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Rejoinder to Open Letter to JNF Leadership

As chairperson of AL-BEIT: Association for the Defence of Human Rights in Israel, which is the publisher of the current volume*, I was utterly dismayed to have come across the text of an “Open Letter to Ronald Lauder, Stanley Chesley, Russell Robinson and the entire leadership of the Jewish National Fund” signed by 27 NGOs, human rights organizations and social movements from the Negev and Israel and by 7 American Jewish organizations.

I find the said text to be a sad illustration of the ongoing weakness of such among “human rights activists, social organizations in Israel, Jewish and other allies in the United States and around the world” as failing to position at the center of their political programme and grass-root practice the demand for the implementation of the right of all 1948 Palestine refugees and their families to return and to the repossession of the titles to their properties inside Israel. Furthermore, the said text fails to recognize the extent of the JNF’s complicity in the racist and apartheid policies of the State of Israel since its founding in 1948.

Allow me point out at the outset that the term “apartheid” is not synonymous with the terms “racism” and “xenophobia”. The terms “racism” and “xenophobia” are not synonymous with the term “apartheid”.

Racism is defined by the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination of 1965 as “any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life”. (Article 1) There is a certain degree of accuracy in the argument put forth by the Israeli Foreign Ministry (which is located in Jerusalem on land belonging to Palestinian refugees who were expelled from the city in the widespread ethnic cleansing perpetrated in Palestine in course of and in the wake of the 1948 war), and other representatives of the State of Israel around the world, that Israel should not be singled out from among other member states of the United Nations as a state uniquely afflicted by racism – not because Israel is not afflicted by racism, but because it is not greatly different from other member states of the UN, such as Indonesia and Canada, to name but two.

However, the State of Israel is not merely afflicted by racism. The core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict hinges upon access to land and to subsoil (minerals and, above all, water), and in respect of this core the State of Israel is anchored in a regime of apartheid. Apartheid is a political regime that imposes upon the population which is under its control racist preferences and choices by power of Acts of Parliament, and enforces the said racist preferences and choices upon the population which is under its control by means of the law enforcement instruments of the state, such as the judicial system, the security forces (police, army, secret services), the planning authorities, the municipal authorities, etc.

Whereas racism in the modern sense of the term is a rampant social affliction at one level or another in all of the member states of the UN (some more and some less), a regime of apartheid as defined above is less common and, to the best of my knowledge, with the dismantling of the apartheid regime in South Africa – a process that began with the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990 and was completed with his election as President of the Republic in 1994 in the first democratic elections ever to be held in the history of South Africa – the State of Israel remains the only member state of the UN that is an apartheid state.

It is possible that my knowledge is insufficient; there may be additional member states of the UN which are apartheid states as defined above, but in any event they would be few and far between. An apartheid regime constitutes a blatant violation of the UN’s founding charter, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and of the standards of international law. Therefore, it is the duty of the international community to single out apartheid states, separately and collectively, including the State of Israel, for the same specific attention that was paid to the apartheid regime of the Republic of South Africa, i.e., a boycott of industrial and other products, academic, cultural and sport institutions (including research grants and international conferences), and international sanctions enforced by the UN. This is our duty, not because Israel claims to be “the Jewish state” (or any other name, for that matter), but in order to assist such states, in the same way as the international community assisted South Africa, to replace the apartheid regime with a democratic constitution.

In this regard it is important to note that, in the first democratic elections in the Republic of South Africa in 1994, Nelson Mandela was elected as President of the Republic by majorities of votes, not only among the “non-White” tribes and ethnic groups that comprise the social mosaic of the territory that comes under the authority of the Republic, but also among the “White” tribes and ethnic groups. This was after decades of political imprisonment and extensive and coordinated efforts on the part of the apartheid regime to remove him from sight and to defame him as a “terrorist”.

