Colin Powell is coming to Manchester

Colin Powell is coming to the Manchester Hilton to attend a Jewish National Fund (JNF) Fundraising Gala Dinner on Tuesday 17th January.

JNF UK has Colin Powell as their special guest at their fundraising dinners in January 2006. As well as the Manchester event he will be at the London Park Lane Hotel on Sunday Jan 15th and the Glasgow Hilton on Monday Jan 16th from 5.00pm onwards.

There are plenty of reasons to object to Powell’s presence in the city, but what about the Jewish National Front - ehm - Fund?

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) is one of the principle components of Israel's discriminatory system of land administration. The JNF was founded in 1901 to further the political project of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. It’s constitution requires the JNF to benefit Jews exclusively. It therefore promotes and implements policies that discriminate against the Palestinian population of Israel.

The JNF is a quasi-official organization of the Israeli state that exists to raise funds for the acquisition and development of land for Jewish settlement. As such, it provides one of the main mechanisms through which Israel's system of ethnic cleansing and discrimination is enforced. Indeed, around 2/3 of JNF land was actually stolen from Palestinian refugees. The JNF owns around 14% of the land in Israel, and is prohibited by its constitution from selling or leasing this land to Arabs. Through its 50% representation on the council of the Israel Lands Administration (ILA), the JNF has a substantial influence over more than 90% of the land in Israel.

Since 1967, the JNF has been active through its subsidiary Hemnutah Ltd. in purchasing land in the occupied Palestinian territories for Jewish settlement. Such settlement violates numerous United Nations resolutions and the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention relating to the protection of civilian societies under occupation. Settlement construction in the occupied territories represents a major obstacle to the peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The JNF states publicly that no Arabs may live on, or buy back any land in Israel once the JNF has purchased it. The JNF is a major enforcer of apartheid inside Israel. "Today, the JNF tractor follows in the wake of the Army tank. Areas which have been annexed to Israel as a result of the Six Day War are being put under the plough. The preparation of this land is the primary task of the JNF."

While he was Secretary of State, Colin Powell instructed US Embassies in the Middle East to stop using the phrase "Occupied Territories" and to use only the militant Zionist phrase "Disputed Territories". According to Powell and Sharon, 78% of historic Palestine is undisputed Zionist territory. Implicit in Powell’s refusal to use the phrase "Occupied Territories" is a commitment to the total violation of any minimum Palestinian human or national rights in the 22% asked for by the Palestinian leadership.

Now Powell is fund-raising for the JNF.

The JNF is a militantly racist organisation which:
- refuses to allow Arabs to live on its land;
- develops illegal Jewish-only settlements in the territories conquered and occupied since 1967;
- controls land stolen from ethnically-cleansed Palestinians;
- opposes all attempts by human rights groups to challenge its policies;
- prohibits by open statute the sale of land to non-Jews.

The JNF UK:
- has funded large amounts of discriminatory land purchases in Israel;
- is funding a new Jewish-only settlement in an area proposed to form a part of a future Palestinian state;
- distributes pro-Israeli propaganda masquerading as educational material;
- features on its website a map of Israel stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River;
- gets financial support from every British taxpayer and has charity status in the UK.


The JNF Charitable Trust funds and supports the development of “British Park”, a forested recreational area in central Israel. This park is built on and around the remains of Palestinian villages, including Ajjur and Zakariya. According to the historian Walid Khalidi, the Palestinians who used to occupy this land were forcibly removed in 1948 and became refugees or internally-displaced persons. The removal of the Palestinians from their land constitutes a breach of human rights under International Law. The demolition of civilian homes; the denial of the right of the civilian inhabitants to the ownership of their properties and to return to the area where their homes once stood, and the arbitrary alteration of the usage of the properties represent gross violations of United Nations resolutions relevant to the question of Palestine and constitute war crimes under international law.

Shall we give Powell the welcome he deserves when he comes to Manchester?