My June 28 column on the Middle East drew a comment concerning Palestinians ejected from their homes by the post-WWII influx of European Jewish refugees to what’s now Israel. Eighty years after the fact, descendants of those displaced still feel much anger.

The primary reason the “right of return” is complicated is because history rarely supports it. Centuries of warfare and persecutions worldwide have given very few displaced persons the opportunity to return to their former home regions, much less to their specific former addresses.

European Americans forced the eastern Cherokee westward to Oklahoma. Few ever returned. My wife’s mother narrowly escaped North Korea. She spent her remaining years in South Korea and California, with no possibility of regaining her family home in the north, and certainly no chance of receiving compensation for the loss. Other examples abound, in all areas of the world.

This is not to say history justifies a no-return policy. That the Europeans lost their homes does not prima facie justify taking Palestinians’ homes. Perhaps a future Israeli administration will offer chances for returns or restitution. I’d like to see that. But there are practical barriers.

First, a really angry displaced person can be a security risk, if re-admitted within the borders. Perhaps a vetting can be devised, to distinguish potentially violent returnees from others. (My mother-in-law for example, were she still alive, and were she to visit N. Korea, would certainly not go on a killing spree.)

Second, the difficulty of establishing provenance. Who is the real original owner of the property? How to settle if there are multiple claimants? Or if governments have deliberately or carelessly destroyed records?

Regarding Nazi theft of Jewish properties, the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs reports that as of 2025, “Only a fraction of the total value of Jewish assets stolen by the Nazis and their collaborators has been restored. Some estimates suggest less than 20% of the value has been returned.” Most of the 20% has been art and jewelry; actual homes must be a small fraction of that.

The Institute of World Politics grad school continues the thread: “Some stolen real estate has been returned to its pre-war Jewish owners or compensation has been provided. However, the process is often complex, especially in Eastern Europe where post-war communist regimes further complicated property ownership. There are still many unresolved issues regarding communal properties like synagogues, schools, and cemeteries.”

It can be useless to base collective property claims on what kinds of people (ethnicities) “originally” inhabited the land. Obviously the answer differs depending on how far into the past one looks. Look way, way back into prehistory and lack of evidence and records renders the question moot.

Third, financial and psychological factors inhibit return. A trivial example: If the current occupant of a house remodeled the kitchen, is that something the original, displaced owner would want? How would the current occupant be compensated for the project expense, if they had to give up the house?

A perhaps less silly scenario: The intervening years have seen growth in the neighborhood, much new infrastructure that has boosted the property taxes. Would the displaced person want or be able to assume that burden?

The two examples show that allowing return would in many cases need to be accompanied by government financial assistance. A sensible government would phase out the assistance after some years, and the returnee would need to face the reality that any subsidy would be temporary.

One’s own government, via “eminent domain,” may force one to vacate a home. Eminent domain has nothing to do with invasions or wars or immigrants: Law in many countries allows appropriation of property for public purposes. It usually does involve financial compensation to the displaced family. When the city widened the street behind my house, they shortened my backyard and built a wall to insulate it from traffic. Small loss, compared to the construction of the Three Gorges Dam in China, which led to the displacement of over 1.3 million people, via that country’s version of eminent domain.

Then there are issues of memory and nostalgia. Pogroms and wars ejected my ancestors from their villages in Ukraine and Hungary. Not that my family, four generations later, would want to return there. But the fact of the matter is, we don’t even remember those villages’ names! Or their locations. And the Czar and the Emperor who were responsible are long gone, so who is there to be angry with?

I feel nostalgia for my childhood home in Pennsylvania, which my father sold when our family moved west. When I revisit it, I see it surrounded by new housing developments and strip malls. Streets have been widened. All the neighbors I knew have moved away. The fields I used to romp in have been paved over. Though the location is bound up with happy boyhood memories, I would not want to live there now.

If the house had been stolen from us (it wasn’t) and if the government gave me the choice of the house or a financial settlement, I’d take the money.

If there are any lessons to be drawn here, they may be: Immigrants who are aggrieved about their exodus should not project their frustrations on the natives. Natives should welcome immigrants to the best of their ability. Natives who are displaced and show extreme anger about it are not likely to be invited back. Keep a tight rein on your own people's violent extreme fringe. Stop war.