Recently, I have held many discussions with certain Sephardim who have disparaged Zionism and the State of Israel. These 'intellectuals', all from North America, have only distaste for Sephardi Zionists, denigrating them Ashkenazi dupes or worse. Many of the arguments revolve around the fact that Sephardim were dispossessed of their culture and heritage by the mainly Ashkenazi political activists who helped create modern secular Zionism.

These Sephardi Zionist-skeptics have reinterpreted a version of Jewish history in Asia and North Africa which barely resembles the actual events that took place. For every individual that was cited as a success story for Jewish integration in the wider Muslim milieu, there were dozens of events which prove that these instances were the exception and not the rule. The Jewish status of al-Dhimma necessitated a repression which even in the best of circumstances meant that the Jew was never equal to the Muslim.

The meeting taking place in Annapolis between the Israelis and Palestinians is one that hardly anyone from the left or the right is holding much hope for. There has been little agreement on any of the major issues, and as Israel provides more and more "confidence-building measures", the Palestinians become entrenched in their positions.

The Jew who was driven out from an Arab land before and after the State of Israel was proclaimed can only look on in wonder at the Palestinian position on their refugees. The Palestinians fictitiously created ?right of return? (a right is a legal term, and there is no binding legal apparatus for such a return) and it has now become a sacred cow that dare not be rejected or ignored.

The Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh declared succinctly recently "No one is authorized to compromise the right of return." Even members of Fatah will not talk of negotiation without the refugee issue being addressed. Abdullah Abdullah, a senior Fatah official in the West Bank, recently described the right of return as sacred. "The right of return cannot be ignored or surrendered," he said.