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The Jewish National Fund (1932-1972) Jewish National Fund a Para-State Institution in the Service of Colonialism & Apartheid

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The Jewish National Fund (1932-1972) Jewish National Fund a Para-State Institution in the Service of Colonialism & Apartheid Issue No. 43 (Winter - Spring 2010) quarterly magazine of BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights «Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both peoples together in this country. We shall not achieve our goal if the Arabs are in this small country. There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries - all of them. Not one village, not one tribe should be left.» The --Yosef Weitz Director of the Land and Afforestation Department of the Jewish National Fund (1932-1972) Jewish National Fund A Para-State Institution in the Service of Colonialism & Apartheid al-Majdal (Winter - Spring 2010) 1 BADIL takes a rights-based approach to the Palestinian refugee issue through research, advocacy, and support al-Majdal is a quarterly magazine of of community participation in the search for durable BADIL Resource Center that aims to raise solutions. public awareness and support for a just solution BADIL was established in 1998 to support the development to Palestinian residency and refugee issues. of a popular refugee lobby for Palestinian refugee and internally displaced rights and is registered as a non-profit organization with the Palestinian Authority. Electronic copies are available online at: Learn more at www.badil.org www.badil.org/al-majdal/ Annual Subscription: 25€ (4 issues) Published by BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency & Refugee Rights PO Box 728, Bethlehem, Palestine Tel/Fax: 972-2-274-7346 Email: [email protected] Web: www.badil.org ISSN 1726-7277 Editor Hazem Jamjoum Editorial Team Reem Mazzawi, Mohammad Jaradat, Nidal al-Azza, Ingrid Jaradat Gassner Layout & Design Acknowledgments Atallah Salem, Badil Badil thanks Marcy Newman, Sofiah McLeod and Hanien Eliyan for their help in putting together this issue Advisory Board of al-Majdal. Abdelfattah Abu Srour (Palestine) Front Cover: Abu al-Saeed visits his village of Lubya in Diana Buttu (Palestine) 2004. Lubya was depopulated and destroyed in 1948 Jalal Al Husseini (Switzerland) and today is the site the JNF South Africa Park (Photo: Mahmoud Issa) Arjan El Fassed (Netherlands) Randa Farah (Canada) Back Cover: Quote from "A Solution to the Refugee Usama Halabi (Palestine) Problem" Joseph Weitz, Davar, September 29, 1967, cited in Uri Davis and Norton Mevinsky, (eds.), Documents Jeff Handmaker (Netherlands) from Israel, 1967-1973, p.21; Map courtesy of Palestine Zaha Hassan (United States) Remembered; Images of JNF Blue Boxes by Badil; JNF Salem Hawash (Palestine) posters courtesy of palestineposterproject.org Isabelle Humphries (United Kingdom) Production and Printing: al-Ayyam Scott Leckie (Australia) BADIL welcomes comments, criticism, and suggestions Karine Mac Allister (Quebec) for al-Majdal. Please send all correspondence to the Terry Rempel (Canada) editor at [email protected] Shahira Samy (Egypt) The views expressed by independent writers in this Joseph Schechla (Egypt) publication do not necessarily reflect the views of BADIL Resource Center. 2 al-Majdal (Issue No. 43) Contents Editorial Knocking Down the Colonial Pillar of an Apartheid Regime .....................................................................................2 Commentary Why Mr. President? by Nidal Azza................................................................................................................................................................5 Main Feature: The JNF The Consequences of Conflating Religion, Race, Nationality and Citizenship by Joseph Schechla ....................................................................................................................................................10 Photo-Story: A Trip to al-Qabu by Hazem Jamjoum ...................................................................................................................................................17 Imwas: Canada Park's Concealed Crime Interview with Ahmad Abughoush .............................................................................................................................21 The Coretta Scott King Forest: Insulting the Memory of an anti-Apartheid Activist by Vivian Tabar...........................................................................................................................................................26 Situating the JNF in Israel's Legal Regime over Land by Alaa Mahajneh .....................................................................................................................................................30 Redeeming National (Jewish) Land: Explanatory Diagram of Israel's Legal Regime over Land by Usama Halabi .......................................................................................................................................................33 The JNF in the Naqab by Yeela Raanan ........................................................................................................................................................34 Metropolitan Aspects of Zionist Organization by Dan Freeman Maloy .............................................................................................................................................39 Campaigns to Challenge the JNF by Mick Napier, Sofiah McLeod & Sara Kershnar ...................................................................................................45 Reviews Book review: Hollow Land Reviewed by Nicola Perugini ....................................................................................................................................49 Writing Hollow Land by Eyal Weizman.........................................................................................................................................................52 Book Review: Dumper's The Future of Palestinian Refugees Reviewed by Gail Boling ...........................................................................................................................................54 Documents Advocating Palestine in the United Nations Badil’s International Advocacy in January-March 2010 ............................................................................................57 More than One year after “Operation Cast Lead”: Distressing Lack of Accountability and Justice for the Victims of the Conflict Joint submission to thirteenth session of UN Human Rights Council .........................................................................59 A Vote for Israel’s Accession to the OECD is a Vote in Support of Israel’s War Crimes and Other Grave Violations of International Law and Human Rights BNC statement ...........................................................................................................................................................61 BDS Campaign Update............................................................................................................................................63 Editorial Knocking Down the Colonial Pillar of an Apartheid Regime or anyone taking a road trip along the highways of the part of Palestine that became Israel in 1948, one is bound to spot a blue and green structure in the shape of a bird marked with the Hebrew letters KKL, which stands for Keren FKayemeth L’Yisrael, the Hebrew name of the Israeli branch of the Jewish National Fund (JNF). All around the bird one will see expanses of forests planted sometime in the past few decades. A walk through one of these forests will take the visitor past fruit trees, cactus plants, terraced hillsides, and the ruins of buildings. In some cases, these ruins are explained in a JNF brochure pointing to their ancient history, in other cases, one is left to the devices of one's imagination. In all cases, these sites are what remains of some of the more than five hundred villages depopulated and destroyed through the course of Israel’s establishment, the homes of millions of Palestinian refugees struggling to return to them for over sixty years. By walking through a JNF park or forest, one inhales the fresh smell of the green-washing of Palestine’s Nakba. The history of the JNF is well documented, the seminal text still being the late Walter Lehn’s 1988 book The Jewish National Fund written in association with Uri Davis. After heated discussions at the first four Zionist con- gresses, the JNF was established at the Fifth Zionist Congress held in Basel in 1901, and incorporated in England in 1907. It’s Memorandum of Association defines the primary objective of the JNF as “to purchase, take on lease or in exchange or otherwise acquire any lands, forests, rights of possession and other rights in the prescribed re- gion [Palestine and surrounding areas]… for the purpose of settling Jews on such lands.”1 The JNF was expressly prohibited from selling any land to ensure that it would hold on to these lands in the name of the Jewish people in perpetuity.2 The organization began its fundraising activities and began to seek out willing sellers, the most significant of whom were absentee landlords living in what would become Lebanon and Syria. The JNF’s “blue box,” a small box for col- lection of donations, became both a fixture in Jewish communities outside of Palestine, as well as an important tool of mobilizing Jewish community support behind the colonization of the country. By the 1920s, Palestinians were suffi- ciently knowledgeable of the Zionist project to colonize their country that they refused to sell their land to the Fund. In response, the JNF reverted to more insidious means to acquire land, including
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