"Twice a Stranger"

Here's the trailer for a documentary on forced population transfers:

Watching Al Jazeera's Al Nakba documentary (basically a Palestinian perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - not a bad documentary) reminded me of encountering the above before in book form. Basically, from a historical perspective forced population transfers are nothing new, and the Palestinian case isn't the largest scale example by any stretch of the imagination. Such things may not be good to repeat but on the other hand eventually you have to move on. I tend to agree with this piece which speaks of the "blight of return":

The right of return would be better named the blight of return. It is a damaging illusion that distracts from an achievable peace in the name of Palestinian children and grandchildren nursed on hope. There is the possibility of compensation, but there is in history no right of return. Ask the Greeks of Asia Minor, the Turks of Greece, the Germans of Danzig and Breslau (today Gdansk and Wroclaw) — and the Jews of the Arab world.

Most people in North America seem to have an overly positive view of the state of Israel, but on the hand Israel also seems to also get some overly negative treatment in other parts of the world.