Did Albert Einstein refuse to be Prime Minister of Israel due to the plight of the Palestinians?

Answer 1

No. He refused to be Prime Minister because a). he was a physicist, somewhat

of a loner, and had no interest in holding public office; b). he felt that he wouldn't

be too good at it; c). whether or not he turned out to be good at it, it would certainly

interfere with his day-job as a Nobel-Prize-winning physicist; d). he was smart

enough to know that becoming Prime Minister is not something that someone just

hands you if you want it, like a king's crown; you have to campaign for votes and

be elected to it, and he had no interest in putting himself through that process;

e). the "Palestinians" didn't enter into it at all. For one thing, until only a couple of

years before that time, Israelis themselves had also been referred to as "Palestinians",

and the label hadn't yet been appropriated as a human-rights mantra. Also, those

Arabs who had chosen to stay when the new nation was declared independent

had it as good as anyone else in Israel, and were in no "plight". Finally, those who

had chosen to get out temporarily until the surrounding nations and their armies

could finish destroying the new nation, and were temporarily sitting in "refugee camps"

in Egypt and Jordan, were there temporarily of their own choice, and weren't expected

to be there very long ... it was inconceivable that their "hosts" would leave them there

without assistance for six months, let alone sixty years.