Dror Etkes on JNF's "Blatant Hypocrisy"

Note: the following was posted after yom tov ended in Israel, so no criticisms about violating yom tov are relevant:

From Ynetnews

Jnf's Blatant Hypocrisy

Dror Etkes

October 4, 2007

It appears that the High Court discussion over the insistence of the Jewish National Fund, which controls about 13 percent of land in Israel, on its right to continue its policy of refraining from leasing out land to Arabs will soon reach the final stretch. JNF's claims in response to the petition of Arab citizens, who it refuses to lease out land to, is that the land it owns is not national land, but rather, assets that were bought for their full price for Jews only, and therefore the JNF has the right to refuse to lease them out to non-Jews.

This argument can be easily disproved, as there are many immigrants who are not Jewish in accordance to Jewish law, but who are nonetheless residing on land leased out to them by the JNF. It is therefore clear that the relevant criterion for JNF officials is not "who is Jewish?", but rather, "who is Arab?", with the main objective guiding the JNF (even though it is unpleasant to declare this openly) is to continue preventing Arabs in the State of Israel from enjoying equal access to land resources. By reading the response provided by JNF representatives to the High Court, it is easy to identify the contradiction in the way JNF presents its connection to the State of Israel. On the one hand, its attorneys claim that it is an independent body completely detached from the State of Israel's official institutions, and therefore is not at all obligated to adhere to the values of civilian equality. On the other hand, they demand not to undermine the fund's status – a result of the exceptional official powers it enjoys via the law pertaining to the relationship between the World Zionist Organization, which JNF is part of, and the State of Israel. Therefore JNF is attempting to enjoy both worlds: Maintain the immense official power trusted in its hands, while at the same time arguing that its blatantly discriminatory policy does not undermine the values of equality.

Recently it appears that JNF's legal advisors realized that the likelihood that High Court judges would be able to refrain from demanding a change to the status quo is low, and therefore they decided to shift to the gimmick phase. And so, after the PR people and spokespersons exhausted the utilization of the dead in their services, headed by Herzl, who passed away in 1904 and whose entire public activity took place in cultural, political, and economic contexts that are vastly different than those faced by the sovereign State of Israel today, they turned to enlisting the living for their cause. The public stage saw the return of the "Second Intifada Army Chief," Moshe Ya'alon, who is seeking along with a group of dignitaries to join as a respondent to the petition, as someone who may be harmed as a former and present donor to JNF. This is the same Ya'alon who in an August 2002 interview with Ha'aretz spoke about "etching Palestinian consciousness" and characterized himself as a "humanist, liberal, democrat, and seeking peace and security." And there, unsurprisingly, it turns out that the lessons of "democracy" passed on to Ya'alon during his long military service in the territories, occupied by Israel in 1967 but never annexed, are the same ones that continue to guide him to this day in his civilian activity West of the Green Line.

Palestinians are natives of this land

Through the political debate taking place within Israel, we discover time and again that many Israelis refuse to reconcile themselves to a basic historical truth, which apparently threatens the sense of national justice many of them were raised and educated with: The Palestinians are natives of this land and have been living here for generations, while the vast majority of Israelis are the descendents of immigrants who arrived here under various circumstances over the slightly more than past 100 years.

This prosaic fact, in and of itself, does not make the Palestinians nicer, more noble, or wiser than any other nation. It also doesn't make them right in every matter. However, the most important moral point derived from this fact is that the Palestinians too have a collective right to enjoy the limited land resources offered by this country. The Palestinians have the right to refuse to accept the monopoly that the State of Israel demands for itself in practice in all matters pertaining to shaping the physical space where both peoples are living.

While West of the Green Line the State of Israel trusted the process of "liberating the land" (that is, pushing out the Arabs) in the hands of an anachronistic body like the JNF, which adopts deliberate discrimination against Arab citizens, east of the Green Line it trusted the same mission in the hands of settlers who are acting with clear understanding that their methodical violations of the law are a price the State of Israel is willing to pay wholeheartedly, as long as the objective of banishing Arabs from as much West Bank land as possible is achieved.

The similar side to both stories is the enlistment of contractors to do the job and the privatization of official functions adopted by the State, while it rolls its eyes heavenwards and self-righteously each time someone dares characterize the State of Israel's policy as racist. And what if the Palestinians dare rebel and engage in another intifada? No problem, we'll call Ya'alon to come back and etch their consciousness.

A Righteous Man in Sodom -- Dror Etkes.

Haaretz published a good piece today about how the West Bank settlers grab land and keep Palestinian villages from expanding.

Here is the Hebrew link:

http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/879100.html

and here is the English link

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/878955.html

The article was written by Amos Harel, who has coauthored the definitive study of how Israel stole and continues to steal Palestinian land in the West Bank and Gaza.

Let me say off the bat that I can't stand Israelies who demonize the settlers. The immorality of the settlements attaches to the entire Israeli society, me included. I have nothing to say about the morality of the settlers, either, most of whom I put in the "captive children" category (captive of their post-Holocaust trauma and Zionist ideology). Of course, excusing doesn't mean exculpating.

Here is the lead:

"West Bank settlements have been allocated huge amounts of land, but use very little of it, according to a Peace Now report.

"Only nine percent of the area under settlement jurisdiction has been built on, and only 12 percent is being used at all, the report said, citing Civil Administration figures.

"But despite their huge unused land reserves, 90 percent of the settlements exceed their boundaries, and about one-third of the territory they do use lies outside their jurisdiction, the report added.

"The findings attest to the government's ongoing cooperation with the settlements' expansion, Peace Now charged: On one hand, the state earmarks huge tracts for the settlements, out of all all proportion to their size, in order to prevent Palestinian construction in those areas. Yet once an area is closed to Palestinians, the settlers begin seizing adjacent Palestinian lands, often privately owned, that lie outside their jurisdiction."

You know, there is a famous midrash brought by Rashi in the beginning of his commentary on Torah, in which the nations of Canaan accuse the Israelites of stealing the land. "You are listim (thieves)." Now, had the Jews written that midrash today, they would have said thinks like, "No, this is not stealing at all...actually, these territories are disputed; we are administering them; we are able to do things for the benefit of the settlers because of the Fourth Geneva Convention which allows us to do things for the benefit of the inhabitants (even though, technically speaking, it doesn't apply); anyway, we build settlements on public land; the Palestinians themselves have lots of illegal building." Yada, yada, yada.

All the above is crapola. The only real justification I understand is what the Midrash answers: "The earth belongs to the Lord. He decides to whom he can give it. He gave it to you; he can give it to us." (By the way, I wonder what the nations responded to that.)

In other words, if the "Pals" don't like it, they can go to hell, or to Detroit, whichever they prefer. (No anti-Detroit jokes.)

But Israel can't say that, right? And so they have to lie, they have to steal through deception, and they have to do it quietly, so the world -- and even the Israelis -- don't know.

That is why Dror Etkes is one of my heroes. He doesn't sit in Tel-Aviv and kvetch on Shenkin St. He and Hagit Ofran, who is taking over from him, know every piece of land being stolen from the Palestinians in Eretz Yisrael. The evil done in the West Bank can only be done in the dark, like ganavim be-layla.

Will publicizing this stuff succeed? To me, that's not the point. The point is that, like my hero Magnes, he stands up and denounces the immorality and the arrogance of power.