April 23, 2006

Picket against the JNF and Solidarity Message from Uri Davis

The Palestine Community Centre www.palestinecommunitycentre.com held a successful picket today against the Jewish National Fund (JNF) Negev Dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel in Vancouver, Canada.

The Picket protested against the continued theft of Palestinian land by the JNF and discrimination by the JNF against Palestinians, even those who are citizens of the state of Israel. The picket also protested against Vancouver Mayors Art Phillips, Mike Harcourt, Philip Owen, Larry Campbell and Sam Sullivan  who were being honoured by the JNF for their support. 

The picket noted that such support amounts to complicity in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and Israeli war crimes. The picket called for a boycott against all corporate sponsors of the event including Phillips, Hager & North I nvestment Management Ltd., HSBC, InstaFund, Mercedes-Benz and the University of British Columbia.

In concluding, the picket endorsed unanimously a resolution in solidarity with the Six Nations and denouced the brutal police threats and attacks against the indigenous people.

The following solidarity message was read at the picket from Dr. Uri Davis, a Palestinian Jew and one of the formost scholars in Israel on the racist and exclusionist nature of the JNF.

Statement of Solidarity with Picket against Israeli Apartheid and Racism

The core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a conflict between the State of Israel as a settler colonial state in Palestine and the indigenous people of the country of Palestine, the Arab-Palestinian people. The core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, like the core of the conflict in any confrontation between a colonial settler state and an indigenous people lies in the claim of the colonial settler state to legally set aside the land and the subsoil for the use of the settler society and to dispossess the native population of their individual and collective property rights to the land and to whatever underlies the land.

The land laws of the State of Israel are apartheid laws, because they enforce preference on the basis of tribal affiliation (religious, and/or ethnic and/or national), allocating in law privileged access to the land (including housing) and the subsoil (notably water) to persons defined in law as a “Jews”, correlatively discriminate against those defined in law as “non-Jews”, in the first instance, against the Arab-Palestinian people. In other words, these are racist laws in the sense defined in the international conventions that Israel has signed and ratified, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination of 1965.

With the apartheid divide in Israel being legally defined as “Jews” versus “non-Jews”, 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”. The legal system by the apartheid powers of 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, where the apartheid divide was legally defined as “White” versus “non-White” (At the height of the apartheid regime in South Africa 87% of the territory of the Republic were legally designated in law for the use of “Whites” only).

Central to the Israeli legal apartheid system is the Jewish National Fund (JNF) Law of 1953, the Covenant between the Government of Israel and the JNF of 1961, and JNF afforestation activities regulated thereby, notably Canada Park, VEILING THE ETHNIC CLEANSING AND THE RAZING TO THE GROUND OF THE PALESTINIAN ARAB VILLAGES OF  'IMWAS, YALU AND BEIT NUBA.

It is the duty of the international community and the responsibility of every concerned individual of conscious 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 North America – but because apartheid in Israel (the regulation of racism through Acts of Parliament0 is akin to apartheid in the former (pre-1994) South Africa.

It is the duty of the international community and the responsibility of every concerned individual of conscious to mobilize for the divestment in and boycott of Israeli industrial and other products; of academic, cultural and sport institutions (including research grants and international conferences); and for the enforcement of international sanctions by the UN against the Government of the State of Israel in order to assist the apartheid State of Israel in the same way as the apartheid Republic of South Africa was assisted in the process of replacing the apartheid regime with a democratic constitution.

NULLIFY ISRAELI JNF LAW!

ANNUL THE COVENANT BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT OF ISRAEL AND THE JNF!

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

Uri Davis (Dr)
P O Box 99
Sakhnin 20173
Israel

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