Around 60 people turned out Sunday to protest against the Jewish National Fund Conference, where ex-Israeli foreign minister and current Kadima party Leader Tzipi Livni was due to address the attendees.
See the full report with photos and video on Indymedia.
Livni pulled out for reasons unknown so two members of the international Solidarity Movement, who had managed to obtain tickets to the event, instead heckled the Israeli ambassador to the UK Ron Proser, calling him an “apologist for war crimes” and an “accomplice to ethnic cleansing” before being dragged out by security chanting “free Palestine”.
Two members of the International Solidarity Movement London obtained tickets to the JNF conference, which Israeli war criminal Tzipi Livni was due to address. She didn’t show up so we heckled the Israeli ambassador instead but in the meantime gained a rare insight into the inner workings of the zionist machine. Here is what we saw…
Tea, Biscuits and Ethnic Cleaning: Inside the Jewish National Fund conference
by Bob Williamson and John Goss for ISM London, 15 December 2009
This article was republished by SPSC as part of an ebook on the JNF. You can download a copy here.
The phone call came at 10.45am. Just as we were preparing to head out to execute a hastily developed plan (that, in retrospect, would never have worked) to break in and disrupt the Jewish National Funds annual conference, where war criminal Tzipi Livni was due to speak, the voice on the other end changed our plans and made everything a lot easier. “Mr ********?” “Yes?” “I’m ringing from the JNF, did you not receive your invitation to attend today’s conference?” There had been a computer error – neither us had been told our application for tickets had been successful, until right now: we were in.
Arriving at the Hendon Hall Hotel in North London at around 1.30pm, we passed a small army of private security guards and police and found ourselves in the plush confines of the hotel’s conference facility just as lunch was finishing.
Hearts racing, we surveyed the scene, this was Zionism’s heartland, surrounding us were die hard supporters of the idea of a racially exclusive Jewish state wiping historic Palestine off the map, funders of an organisation established to acquire and administer land for Jewish use only. This was a central hub of the worldwide machine driving the dispossession, suffering and pain we had both seen in occupied Palestine.
Who are these people? Where do they come from? Why are they all so old? They can’t have been much under 60 on average, maybe older even. Perhaps younger Jews are more turned off by Zionism than their parents, or perhaps they just affiliate with different organisations.
Free orange juice in hand, Jaffa branded no doubt, we walked through the smallish conference room, slightly cramped with an abundance of wide screen televisions and sound equipment amongst the 130 or so seats. Trying to get as close to the front as possible we ended up parked between a group of pensioners discussing their latest visit to a Kibbutz near Haifa and another group discussion the phenomenon of the self-hating Jew.
Studying the programme that had been included in our delegates pack (1), it became evident that Livni would speak later in the day. The event was running behind schedule and we first had to listen to Moshe Berniker, a leader from a Negev community supported by the JNF, the head of KKL-JNF (2) and fervent Zionist leader Avraham Duvdevani, the Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, a JNF video and the Israeli Ambassador to the UK Ron Prosor, as well as a panel of ‘experts’ for a question and answer session. Their mission was to sell the Israeli government and JNFs vision of bringing an extra 300,000 Jews to the Negev desert by 2020.
First up was Moshe Berniker, a tall, gurning, lump of a man who seemed uncomfortable in his pressed suit, more at home out in the fields than in an up-market London hotel. He told the history of his home community of Halulzit in the north West Negev, started by former Gush Katif settlers after Israel withdrew its settlers from the Gaza strip in 2005. Some of the residents had also been former settlers in Yamit (3), and much talk was of the “outrage” of them having already been forced to “start from scratch” three times following various withdrawals from territories illegally seized by Israel. Of course nothing was mentioned of the legal status of Gush Katif or Yamit. He talked with a messianic zeal about the land, about how they viewed where they live as their “mission”, and how the JNF had helped them settle and “reclaim” the land.
Avraham Duvdevani, affectionately introduced by the chair as ‘Duvduv’, carried on the theme. ‘Duvduv’ spoke mainly in long-winded metaphors, essentially arguing that the settlers are the unsung heroes of the state of Israel and that Israel could not exist without them. He, like Moshe before, referred to the Negev communities as settlers in settlements. Israeli citizens, living within the green line, referred to as ‘settlers’. It seemed odd at first; that word is supposed to describe another people entirely – the Israeli population living in the occupied territories. But that really is the heart of Zionism, a movement that cares not for green, blue or purple lines, that defines its citizens not by their legal status but by how far they are pushing the boundaries of the state’s existence. For Israel is not a regular western-style nation state of its citizens, it is a movement, a fluctuating entity driven by a simple, never ending desire for greater expansion and greater racial exclusivity, and whether its settlers are displacing Palestinians in the West Bank or Bedouin in the Negev, it doesn’t matter; all that matters are that they are ensuring Jewish hegemony in a larger and larger area. And ‘Duvduv’ is absolutely correct in his assertion that without these people out there at the extremities, keeping alive the myth of the brave pioneer who redeems the barren land, the whole thing would just collapse like a house of cards.
