Normalize Return – a Zochrot campaign
There are voices of resistance in Israel who keep on going in the face of a genocidal mood in the wider society.
For the past 22 years members of the Israeli organisation Zochrot (Remembrance) have been campaigning to remember and keep alive the history of the nakba of 1948 as well as the ongoing nakba.
They have researched the history thoroughly, put up memorials to lost villages, and refuse to accept the prevailing silence and denial of the past.
They have organised literally hundreds of Zochrot tours to displaced Palestinian localities, fighting within Israeli society to make its real history more widely known.
In the face of the current catastrophe they are increasing the stakes by launching a bold new campaign to “Normalize Return”.
As they say, “We know that even after mass killing and wanton destruction, there will be a future in Palestine, and we’re investing in it now.”
We reproduce below the contents of the latest Zochrot Newsletter and appeal for support.
RK
Dear friends and partners,
In the midst of ongoing violence, displacement, and political erasure, the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees remains the key to justice and peace. Today, Zochrot proudly launches #NormalizeReturn – The Time Is Now, a political campaign that centers the Right of Return as the only just and achievable future for Gaza and all of Palestine.
#NormalizeReturn – The Time Is Now
In a world that normalizes ethnic cleansing, we choose to normalize return.
Today, as Gaza descends deeper into destruction—with mass starvation, forced displacement, and discussions of permanently confining its people into a so-called “concentration zone”—Zochrot launches #NormalizeReturn – The Time Is Now to assert a clear truth:
Palestinian refugees do not need relocation, management, or humanitarian charity. They need the internationally recognized Right of Return—and the freedom to reclaim home.
For decades, return has been sidelined as “unrealistic” or “naive,” while apartheid, mass displacement, and siege have been treated as normal—even “reasonable.” But what is truly unrealistic is imagining a future without justice. If ethnic cleansing can be discussed openly as a “solution,” then return must be asserted—as urgent, necessary, and just.
Let us be clear:
When we say “normalize return,” we don’t mean it’s new or unnatural. Return is already normal—it is the legal, historical, and moral baseline.
We say “normalize” because what has been falsely normalized—dispossession, apartheid, genocide—must be uprooted.
Return is not the exception—it is the norm that was violently interrupted.
Why Now?
In July 2024, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation illegal. The UN General Assembly followed by endorsing the ICJ ruling and setting a 12-month deadline for Israel to end its presence in the occupied Palestinian territories—by September 18, 2025.
But instead of advancing justice, powerful states are using this moment to push top-down frameworks that entrench apartheid and erase refugee rights. On July 28, France and Saudi Arabia co-hosted a UN conference promoting a recycled two-state “solution”—one that sidelines Resolution 194 and normalizes permanent displacement under the illusion of peace.
As this deadline approaches, our campaign calls on the UN and global actors to go further: not just to end occupation, but to fullfill the UN’s own Resolution 194 by upholding the Right of Return. Dismantling colonial structures without restoring refugee rights will only entrench injustice.
Return must be central to any future. And Gaza makes this clearer than ever.
Gaza is home to a majority of Palestinian refugees, already displaced multiple times. Now, Israeli and international officials openly propose permanently confining its population—those who have already fled massacre—into a zone of exile.
Meanwhile, refugee camps in the West Bank have been repeatedly destroyed, their residents displaced again. And UNRWA, the only institution upholding refugee status, is under political assault—defunded, delegitimized, and banned.
This is not a humanitarian emergency alone. It is a coordinated political project of erasure: erasing refugeehood, blocking return, and entrenching apartheid.
Campaign Goals
This campaign is a political intervention. We aim to:
1. Expose the Ongoing Nakba
- Reframe Gaza and refugee displacement as part of a single, continuous process of ethnic cleansing since 1948.
- Reveal how global discourse obscures Zionist violence and erases Palestinian agency.
2. Reject Imposed “Solutions”
- Challenge frameworks that exclude return and impose “pragmatic” alternatives that normalize injustice, such as the two states solution.