93% of the entire territory of the State of Israel within the borders of 4 June 1967 are defined as “national lands” and are legally designated for “Jews only”, more specifically, for those persons who are defined under the laws of the State of Israel as “Jews”. Only some 7% or less of the entire territory of the State of Israel within the borders of 4 June 1967 are privately owned, approximately half of which are estimated to be privately owned by Arabs and half by Jews. The legal system of apartheid by which this blatant discrimination is maintained in the territories under Israeli sovereignty has resulted in a land tenure system worse than that of the Republic of South Africa at the height of the apartheid regime, where 87% of the territory of the Republic was legally designated in law for the use of “Whites only”.

The strategic settler colonial apartheid legislation in the State of Israel is anchored, inter alia, on the following series of laws:

• Absentees’ Property Law; Law of Return; Development Authority Law all of 1950
• World Zionist Organization [WZO]-Jewish Agency for the Land of Israel [JA] (Status) Law, 1952
• Jewish National Fund [JNF] Law; Lands Acquisition (Validation of Acts and Compensation) Law both of 1953
• Covenant between the Government of Israel and the Zionist Executive, also known as the Executive of the Jewish Agency for the Land of Israel, 1954
• Perscription Law, 1958
• Basic Law: Israel Lands; Israel Lands Law; Israel Lands Administration Law all of 1960
• The Covenant between the Government of Israel and the JNF, 1961
• Agricultural Settlement (Restriction on Use of Agricultural Land and Water) Law, 1967

It is beyond the limits of this contribution to elaborate further upon the apartheid laws that operate in the State of Israel. In order to properly appreciate the case, one must begin by examining the cornerstones of the aforementioned legislation, and first and foremost understand how the Israel Lands Administration operates; what is the status in Israel of the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund; and the modalities and the links that obtain among them.

Given the above, aren’t the signatories to the above “Open Letter” aware of the articles of incorporation of the JNF company as registered in Israel such as were approved and signed in 1954 by the Justice Minister at the time, Pinhas Rosen? They read inter alia as follows:

To purchase, acquire on lease or in exchange, etc., … in the prescribed region (which expression shall in this Memorandum mean the State of Israel in any area within the jurisdiction of the Government of Israel) or any part thereof, for the purpose of settling Jews on such lands and properties (Article 3a, Jewish National Fund, Association Limited in Liability and Without Capital Distributed to Shareholders, Memorandum of Association, Government Gazette No. 354, 10.6.1954).

Aren’t the signatories to the said “Open Letter” aware of the JNF’s complicity with the crime against humanity of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine under the cover of the 1948-49 war and their critical role in “greenwashing” the said crime by planting its forests, cultivating its parks and developing its recreational facilities over the ruins of many of the 500 odd ethnically cleansed Palestinian Arab villages inside pre-1967 Israel and over their lands?

How can the said 27 NGOs, human rights organizations and social movements from the Negev and Israel and 7 American Jewish organizations suggest that “If you, the leaders of the JNF, fail to heed this call, you will bear responsibility for the betrayal of Israel’s commitment to the values of equality and justice enshrined in its Declaration of Independence”? It is the “greenwashing” by the JNF of the crime against humanity of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine that has significantly made possible for the apartheid State of Israel to conceal these crimes for several decades and project itself as the “only democracy in the Middle East”.

How can the said 27 NGOs, human rights organizations and social movements from the Negev and Israel and 7 American Jewish organizations call upon the leadership of the JNF “to end your complicity in the destruction of Bedouin villages in the Negev and in the dispossession of Israel’s Bedouin community”, rather than call upon governments world-wide and western governments in particular to direct their Commissioners of Charities to strike the JNF off the list of charitable societies the charitable registration of the JNF, to nullify the JNF tax privileges in their respective states (as well as demand that the JNF reimburse their respective treasuries with all the monies fraudulently gained as tax-exemptions), and to declare the JNF an illegal organization under their respective liberal democratic constitutions.

