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Protest against the Jewish National Fund and Colin Powell.

Sarah Anderson - Secretary of Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign | 18.12.2005 16:10 | Anti-militarism | Globalisation | Repression

Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign would like to announce a protest against the Jewish National Fund and Colin Powell to be held outside the JNF charity dinner at the Glasgow Hilton on 16th January 2006 from 5pm onwards. After the demonstration outside the Hilton there will be a public meeting where two Palestinians will speak by telephone to people attending and will discuss how the JNF have affected, and often destroyed, their lives and property.

Our goals for the protest are to raise public awareness on the JNF, campaign against their ongoing ethnic cleansing in Palestine and to deprive them of their charity status in the United Kingdom.
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. Its 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 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.
If you would like further information, please visit the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign website at  http://www.scottishpsc.org.uk/index.html, or alternatively e-mail  secretary@scottishpsc.org.uk

Sarah Anderson - Secretary of Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign
- e-mail: essbee@essbee.me.uk
- Homepage: http://www.scottishpsc.org.uk


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