[NYTr] Israeli Apartheid: Hitler's Enduring Legacy

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Guardian - July 27, 2007
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_silverstein/2007/07/the_right_to_discriminate.html

The 'right' to discriminate

A new bill in the Knesset seeks to perpetuate discrimination against
Israel's Arab citizens.

by Richard Silverstein

A fixture in the lives of all children who have ever attended Hebrew school
is the blue Jewish National Fund (JNF) pushke (or charity box), into which
parents and teachers encouraged us to throw our pennies, nickels, dimes and
quarters. They taught us to perform a mitzvah by giving tzedakah to support
the building of the Jewish homeland. Thus, the Jewish National Fund was the
Red Cross of Jewish life, a "mom and apple pie" charity doing nothing but
good for our people.

How times change! Last week, the Israeli Knesset passed, on first reading,
the Jewish National Fund bill which allows the JNF to refuse to lease land
to Arab citizens. The JNF is a quasi-public charity established to raise
funds to purchase land for Jewish settlement within Israel. In 1961, the
Israeli government transferred 13% of Israeli land to the JNF. Included in
this were one million dunams expropriated from Arab residents who fled
Israel in 1948.

The government had sold the land to the JNF at bargain-basement prices in
order to remain at arm's length from the tainted process. Historically, the
JNF has maintained a ban against Arab use of its land. But the Israeli
supreme court, in a landmark ruling, said that the JNF can no longer
discriminate against the Arab population. The Court maintained that such a
ban defies the norms of a democratic state and must be ended.

The Knesset bill, co-sponsored by a ruling party Kadima Knesset member, is
an attempt to get around the court ruling. While it would allow the JNF to
resume discriminating against Arabs, the other 80% of Israeli land
administered by the ILA would continue to be governed by the supreme court
ruling. On first reading, the bill passed 64-16, with only 10 Jewish MKs
voting No. One of those voting Yes was Ami Ayalon, recent candidate for
Labour party leader and partner with Sari Nusseibeh in a dialogue seeking
Israeli-Palestinian peace.

This bill certainly does make for strange bedfellows. Opposition within the
Diaspora has been slow to develop. The only US Jewish group to protest
publicly was Ameinu, which wrote a letter to Zeev Elkin, the Kadima bill
sponsor. The Union for Reform Judaism is also preparing a letter expressing
its opposition. MeretzUSA is circulating an online petition as is a group of
Jewish bloggers - including this author, Dan Fleshler (Realistic Dove) and
Jerry Haber (Magnes Zionist) - who have created an online campaign against
the bill.

The other major Jewish groups like the Anti Defamation League and American
Jewish Committee have sat on their hands so far. First, they cannot rock the
boat against a fellow American Jewish group (the JNF); second, their rather
conservative membership sees little wrong with discrimination in favour of
Israeli Jews.

Haaretz excoriated the legislative effort in an editorial, A Racist Jewish
State:

This bill reflects an abasement of the Zionist enterprise to lows never
imagined in the Declaration of Independence. 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. For those living for tomorrow and not the past, the aim is to
create in Israel a healthy, progressive state where the needs of the two
peoples should concern the leaders and legislators. The Jewish National
Fund's land policy counters the interests of the state and cannot
discriminate by law against the minority living in Israel.

Ronald Lauder, the cosmetics heir and national JNF chair released a crowing
statement which praised the Knesset for reaffirming the JNF's right to
discriminate:

We are gratified that the government of Israel ... recognised that the land
purchased by the Jewish people for the Jewish people should remain in the
hands of its rightful owners. This Knesset decision reaffirms the vision and
the dream of Theodor Herzl and the millions of Jews over the past 106 years
who contributed and participated in the rebirth of a Jewish nation after
2,000 years. The land of Israel is part of the very existence of the Jewish
people from as far back as Abraham. We are a people linked to our land. Now
and forever.

Jerry Haber, a liberal Orthodox Israeli-American blogger, pointed out the
bogus nature of this response in a private email to me:

This argument is invalid for two reasons: First, the vast majority of land
owned by the Jewish National Fund was not purchased by Jewish individuals
but rather was expropriated by the Israel government in the early years of
the state from absentee Palestinian owners and transferred to the fund so
that the Israel government could not itself be accused of discriminatory
land leasing - a legal fiction of dubious morality. Second, no parallel
mechanism for the settlement needs of Arab citizens was ever established. On
the contrary, as the Or Commission set up after the Israeli Arab protests in
2000 noted, "Arab settlements have been surrounded by security zones, Jewish
district councils, national parks, nature reserves, and highways, that
prevent or inhibit the possibility of future expansion."

The reason this issue is so complicated is that Israel considers itself the
homeland of the Jewish people. As such, it currently discriminates in many
ways in favour of its Jewish citizens. But at the same time it considers
itself a democracy and includes a sizable minority of Arab citizens. These
two elements have always co-existed in a tense relationship. While there
undoubtedly remains a high level of prejudice against Israeli Arabs, social
developments - which include the High Court ruling - have been very
gradually eroding some of the more odious discriminatory regulations.

This legislative attempt to restore to the JNF its right to discriminate in
favour of Jews may be seen as a rump effort by the Israeli right to take
back its prerogatives and return to the era when Jews predominated and there
was never a doubt that Arabs were second-class citizens. Is it too much to
expect a majority of the Knesset to see this and put down this attempt to
enshrine Jewish dominance into the law of a state otherwise proud to call
itself a democracy?