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"All
Canadian Tax
Payers are Complicit in Israeli War Crime"
Uri Davis: Apartheid
Israel and the Jewish National Fund Report of a Lecture by
Dr. Davis at Carleton
University, Sept. 24, 2004
See
comments
from Dr. Ismail
Zayid below
this article
September 30,
2004
By YayaCanada
Uri Davis is a self-described citizen of the State of Israel, but if
you were to ask him from what country he comes he would say
Palestine. In fact, he calls himself an "anti-Zionist Palestinian
Jew", and his definition of Palestine includes both the area known as
the State of Israel, and the areas euphemistically termed the "disputed
territories".
His reasons for this can be found in this
interview and more information about his Canada speaking tour can
be found here.
 There
may be something of a zealot lurking beneath the calm, methodical
exterior Dr. Davis presented to the audience that gathered to hear him
speak on September 24th at Carleton
University - but he is hardly a fanatic.
He spoke simply and directly, with
one clear objective: to make Canadians aware that as long as the Jewish
National Fund is allowed to give tax deductible receipts to donors, we
are all - through "the common weal" - complicit in a war crime; that
is, the
ethnic cleansing of the Arab population from what is now known as
Israel.
"This is Yom Kippur," said Dr. Davis at the outset, "and I deliberately
did not ask for the date of this lecture to be changed. I would
rather be here giving this address than in a synagogue because I have
an objection to the kind of fund raising that takes place there,
especially on Yom Kippur."
As a proponent of the separation of state and religion, the kind of
political fund raising that is standard practice in most western
synagogues is to Uri Davis "wholly unacceptable".
It was the Jewish National Fund that built Canada Park which not only
covers razed Arab villages but extends into the territories occupied
since the 1967 war.
Canada Park is proud that it incorporates the old
village of Emmaus, the place where Jesus is said in the Bible to have
revealed himself to his disciples after his resurrection from the
tomb. But no one wants to admit that
it is built over the ruins of three Arab villages, Amwas, Yalu,
and Beit Nuba, from which the residents were forcibly expelled during
the 1967 war.
JNF officials insist that the parts of the park funded by Canadian
money do not include those villages or areas that extend into the
"disputed territories", yet signs erected at the
park indicate otherwise.
For instance, one of the signs commemorates a
Canadian family named Tannenbaum for having contributed to "Valley
of the Springs". When interviewed by the CBC, a son representing
the family
said that their money did not go to any specific section of the park,
but when told of the inscription on the sign he had to admit it sounded
quite
specific.
The State of Israel, says Dr. Davis, is the only member state of the
United Nations that cultivates and insists on an apartheid regime; that
is, discrimination between Jew and non-Jew enforced by law and abetted
by "political Zionism in the name of 'national identity' - a mixture of
tribalism, nationalism, religion, and a large portion of 'colonial
greed'."
In apartheid South
Africa, 87% of all property was reserved in law for
whites only. The State of Israel reserves 93% of all property inside
the
green line for Jews only.
"The core issues",
says Dr. Davis, "are control of the land and the
subsoil, which in the case of South Africa contained precious
minerals. In Palestine, the most precious subsoil commodity is
water.
"But it is easier for the State of Israel to present itself as the only
democracy in the Middle East because of the absence of 'petty
apartheid' legislation, such as separate beaches, water fountains and
toilets."
Some Zionists are not political, not Sharonists; their Zionism is more
ritualistic in nature, and they tend to be active in supporting the
rights of Palestinians. They believe that the security of all
parties can be guaranteed only by the equality of all
citizens.
But mainstream Zionism insists that, in the name of national liberation
of the Jewish people, ethnic cleansing is a necessary evil. "This
kind of thinking is obscene," says Dr. Davis emphatically. "It is
fascism, no matter what other name it is given, and it should not be
allowed to go unchallenged."
To demonstrate the human impact of the ethnic cleansing that made room
for the State of Israel, the audience was shown a CBC
film entitled
Canada Park, that included comments from Yitzhak Rabin, IDF Chief
of
Staff during the 1967 war; Uri Avnery, a well-known journalist
who often writes for the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz; Ismail Zayid, a
Canadian university professor whose family lived in one of the villages
now covered by Canada Park; and a man named Amos Keenan who was in the
Israeli military, and was present at the time the villages were
evacuated.
Yitzhak
Rabin said that he issued the order for the evacuation of the
villages because it was necessary to remove any places where Egyptian
soldiers could hide and attack. He acknowledged that the transfer
of civilians was and is illegal, but that he had been prepared to issue
any order that was needed to defend Israel. Anyway, he believed
that most of the people had "run away" by the time Israeli soldiers
arrived.
Rabin insisted it was necessary for the protection of Israel to remove
the inhabitants of the three villages covered by Canada Park.
"[Israel] will never give up that land", he said. "Would Canada
allow an artery from Toronto to Ottawa to be threatened by an
enemy? Neither would Israel allow an artery from Tel Aviv to
Jerusalem to be threatened," Rabin concluded.
The analogy was incorrect, of course, as Uri Davis later pointed
out. "This is an example of the 'structured amnesia' that exists
among Israelis who imagine that Jerusalem is the capital of the State
of Israel."
Amos Keenan recalled finding residents still in the villages, including
old women
and children, and the children cried and called out for water.
"Some soldiers cried as we
drove them out; they wandered like lost cattle; they died on the road,"
said Keenan. "There was no written order. It was taken for
granted that the people were to be expelled. There wasn't a shot
fired; the Israelis entered as if on
parade."
Keenan went on to say, "It is stupid of Canadians to allow a park to be
named after them on disputed territory."
Uri Avnery had no qualms in saying that Canada Park hides a war
crime. He concluded that Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan wanted
to straighten the border, and removing the Arab population in the area
would facilitate that.
In the CBC film, a Palestinian was shown visiting his family's burial
plot, hidden in the shrubbery of Canada park. Remnants of houses
were visible in other parts of the park.
Ismail
Zayid,
born in Beit Nuba, held in his hand the key to his family's home that
his parents had carried away with them, thinking they would only have
to be away a few days until it was safe to return home. After all
this time, it causes him anguish to even speak of that time.
"Canada Park is entirely on occupied territory", said Dr. Davis when
the film had ended, in spite of the JNF's protestations that they
funded no projects beyond the 1967 border line. "Perhaps,
technically, the JNF is telling a partial truth, since a subsidiary
company very likely took charge of the funding in question."
It was at this point in Dr. Davis' lecture that something quite bizarre
occurred. A male voice in the audience began to override that of
Dr. Davis. Then suddenly a scuffle broke out. I turned to
look just as a man took a swing at a younger man who was holding a cell
phone. Other men quickly intervened, and the younger man
proceeded, unharmed, to the front of the auditorium - along with his
young companion who was dressed in suit and tie, and wearing a yarmulke
as if he had got lost on his way to synagogue - and continued with the
cell phone conversation, with no attempt to lower his voice, for at
least a couple of minutes until the call ended, and then the two left
the hall.
I couldn't believe my eyes and ears! These two young men
unabashedly disrupted the lecture, and not one soul in the auditorium,
other than the man who had been prevented, attempted to stop or even
admonish them. In fact, Dr. Davis continued speaking as if they did not
exist, and the audience, including myself, did its best to focus on
what he was saying.
What he was saying was that Canadians could help end Israeli apartheid,
but it would take years of persistent small efforts, just as the South
African apartheid had, and the Berlin wall had. For instance,
Ottawans could begin by convincing their mayor to decline the JNF's
invitation to attend as Honorary Chair its annual Negev dinner taking
place in November.
Then a question period began with the first question being: If Israel
considers itself a democracy, how can the majority of its people allow
the apartheid to continue?
"The short answer is colonial greed", replied Davis. "The long
answer is that even a pauper Jew in Israel has a better standard of
living than the people living in refugee camps." He went on to
say that to be considered a good Jew one must be pro Political Zionism;
to be against it is to be anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic.
"Democracy does not consist of majority rule alone", he
continued. "Decisions made must be in accord with the Declaration
of Human Rights."
"How can pro Palestine students operate in universities that want to
shut them down, and put them on probation", asked a young woman from
Ottawa University. "That should not be the case," said Dr. Davis,
"but in such a case one must try to make the best of a bad situation.
Try to get pro-Israel students to occupy the same platform, and keep a
dialogue going."
"Shouldn't Israel admit it made a huge mistake to think it could do
what it has done to Palestine's original inhabitants without
consequence?" the student continued. "Yes", replied Davis, "just
as South Africa needed to acknowledge its mistake and take steps to
correct it."
One questioner, quoting Noam Chomsky, said that the conflict was not
happening in a vacuum; that there is a wide ranging conflict between
Law and Practice. Would Dr. Davis comment on Imperialism.
"You invite me to swim an ocean," Davis replied. "You are asking
why the United States would underwrite Israeli policy to the tune of $3
billion annually. Nixon said flatly that it was cheaper than
maintaining the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean."
"The answer to imperialism is international solidarity against it",
Davis continued, at which point he modestly recommended a book on which
he had collaborated, "The Jewish
National Fund" as one resource to help build such a solidarity
movement.
"Is a culture of fear deliberately being cultivated to control society
as in the book "1984", asked a young woman. To which Davis
replied that there are always good reasons to fear that an abused party
will seek reparation by legal or illegal means.
He added that "security of the privileged is anchored in colonial
greed, and is not the same as security of the people, but even a Jewish
pauper in Israel will support security."
Given time, suggested a member of the audience, might not Israel become
as good a place to live as Canada, a country that also displaced its
indigenous people?
"Perhaps the Nazis made a mistake by not getting rid of all Jews",
replied Dr. Davis, which caused yours truly and perhaps a few others to
gasp in shock.
But I see his meaning, I think. Palestine, too, might be a nice
place to live if the Jews had been annihilated, but that would not have
been any more right than what happened to Canada's native peoples or
what is still happening to the Palestinian people.
"The only thing that should ever happen," said Davis, "is that people
have regard for common humanity, that they adhere to the Declaration of
Human Rights, and do what is decent and good! I can only say that
when atrocities are perpetrated in my name, I will do my best to see it
does not happen."
"Canada got better only because the people demanded it", said a member
of the audience, who went on to say that there is a much stronger
movement in the U.K. than in Canada right now that advocates boycotts
and sanctions against Israel. Did Dr. Davis have any suggestions
for what Canada's next step might be to create a broader movement of
its own?
Spend time researching Canadian investments and urge divestment, was
the answer. Boycott scientific exchanges, and cultural and sports
exchanges. A movement like that, said Davis, would echo
throughout Canada - but it must be done with care and accuracy, he
stressed.
Apartheid language must be examined carefully, he said. For
instance, pro-Israel people will say that nobody can purchase land in
Israel, whether Jew or not, so how can they be accused of
discriminating against non-Jews owning property? The fact is that
Jews are allowed long term leaseholds up to 49 years, while non-Jews
are allowed only up to 3 years.
"It is important", said Dr. Davis, "to be razor blade accurate!"
"The barrier in any discussion always arises at the word 'terrorist'",
said another voice from the audience. How could that be dealt
with?
"First," says Davis, "people are not born terrorists, they are made
terrorists. Second, the issue of terrorism is a cover, but it can
be exposed.
"If a woman is abused for years by her husband, but feels she has no
recourse because of her fear for her children, and then finally snaps
and murders her husband, a court will always take into account the
mitigating circumstances.
"The strict definition of a terrorist is one who causes direct violence
against a civilian population, but this definition must be used in
proper context. The first terrorist is not the suicide bomber, but his
or her name could be appended at the bottom of a list of terrorists
that includes Bush and Sharon."
As the lecture ended, the audience rose to its feet and applauded at
some length. People seemed reluctant to leave, and those who
hadn't surrounded Dr. Davis to express their appreciation gathered in
small, animated discussion groups.
Yours truly went home and composed a second letter to Mayor Chiarelli
advising him to stay away from the JNF Negev dinner.
Uri Davis, an Israeli
anthropologist and fighter for equality and human rights, is a Jewish
citizen of Israel who describes himself as a Palestinian. He is best
known for his book - Israel: An Apartheid State (1987, Zed Books),
which analyses Israeli legislation and shows that Israel is a state
that offers first-class rights to only a subset of its citizenry. Davis
has written and edited 15 books and numerous articles on the economy,
politics, and legal system in Israel and Palestine. He is an Honorary
Research Fellow at the Institute for Middle Eastern & Islamic
Studies at University of Durham, and at the Institute of Arab &
Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. He is Chairman of Al-Beit,
the Association for the Defence of Human Rights in Israel; Founder
Member of the Movement Against Israeli Apartheid in Palestine (MAIAP);
and an Observer-Member of the Palestine National Council. Dr. Uri Davis
is now promoting his newest book, Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for
the Struggle Within (2003, Zed Books).
The information below is from the Canadian
Revenue
Agency website.
Minister of National Revenue John McCallum
Jewish National Fund
They describe themselves as follows on CRA website:
THE CHARITY EXISTS TO PROVIDE, ENLARGE AND ADMINISTER
A FUND
MADE UP OF VOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF CANADA
AND OTHERS TO BE USED FOR CHARITABLE PURPOSES.
(figures are for their 01/02 return)
All the funds that they collect are spent in "the
Middle
East".
