law. One thing Israel and her supporters never seem to get is that nations belong to their citizens and not to religious groups. And self-determination applies to people in a contiguous territory, not to people belonging to a race or religion. If Germany does not belong to the Aryan tribe and India does not belong to Hindus, then Israel does not belong to Jews. Each of them just belongs to its citizens. Sat, 5 Jun 2010 20:44:21 +0000 http://bigjournalism.com/jpollak/2010/06/05/pollak-post/#IDComment78721859