Political Zionism is a form of apartheid and the appropriate penalties prescribed by the International Covenant on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid of 1973 should be applied to its institutions, notably the WZO, the JA and the JNF, and to the State of Israel, which has granted those institutions statutory status by power of parliamentary legislation.

It is the duty of civil society, including professional associations, trade unions, and religious organizations, as well as the responsibility of every concerned individual of conscience (notably, the 27 NGOs human rights organizations and social movements from the Negev and Israel and the 7 American Jewish organizations) to single out the State of Israel for the same specific attention that was paid to the apartheid regime of the Republic of South Africa, inter alia in the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid of 1973, not because racism in Israel as defined in international law is that different from racism in the UK or North America, but because apartheid in Israel (the regulation of racism through Acts of Parliament) is akin to apartheid in the former (pre-1994) South Africa.

It is the duty of civil society, including professional associations, trade unions, and religious organizations, as well as the responsibility of every concerned individual of conscience (notably, the 27 NGOs human rights organizations and social movements from the Negev and Israel and the 7 American Jewish organizations) to mobilize for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and act to:

NULLIFY ISRAELI JNF LAW!

REVOKE THE CHARITABLE REGISTRATION OF THE JNF AND CANCEL ITS TAX EXEMPT STATUS IN THE UK AND BEYOND!

ANNUL THE NGO OBSERVER STANDING OF THE JNF IN THE UNITED NATIONS AND DECLARE THE JNF AN ILLEGAL ORGANIZATION UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW!

*About the contributor and publisher of Vol 3 of the JNFebook:

Professor Dr Uri Davis is a Palestinian Hebrew, citizen of the alleged constitutional monarchy of the U.K. and of the apartheid State of Israel, born in Jerusalem in 1943. He has been at the forefront of the defence of human rights in Israel, notably Palestinian rights, since 1965 and has pioneered critical research on Zionism and the State of Israel since the mid-1970. He has published extensively in these fields, including Israel: An Apartheid State (Zed Books, London 1987 & 1990; abridged edition, MRN, Laudium, 2001); (associate author with Walter Lehn, author), The Jewish National Fund. Kegan Paul International, London and New York, 1988; Citizenship and the State: Comparative Study of Citizenship Legislation in Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon (Ithaca Press, Reading, 1997); Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications (co-ed) (Syracuse University Press, 2000) and most recently Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within (Zed Books, London, 2003); A Secular Anti-Zionist COMPANION of an Abridged Passover Haggadah (with Ricky Romain, forthcoming).

Dr Davis is Associate Professor at AL-QUDS University, Institute of Regional Studies, Israel Studies Programme, Jerusalem/Abu Dis; member of the Middle East Regional Committee of the international Journal Citizenship Studies; Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of Arab & Islamic Studies (IAIS), University of Exeter and Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute for Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies (IMEIS), University of Durham; Chairperson of AL-BEIT: Association for the Defence of Human Rights in Israel; member of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (FATH) Revolutionary Council; and Observer-Member of the Palestine National Council (PNC).

AL-BEIT: Association for the Defence of Human Rights in Israel was founded in March 1995 by a group of Arab and Hebrew veteran human rights activists as a not-for-profit organization with the view to address a largely neglected area of human rights abuse in Israel, namely, the violation of Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR):

(i)            Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state;

(ii)          (ii) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

The organization has been a small and innovative voluntary association aiming to contribute to the process expanding the choice of residence in the State of Israel for all citizens (UDHR Article (i), above); advance the implementation of the right of return for all 1948 Palestine refugee families (UDHR Article (ii), above); and promote the idea of open localities and mixed cooperative and other communities, Jewish-Arab/Arab-Jewish communities in the first instance on an equal footing. AL-BEIT is a signatory to the Call for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (Published by PACBI: Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel http://www.PACBI.org). All members of the AL-BEIT Management Committee volunteer their time and their skills.

February 7, 2011 - Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular