Ethnic cleansers get the royal treatment

I think I may have posted on this disgraceful event already but here it is again. The UK's royal family are hosting the Jewish National Fund at a celebration of the ethnic cleansing of Israel. Here's Tony Greenstein in today's Comment is free on the whole sorry business

The British royal family have a constitutional role greater than their private prejudices. They are seen as the representatives of British society and their invitation to the JNF will inevitably be seen as giving a royal seal of approval to the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe. Britain's role in arming the Zionist militias who fell like wolves on largely defenceless villagers, while suppressing the 1936Palestinian national uprising, is infamous enough without the monarchy celebrating the consequences of Britain's perfidy.

Not that the association between royalty and the most barbaric aspects of colonialism is anything new. Today's royals may hold gala dinners in celebration of the abolition of the slave trade and Wilberforce, but when slavery was a going concern, its most ardent supporters were royalty. Elizabeth I went into business as a partner of slave trader John Hawkins, Charles II was a major shareholder in the Royal African Company and William IV, then Duke of Clarence, spoke out strongly against the abolition of the slave trade and emancipation in the House of Lords.

With the solitary exception of Princess Diana and her campaign against landmines, the royals have been associated with the most atavistic and bloody aspects of British imperial rule. From the Indian Mutiny and the Amritsar massacre to the Hola death camp in Kenya, the royals have always been associated with militarism and empire. Prince Harry's role in Afghanistan is a continuation of this inglorious history.

In 1995 an Arab couple, the Kadans, tried to buy an apartment in Katzir. For 10 years the JNF and the Israeli Lands Authority tried to prevent the leasing of "Jewish" land to non-Jews. Eventually the supreme court ruled that state land could not be sold to Jews only.

This caused huge embarrassment among Jews worldwide. How could Jews protest against anti-Semitism when condoning blatantly racist practices in Israel? America's Reform movement, to which most Jews adhere, condemned the practice unequivocally.

The JNF itself, though, was anything but embarrassed. It began a campaign to reverse the court's decision and last summer a JNF Bill was introduced into the Knesset, where it was passed on the first reading by 64-16 votes. Under the headline "KKL-JNF - Trustee for the Jewish People on its Land" it noted that:

A survey commissioned by KKL-JNF reveals that over 70% of the Jewish population in Israel opposes allocating KKL-JNF land to non-Jews, while over 80% prefer the definition of Israel as a Jewish state, rather than as the state of all its citizens.

I'm glad Tony took that detour to discuss the slave trade. I always think that that was the worst crime against humanity, worse even than the holocaust, in that it set the divisions between white Europeans and black Africans that we still grapple with today. I also think that history may one day show that the imposition of the State of Israel on the heart of the Arab world together with support for the ethnic cleansing that brought Israel its Jewish majority and support for its relentless aggression against the natives and neighbours of Palestine was the biggest crime the west committed against the third world since the slave trade. And that too for the sheer divisiveness between the colonisers and the colonised and displaced.

I just took a look at the comments to the Cif piece and the GIYUS software again seems to have gone into overdrive with zionists infesting the proceedings. The claim at the foot of the article is that comments are now closed. After the last comment it says that comments will be closed after three days but they've already closed and the piece only appeared today. What's all that about?