The media has fallen head over heals in love with Gillard’s trip to Israel. The latest is her trip to a Palestinian ‘refugee’ camp. From Powerline back in 2003:
For many years, the Palestinians have argued that the descendants of those Arabs who voluntarily left Israel in 1948 have a “right of return” to that country. The purpose behind this claim is transparent: if all of the descendants of the Arabs who left Israel in 1948 were to “return” there, Jews would be a minority and the State of Israel would be destroyed–Israel being, if I am not mistaken, the only country where Arabs can vote.
In order to maintain the Palestinian “refugees” as a political weapon against Israel, they and their descendants have been maintained in “refugee camps” for more than fifty years. There is, of course, such a thing as a genuine refugee camp. After World War II, for example, there were millions of displaced persons, many of whom lived for a time in such camps. But the people soon moved on and the camps were disbanded.
Only in the case of the Palestinians have generations of people lived indefinitely in refugee camps…
66 per cent of the people in the ‘refugee’ camp Gillard visited are under the age of 18. In other words, they were never displaced. The ‘camps’ are maintained for photo opportunities for visiting dignitaries. Just look at this google map of the Dheisheh ‘camp’ that Gillard visited. It is a high density urban area. And the Australian media have been sucked right in to the scam.