[wvns] Dark side of Jewish dream
Dark side of Jewish dream
Ed O'Loughlin, Jerusalem
The Sun-Herald Australia
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/world/dark-side-of-jewish-dream/2007/08/26/1188066926247.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2
The Jewish National Fund's blue collection boxes have long been a
familiar sight in diaspora schools, workplaces, shops and homes - a
chance for ordinary Jews to contribute their private cash to the
Zionist dream.
These "pennies from the pushka" were used from 1901 onwards to
purchase land for Jewish settlements in the Turkish and later British
territory of Palestine, stepping-stones towards the creation of a
Jewish state.
Yet sixty years after the birth of the state of Israel the JNF
continues to thrive - and to generate controversy.
Last month Israel's parliament overwhelmingly endorsed the first stage
of a bill which would formally allow the JNF to continue its
established practice of barring non-Jews from leasing land and housing
held in its name - 13 per cent of the area of Israel, much of it now
prime real estate.
The Knesset bill has led to renewed accusations both in Israel and
abroad that the JNF denies Israel's 20 per cent Arab minority access
to what is in practice state land.
Under the headline "A Racist Jewish State" an editorial in the
center-left Israeli newspaper Haaretz wrote that "the Jewish National
Fund's land policy counters the interests of the state and cannot
discriminate by law against the minority living in Israel ... Even
though the Jewish National Fund purchased the lands for the Jewish
people in the Diaspora, the State of Israel has already been
established and these lands must now serve all its citizens."
Other Israeli commentators have pointed out that the move comes just
as the Israeli government and international Zionist bodies are trying
to stifle moves by trades unions in Britain and South Africa to
boycott Israel as an apartheid state.
Most government figures, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, have
avoided taking a stand on the issue. The JNF and its many supporters
say that its activities do not discriminate against anybody.
It says that the forests and parks it has built in its more recent
environment role - many on bulldozed Arab villages - are open to all
visitors, whether Jewish or not, and that it employs many Arabs there.
It says that Bedouin herders are permitted to graze their sheep and
goats in JNF forests.
"[JNF] land has been legally purchased penny by penny over the last
106 years, by Jews from all around the world in order to fulfill the
dream of creating a secure Jewish homeland in the land that was from
biblical times, the Land of Israel," said a statement from the Fund's
office in Israel.
"To use these donations for any other purpose would be to breach the
trust and desecrate the sacrifices of these Jews, many of whom were
later to perish in the Holocaust and whose sole desire was to use the
little they had to secure land for the benefit and security of the
Jewish People, who like any other legitimate purchasers of land
anywhere in the world have the right to decide, subject to the laws of
the land how to manage, maintain or otherwise utilise the land that
they have legitimate title to."
But historians say that much of the JNF's almost 3000-square
kilometres of real estate was not legitimately purchased from its
legal owners.
At the birth of the state the JNF had only purchased less than 1000 sq
kms of land from willing sellers, but Prime Minister David Ben Gurion
then hurriedly and illegally sold it another 2000 sq kms which had
been seized from native Arab owners displaced by the fighting or by
military orders.
Ben Gurion's aim was to block any possible implementation of a recent
United Nations resolution calling on Israel to allow the displaced
Arabs to return to their homes and property in the new Jewish state.
The "transaction of millions", as it was known, left the JNF holding
much of what is now Israel's most valuable urban real estate. It was
also a way to channel diaspora money into the new state's depleted
coffers.
The close ties between the state and the JNF became formal in 1961,
when the JNF agreed to manage its lands in tandem with the state-owned
Israeli Land Administration (ILA). In return the privately-owned JNF
was given half of the seats on the board of the ILA, collectively
owning and managing 93 per cent of the state of Israel.
In recent years the twin organisations have lost two high court
challenges accusing them of blocking non-Jews from leasing homes and
property (ILA and JNF land is only leased, usually to long-term
tenants, and never sold as freehold).
But the courts would not apply the precedents generally, and rights
groups say that in practice Jewish housing developments are still able
to exclude non-Jews by means of committees which vet the "suitability"
of would-be new residents.
In Palestinian territories under Israeli military occupation the JNF's
commercial subsidiary, Himnuta, has used agents and middle men to
covertly buy Arab property in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In
2005 Israeli police charged that some of this land was stolen from its
Palestinian owners by corrupt Israeli officials and middle men who had
forged bills of sale.
The new Knesset bill is sponsored by ultra-nationalist deputy Uri
Ariel and was backed by a crossparty majority of 64-16 on its first
reading. Its introduction was prompted by an order from Israel's
attorney-general earlier this year directing both agencies not to
discriminate against non-Jews, even when the property in question
belongs to the JNF.
Despite its political/ethnic agenda in Israel the JNF continues to
enjoy tax-free charitable status in many Western countries, including
Australia, where it presents itself as a primarily environmental
organisation.
Gordon Brown agreed to serve as a patron of the JNF shortly after
becoming British Prime Minister, while its Australian branch recently
co-hosted John Howard at a gala award ceremony to recognise his
support for Israel.
In Israel the JNF has renamed a forest on the edge of the Gaza Strip
after Mr Howard, and there are JNF forests in the Galilee named after
former prime ministers Bob Hawke and Robert Menzies.
The Australian Jewish National Fund has adopted the Bnei Shimon
community council near the southern Israeli city of Beersheva as its
main fundraising project. AJNF's web site says it hopes to raise
between $5 million and $8m dollars to provide water facilities to the
council, which aims to double the number of Jews living amidst the
area's marginalised and deeply underprivileged Israeli-Arab majority.
Nuri Elokbi, 65, a locally-born Bedouin Arab, said that the Australian
money is helping to build the new Jewish community of Givot Bar on his
tribe's land, from which the IDF expelled it under false pretences
when he was still a boy.
"I've heard that the Australians once did exactly the same thing to
their original natives that the Israelis are doing to us," he said,
manning his lone protest tent on a dirt road near Givot Bar. "The
difference is that this is the modern times. Today it's supposed to be
forbidden."
The chief executive officer of the Australian JNF, Rob Schneider, has
strongly backed the Knesset's new bill to prevent non-Jews from having
access to JNF land.
"It is a question of exercising ownership over land that was purchased
historically by Jews for the benefit of Jews," he was quoted as saying
in the Australian Jewish News.
Yet the Knesset bill has disturbed many Jews in other parts of the
diaspora.
In the United States the leader of the Union for Reform Judaism, the
world's largest Jewish congregation, condemned the move.
"It's very hard to imagine any circumstance where a Jewish minority in
any diaspora country would accept with equanimity a bill that would
forbid Jews from purchasing land," said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the union's
president.
"Therefore it is essential that when the Jewish majority in Israel
exercises power, it extend to others the rights it always demanded for
itself when we were in the minority."
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