- Advocate for political solutions rooted in decolonization, reparation, and refugee rights and agency.
3. Reframe the Discourse
- Shift from humanitarian “management” to justice-centered political action.
- Normalize return as the most realistic, legal, and just solution—not the most radical.
4. Mobilize for Return
- Build a Return Working Group for political education, advocacy, and organizing.
- Push for a UN General Assembly resolution that reaffirms Resolution 194 and upholds return as a political obligation—especially ahead of the September 2025 deadline.
This Is Not Symbolic
This is a sustained effort to place Return at the center of global political discourse and action— not just as a right to be affirmed, but as a reality to be organized for.
As governments negotiate over Palestinians’ heads, we are building something different: A global, grassroots political movement to assert return as the only just and achievable future.
Take Action
For too long, the world has normalized ethnic cleansing—not just through silence, but through international frameworks that render Palestinian return “impossible” and displacement “inevitable.”We reject this logic. We choose to normalize return—not because it is new, but because it is right.
- Use #NormalizeReturn in your posts, content, and conversations.
- Share the campaign and help make return not only visible—but legitimate, urgent, and central.
- Join Our Twitter Storm!
Take part in our coordinated Twitter storm on Thursday August 7, from 8 PM to 11 PM Palestine time, to amplify #NormalizeReturn globally. Your tweets can help shift the conversation, challenge settler-colonial narratives, and put the Right of Return at the center of the struggle for justice. - Ensure your organization’s work, demands, and educational efforts explicitly center the Right of Return. Make return a visible, integral part of your political vision, advocacy, and discourse—challenging frameworks that sideline or erase this fundamental right.
- Join the Return Working Group to help build the tools and strategies we need. Stay tuned for the official launch and application details coming soon!
Return is not only possible. It is the only path to justice, freedom, and real safety—for Palestinians and for all.
Follow @Zochrot and use #NormalizeReturn.
Support Zochrot in keeping this radical Jewish voice alive—a voice that refuses to stay silent in the face of genocide, colonialism, and apartheid. Your contribution helps us confront erasure, challenge Zionist narratives, and demand the Right of Return for Palestinians.
Donate today to strengthen our efforts and bring the Right of Return to the heart of the conversation.
Excellent. I was surprised at a recent JVL education meeting to hear that many members and officers don’t see Return as a fully practical demand. To me it seems central.
Even more central imo is an end to the existing ‘law of return’ to Israel , the reason the country gets flooded with rightwing colonists instead of acting like a proper state with citizen rights for all inhabitants.
Some years ago I bought a rusted key I at P21 gallery so that I could give it to a Palestinian. The purchase might have been symbolic but the purpose was for real.
I think most of what’s needed won’t be seen as “practical” now. It still has to happen – it’s the only way of building a sustainable, just peace and of ending the grievous wrongs done to the indigenous population of Palestine. One can argue that Israel’s appalling conduct towards the Palestinians since 1948 has simply followed the example we British set in 1923.
I didn’t realise how DIRECTLY culpable we British are for the savage, unlawful oppression of today’s Palestinians until I read this law lecture:-https://opiniojuris.org/2023/09/29/british-reparations-owed-to-the-palestinian-people/.
The (antisemitic) British state abused the legal powers granted by the League of Nations Mandate to encourage their unwanted European Jewish refugees and British Jews to set up home in Palestine. The British stopped any non-Jewish migration into Palestine, “assisted” the growth of Jewish governance (while repressing Arab governance) and crushed the native people’s revolts against their dispossession. Without the unprincipled, quite possibly unlawful assistance of the British state, Israel wouldn’t have come into being; and the State of Palestine would extend to the borders of the British Mandate.
Somehow, the UK and Israel have to pay the reparations we owe to the Palestinians from 1923 and 1948. Somehow, the world has to move to at least the “halfway- house” stage of conflict resolution – where Israel’s borders with the State of Palestine are on the 1967 boundaries (and 750,000 Israeli settlers depart into a smaller Israel).