Ruby Wax Supports Racist Organisation

Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign Issued: 24 March 2004

Ruby Wax will be attending the Jewish National Fund dinner this coming Sunday evening (March 28th) at the Glasgow Hilton.

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) is an extremist racist organisation which promotes the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Palestinians from their land.

The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign with other human rights campaigns is calling for a huge demonstration at the Glasgow Hilton.

The JNF has frequently broken the law by dispossessing peasant cultivators from their customary lands. Most of the lands acquired by the JNF since 1948 are lands which belonged to the refugees forced to flee in 1948 or lands expropriated by the government from Arab citizens. Once acquired by the JNF, land becomes an inalienable part of the Jewish national heritage — that is, it may not be sold or leased to non-Jews.

The JNF has the right of first refusal when any public lands not owned by it outright are sold or transferred. The JNF has exclusive responsibility for land development. Non-Jews, regardless of their citizenship status, are not eligible for JNF services. This means they cannot lease or sublease JNF-owned lands and cannot work as hired laborers on these lands.

The JNF supports the occupation and helps to finance the illegal settlements in the territories. Since 1978 most JNF activities have been involved in acquiring and developing land for Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. The JNF has collaborated with the Israeli authorities in expropriating Palestinian lands, razing cultivated fields and bulldozing orchards, and denying equal access to water sources.

In December of 1998, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, under the aegis of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, issued a scathing report on Israel’s violations of its obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in both Israel and the territories it still occupies.

The magnitude and extent of this discrimination is further underlined by Israeli practices with regard to land ownership as evidenced in the activities of the World Zionist Organization/Jewish Agency. Although these organizations are chartered under private law, the Government of Israel works collaboratively with them, facilitating their activities and often exercising a decisive influence on their policies. As stated in the UN report, "the Committee notes with grave concern that the Status Law of 1952 authorizes the World Zionist Organization/Jewish Agency and its subsidiaries, including the Jewish National Fund, to control most of the land in Israel, since these institutions are chartered to benefit Jews exclusively."

The activities of these groups with regard to the land are particularly troubling. The Committee noted that "large-scale and systematic confiscation of Palestinian land and property by the State and the transfer of that property to these agencies constitute an institutionalized form of discrimination because these agencies by definition would deny the use of these properties to non-Jews. Thus, these practices constitute a breach of Israel’s obligations under the Covenant."