[van-announce] Fwd: Picket the Jewish National Fund May 31, Vancouver, Canada

[Mike Krebs]

Please post and forward widely

Picket the Jewish National Fund Dinner
Sunday, May 31, 5 pm
Four Seasons Hotel, W. Georgia & Howe, Vancouver

Canada Palestine Association-Vancouver (www.cpavancouver.org ) is
calling for a picket against the Jewish National Fund (JNF) Negev
Dinner on May 31/09 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Vancouver, Canada.

The Picket will protest 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. With the theme of
the Jewish National Fund equals 61 years of Palestinian dispossession,
the picket will also commemorate the 61st anniversary of the
Palestinian Nakba.  The JNF and its tax-deductible status are of
particular concern to all people in Canada concerned with genuine
justice because of the infamy called "Canada Park", built by the JNF
on three destroyed Palestinian villages.

Endorsed by: Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights-UBC, Jews for a
Just Peace, CanPalnet, Boycott Israeli Apartheid Campaign.
Check out our Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=82239107995&ref=ts
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The following solidarity message was sent from Dr. Uri Davis, a
Palestinian Jew and one of the foremost scholars in Israel on the
racist and exclusionist nature of the JNF to a previous picket in
Vancouver against the JNF in April 2006.

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.

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