The Right of Return Mike Rappaport

I came across this post by Jacob Levy by accident.  But it seemed quite interesting:

Between 700,000 and 750,000 Palestinians were refugees by the end of1949. More than 100,000 remained in Israel. Those 750,000 left undervery complicated and messy circumstances– some fleeing attacks andvillage-razings by Zionist paramilitary groups, some urged to leave bysurrounding Arab states or local Arab leaders, some fleeing under fearof local ethnic cleansing that appears to have been justified, somefleeing under fear that appears not to have been.

In 1945/46,three million Sudeten Germans were expelled, by clear and officialstate action, from Czechoslovakia– essentially the entire suchpopulation. The expulsion was preceded and accompanied by someprettysubstantial local violence.

The number of Germans expelled fromPoland (partly from areas that were reallocated from Germany to Poland,partly from Danzig, partly from Poland’s original territory) is underdispute but seems likely to have been more than 10,000,000– again,nearly the entirety of the relevant population. Again, there was agreat deal of associated violence; more than 1,000,000 Germans may havebeen killed.

The partition of India in 1947 sent more than tensof millions of refugees across the new borders in all directions–again, often as part of a spiral of fear about local violence andpre-emptive violence. Millions were killed. While a substantial Muslimminority remained in India, almost no Hindus remained in Pakistan. 

{N]otice that in only one of these cases is therestill serious talk about a “right of return.” Even if– as is nottrue– the entire group of 750,000 Palestinians had been 1) expelled 2)by deliberate centralized Israeli policy, this would have been acomparatively mild instance of the ethnic politics of the immediatepostwar era. Notice, too, that the expelled Germans– much as theymight nurse historical grudges and want public apologies orcompensation– have never engaged in the organized murder of Poles orCzechs, have been received into the German states as citizens, and havethrived in democratic and capitalist settings.

What explains the fact that I have italicized above?