Total Tax Receipted Gifts 4,251,016
Total funds raised in Canada $7,663,496
Total expenditures outside Canada $3,914,000
Related:
Canada Park
Project - Flashback for the Future
CBC:
Canada and the Fight Against Apartheid
For almost 50 years, South Africa was ruled by apartheid — a
brutal system of racial separation that kept the nation's black
majority in poverty while a white minority held the wealth and power.
As unrest grew, South Africa seemed destined for a bloodbath. Canada —
like many nations — was slow to react but, by the 1980s, assumed a
leading role in forcing economic sanctions against South Africa.
Canadian business people, activists and clergy also played parts in
bringing about all-race elections in 1994, and a surprisingly peaceful
end to apartheid.
Websters:
Palestinian Exodus
The Palestinian Exodus is the name given to the refugee
flight of some
520,000 (Israeli estimate) to 1,000,000 (Arab estimate) Arabs during
the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, called the Nakba by Palestinians. They fled
from their homes in what was then known as Palestine and would become
the State of Israel to other parts of Palestine or to neighbouring
countries. Despite international pressure, Israel forebade them to
return to their homes after the war and either destroyed their property
or expropriated it to Israeli Jews. Today the original refugees and
their descendants amount to some 5.5 - 6.5 million
Map
showing location
of Canada Park (#16) drawn by a Canadian Jewish couple who visited
Israel
The following and other comments can be found here: Canada
Park, a 7,500 acre recreational area covered with
pine forests,
is actually built inside the former no mans land that was part of the
border in this area. It's legal status is debatable at best, as it was
built on land of a Palestinian village - Beit Nuba - which was leveled
to the ground by Israeli forces following the Six Day War for "security
reasons".
Dr. Ismail Zayid comments
below on the accuracy of the map
top
Comments
from Dr. Ismail Zayid:
Thank you for publishing Dr. Davis' lecture, a most valuable document
from a man of courage and integrity.
The map sketched to show Canada park, labelled # 16, appears to show
the park outside the Latrun Salient, which is part of the West Bank and
was occupied in June 1967. In fact Canada Park is entirely in the
territories occupied in 1967, and built on the ruins of Imwas [Emmaus]
and neighbouring villages of Yalu and Beit Nuba.
The three villages were systematically dynamited and bulldozed, on the
direct orders of Yitzhak Rabin, immediately after occupation on June
6,1967, without a shot being fired. Their inhabitants, approximately
12-14,000, were expelled, as their homes were demolished.
In the the village of Beit Nuba alone, 18 disabled old men and women,
including my mother's uncle, were buried alive under the rubble of
their homes because they could not get out quickly enough while the
soldiers were dynamiting their homes.
The fable, created by Israel, that the Palestinian refugees left at the
orders broadcast by their leaders is baseless. Erskine Childers
examined all the British and American monitoring records of all Middle
East broadcasts throughout 1948 and reported:
"There was not a single order or appeal or suggestion about evacuation
from Palestine from any Arab radio station, inside or ouside Palestine,
in 1948. There is repeated monitored record of Arab appeals even flat
orders, to civilians of Palestine to stay put." {The Spectator, May
12,1961.}
The policy of massacres, to drive the Palestinians out, was
complemented by a campaign of psychological warfare, initiating terror
to force the Palestinians to flee. Leo Heiman, Israeli army reserve
officer, who fought in 1948, reported in Marine Corp Gazette, June 1964:
" As uncontrolled panic spread throughout all Arab quarters, the
Israelis brought jeeps with loudspeakers which broadcast recorded
'horror sounds'. These included shrieks, wails and anguished moans of
Arab women, the wail of sirens and the clang of fire alarm bells,
interrupted by a sepulchral voice calling out in Arabic: " Save your
souls all ye faithful; the Jews are using poison gas and atomic
weapons. Run for your lives in the name of Allah."
Yigal
Allon played also a significant role in the psychological warfare
to empty the Galilee {see the statement in my lecture at
McGill University included in my website}.
Thank you for your interest.
Ismail Zayid,MD.
YYC notes -
Yigal Allon was a founder of the Palmach, an elite
forces
unit established in 1941:
"The Palmach launched pre-emptive
strikes into Syrian and Lebanese territory, frequently sending members fluent in Arabic in Arab dress into
Syria and Lebanon to sabotage and scout targets. The Palmach grew to 12
companies. Palmach leaders
included Yigal Allon, Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, Haim Bar-Lev, Uzi
Narkiss and Ezer Weizman."
Source: Jewish
Virtual Library
yayacanada
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