The celebrated American soul musician Ray Charles visited Israel three times during his life. During the first, in 1972, he discovered that he was wildly popular in the Jewish state. So enthusiastic was his reception in Jerusalem that in his autobiography Charles recalled that “in 30 years on the road, I had never experienced anything like this.” Shalom Goldman writes:

After the major conflicts of the 20th century, the United Nations and its predecessor organizations sought to resettle millions of refugees in new homes. But, as Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf explain in The War of Return, the UN has taken a different approach to those Arabs who fled their homes during Israel’s War of Independence, seeking instead to keep them and their descendants in a permanent state of a homelessness. Matti Friedman writes in his review: