Tzipi Livni, current leader ofIsrael ’sKadima party, will be a star of the JNF 13 December conference, Creating A New Future For Israel in the Negev. Livni was constantly on our screens during last year’s bombing ofGaza , a chief apologistof the slaughter.  Shamelessly, she had said: “There is nohumanitarian crisis in Gaza .”[1]

Livni’s brutality has atradition.  Her parents were prominent members of the terroristorganisation Irgun – responsible for the 1946 bombing of theKing David Hotel inJerusalem . Ninety-one peoplewere killed: including 41 Arabs, 28 British, and 17 Jews. The Irgun announcedthat it would mourn Jewish victims, not, British ones [2]; there was not evenmention of the Arab dead.

In this one action the Zionists had killed moreJewish people than all the rockets ever fired fromGaza to Sderot.  But during lastyear’s onslaught Livni’s concern was for Sderot: “It isunbearable. Children cannot go to school, and the residents cannot live theirlives” [3]

The JNF conference that Livni willgrace is part and parcel of the ethnic cleansing of the Negev Bedouinpeople.  Discriminatory laws and practices have forced tens of thousandsto live under constant threat of seeing their homes demolished and theircommunities torn apart.[4]  Hundreds of Bedouin and Israeli Jewshave protested the state’s refusal to recognise Bedouin villages,depriving them of water, and the JNF’s theft of Bedouin land. [5]

The JNF calls itself “Israel 'sleading humanitarian and environmental Charity”.  PrimeMinister Gordon Brown and leader of the opposition, David Cameron bothsponsor the JNF. Both refuse to condemn either JNF’s role in ethniccleansing [6] or Israeli war crimes in Gaza and in general.

The JNF has charitable status inover 50 countries, including inBritain .  But it is apara-statal organisation whose aims are far from charitable.  With theIsraeli government’s Lands Administration, JNF controls 93% of the landin Israel ,for Jewish people only, till the end of time.  

The JNF plays a central role in theongoing colonization of Palestine ,Israeli apartheid and violent occupation – crimes against humanity. Theimmediate aim of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN),working with the Palestinian BDS Committee and others, is to expose the JNF,and end its charitable status. [7]

Jewish and other organisations willprotest Livni and the conference, and call for the principle of universaljurisdiction to apply, and that for her role in the onslaught onLebanon in 2006 as well asGaza in 2008/9, she is indicted for warcrimes and crimes against humanity.

1. Ha’aretz, 5 January 2009, www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1052302.html

2. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/126929

3. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3403164,00.html

4. www.hrw.org/en/node/62284/section/2 

5. http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/press_releases/1254607624

6. For background, Tony Greenstein,Comment is Free, Guardian, 25 March 2008, www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/25/israelsroyalwelcome

7. See the Call for anInternational Campaign against the JNF, www.ijsn.net/390/