AVNERY – “ABOLISH THE JNF”
e of all this effort, when the United Nations resolved in November 1947 to partition the country between a Jewish and an ArabState, less than 7% of the land belonged to Jews. Only a part of this area belonged to the KKL, the rest to private Jewish owners in the towns and the agricultural “colonies”.
Logic would have dictated that with the founding of the State of Israel, the KKL transfer its lands to the State. After all, that was the idea of collecting the money.
But this did not happen. In fact, the very opposite took place: the new state transferred to the KKL millions of dunams of land expropriated from Arabs – the refugees who were not allowed to return (“absentees” in legal language), those who had remained in the country but were absent on a given day from their villages (“present absentees”), as well as Arabs who became citizens of Israel.
It is important to keep this in mind, since it disproves the big lie that hovers over the whole debate: that the KKL land was bought with the money of the Jewish people. The greater part of the present KKL land was not bought at all, but conquered in war and transferred to the KKL.
Why transferred? Why did the sovereign state transfer lands gratis to a non-state body? Only one reason comes to mind: so as to continue with the discrimination against the Arab citizens.
In an official brief, the KKL argues that it does not owe loyalty to the principles of the State of Israel, as put down in the 1948 Declaration of Independence (equality between all citizens, regardless of religion and race), but to “The Jewish People”. This means that “The Jewish People”, which is not a political body, is being presented as an independent entity superior to the State of Israel.
The KKL does not act, of course, for “the Jewish People”. It is an instrument of the Israeli Jewish community against the Israeli Arab community. It has become an instrument for institutionalized discrimination. The Attorney General’s sleight of hand, designed to satisfy the demand of the Israeli Supreme Court for equality between all citizens, while still allowing a body based on discrimination to keep hold of 13% of the land in the state, does not change the situation in principle. The KKL is not unique. Discrimination reigns in many fields. In the last few days alone, the following facts happened to come to light:
- The chiefs of the Treasury Ministry are pondering how to pay allowances to big Jewish families, without paying them to big Arab families. (There are two communities in Israel with a soaring birth-rate: the Jewish orthodox and the Muslim Arab, especially Bedouin.)
- The Ministry of the Interior is pushing a law that allows all foreigners who marry Israelis to acquire Israeli citizenship, even if they are not Jewish – but explicitly excludes Arabs. This denies thousands of young Arabs, citizens of Israel, the right to set up a family in Israel, if the bride or bridegroom is a resident of the Palestinian territories, even if he or she is a relative.
- The Ministry of Education confirmed what until now has been an open secret: that the appointment of every teacher and principal in an Arab school in Israelis subject to the approval of the General Security Service (Shin-Bet). But the ministry is progressing with the times: Until now, the Shin-Bet representative was automatically the vice-chairman of the appointments committee. From now on, he will only be a simple committee member.
It would be nice if we could say that these phenomena, and the many others of the sort, are inspired by the right-wing. But the truth is that most of them came into being when the Zionist left was in control, and continue now with the support of the left-wing whose representatives serve in the Sharongovernment.
This is not the state that we promised ourselves in the Declaration of Independence. We have a tough struggle ahead of us, until Israel becomes a democratic, liberal, secular, pluralist and egalitarian state.
A step in this direction would be the abolition of the KKL and the transfer of its lands to the state.
Page 2 of 2 | Previous page
Thermblog:
April 27th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
Avnery has a very blinkered perspective in addition to some ignorance. In North America, aboriginals are accorded special rights, including land rights, based on their race.
Well, living in Israel, maybe he’s not aware of it. He has however, no excuse for not being aware of this:
Arabs Who Sold Home to Hebron Jews Arrested, Face Death Penalty
In the story, both the PA and Jordan discriminate against Jews.
I understand that a certain amount of hypocrisy is built into life and politics, but there must be some rational limits. Given that Israel in toto, is a tiny speck of land (the size of Wales) amid a huge sea of Arab nations with Jew-hating propensities, the problem Avnery addresses with such hand-wringing, is trivial. Moreover, the external situation provides a distinct justification for the JNF.