One of the main themes of the conference during the afternoon was the question of fresh water, specifically for developing settlements in the Negev. A four-way panel convened, compromising of ‘Duvduv’, Samuel Hayak, Alon Tal and an unidentified Israeli water official, to field questions on this and other issues. Some interesting points arose; Israeli desalination technology will apparently be providing over half of the country’s fresh water in 2010, and it was alleged that Israel apparently sells desalination technology to Arab states – this would be in violation of the Arab league boycott using front companies.
One person asked about the possibilities of conflict with Syria and Jordan over fresh water, and the availability of fresh water in the West Bank. This was the only question where the chair limited the response time to a minute, and the answer was in fact cut short before the panellist could address the question of Syria and Jordan. Regarding the West Bank, it was stated that since Hamas took over (presumably the ‘expert’ meant in Gaza) negotiations over water arrangements had halted and this needed to be resolved. No mention was made of the fresh water that Israel takes from the West Bank, indeed the panellist claimed the overwhelming majority of Israel’s non-desalinated water comes from the sea of Galilee, ignoring the West Banks massive underground aquifer. Nor was any mention made of the sewage that is pumped from Israel into the West Bank, although it was stated that sewage in the occupied territories was seeping into the soil and polluting Israeli water supplies.
The only other ‘difficult’ question was on the subject of the impact of the Negev development on the Bedouin population. In fairness, the chair didn’t have to read that question out (it was submitted by a member before the event), but the response was an echo from the past, straight from the colonialist’s handbook. In Alon Tal’s answer that the “Bedouins would benefit greatly from Israel’s development of this barren desert” you could hear the French in Algeria, Boers in South Africa, indeed Israelis in the 1970s talking about the newly occupied West Bank. Of course no mention was made of how just two months ago hundreds of Bedouin marched in el-Malichi el-Arakib under the banner of ‘Israel and the JNF – land robbers’, nor how decades of Israel’s ‘urbanisation’ policy, land theft and denial of building rights has decimated the Bedouins traditional lifestyle and how 300,000 Israeli Jews brought to ‘develop the area’ will deal a death blow to the community. Just ‘the natives will benefit from the development we will bring’, matter closed.
Next to speak was the Chief Rabbi. In a disconcertingly low baritone he suggested that the withdrawal from Gaza was one the most traumatic events in Israel’s recent past, but that it had been carried out with “typical moral courage and fortitude”, neglecting of course to mention how much moral courage is required to establish an asphyxiating blockade on the Gaza Strip in the wake of the withdrawal and then launch an illegal and bloody three-week attack on the civilian population a few years later. The majority of his speech taken up with bland, generalised praise for Israel – the most inventive and vibrant place in the world that god had chosen as his children’s promised land, shown by the fact that they would require miracles to live off its barren and rugged terrain. Here again was Israel the myth. Not the place, not the country, not the state, but the idea – an entity that embeds itself in the spiritual identity of its supporters. The plucky settler, the land redeemed, a nation reborn, god’s prophesy fulfilled, the all-encompassing mythology of Zionism blinds its adherents to the destruction it ravages on the indigenous population of lands under its control.
After a slick JNF promotion video, we found out that Livni would be speaking to the conference via video link. Disappointed at not having the chance to shout at the grade-A war criminal, we settled for the next speaker, Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor. About 30 seconds into his talk one of us jumped up and addressed him as an “apologist for war crimes” and an “accomplice to ethnic cleansing”, calling the crowd a bunch of racists and generally heckling for about 20 seconds before being dragged out by security chanting “Free, Free Palestine”. The other, sensing that he had been rumbled, immediately did the same, getting punched and kicked by a member of the progressively more irate crowd as he was being dragged out by security. The cops took our details but thankfully neither of us was arrested.
Then it was time to hit the pub to watch the Arsenal match, job done.
(1) PDFs of materials gained from the day can be found at the links below. Most of its quite dull but there are some items of note in the JNF newsletter, notably the admission that Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon could not attend the last JNF meeting for fear of war crimes arrest. How a so-called peaceful organization can continue to invite such guests without asking itself difficult questions is astonishing. Moreover, it is a huge tribute to the lawyers and activists that continue to work on these cases that these war criminals know they cannot take the risk of visiting the UK.
(2) The KKL is a subsidiary of the JNF that facilitates people who wish to leave money in their wills to charity.
(3) Former Israeli settlement in the Sinai before Israel withdrew from the occupied Sinai in exchange for a peace treaty with Egypt in 1978.