Letters: Dubious honour given JNF’s history

Here is my published contribution to the debate at
the University of Western Ontario on President Paul
Davenport's acceptance of an award from the
Jewish National Fund.

Ed Corrigan

University of Western Ontario President Davenport
has accepted an award from the Jewish National Fund
despite the protest of 36 faculty members.

Many individuals, including Jews, contend the
JNF is a racist organization that discriminates against
non-Jews. A letter signed by two Jewish organizations
and 34 individual Jewish signatories protests a JNF event
at Windsor Castle to commemorate the 60th anniversary
of the founding of Israel. Israeli Uri Davis’s book, Israel:
An Apartheid State details the discriminatory policies of
the JNF. Davis spoke at Western in 2005.

In 1995 an Israeli Arab couple, the Kadans, tried to lease
an apartment on land owned by the JNF. For 10 years
the JNF and Israeli Lands Authority refused to lease
this land to non-Jews. Eventually the Supreme Court
ruled state land could not be leased to Jews-only.

Unfortunately 93 per cent of the land in Israel excludes
non-Jews. The ruling caused embarrassment among Jews
worldwide. Many asked how Jews could protest against
anti-Semitism when condoning such practices in Israel?
America's Jewish Reform Movement, to which most
American Jews adhere, condemned the practice.

Former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, Meron Benvenisti,
wrote in 2006 in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz "it's well known
that the ‘national institutions’ - the Jewish Agency and
Jewish National Fund - primarily exist to enable
institutional discrimination based on ethnicity while
clearing the state from accusations that it deviates
from universal norms common to liberal democracies."

To avoid overturning the practice held to be racist the
JNF has adopted policies to circumvent the law.

Israeli Attorney General Menachem Mazuz in 2005
forbade the Jewish National Fund from issuing tenders
for Jews only. To quote Benvenisti, "And once again, a
way was found to circumvent the decision through
"land swaps," which only strengthened the JNF as a
discriminatory institution with racist policies."

The JNF continued the discriminatory practice with state
authorities refusing to enforce the ruling. The JNF launched
a campaign to reverse the decision.

In 2007 a JNF Bill was introduced to continue the discriminatory
practice, which passed on first reading 64-16. The implications
are clear. If Israel is a Jewish state then it cannot be a state for
all its citizens.

In Israel 25 per cent of the population is non-Jewish, severely
discriminated against and denied basic democratic and social
rights. The bill prompted Israel's newspaper, Ha'aretz, to
publish an editorial titled, "A racist Jewish state".

The late and prominent member of the London Jewish
community, Bernard Wolfe, who I had the privilege of knowing,
challenged the restrictive convenant that barred Jews,
Catholics and Blacks from living in the Beaches o’ Pines
resort in Grand Bend. As a result of this challenge and others,
such restrictive covenants have been declared illegal in Canada.

Would Davenport accept an award from the South African
apartheid state? Would he accept an award from an
organization that discriminated against Jews? I hope
he would not accept such a dubious honour.

Edward C. Corrigan BA, M.A., LL.B
Alumnus 1977 and 1991