Racist fundraisers face falling support
By Robert Burns
27 June 2009
For large parts of last Tuesday’s perfect day for the outdoors, the fairways and greens at Bonnyton Golf Course near Eaglesham were empty. Unofficial police reports confirmed the obvious - numbers were down, mainly due to the Gaza massacres but possibly due also to noisy protests in previous years that spoiled at least part of the players’ outing in support of ethnic cleansing in Palestine.
The evidence before our eyes was confirmed by Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign protesters from the 2008 JNF golf fund-raiser for the Jewish National Fund, an organisation that raises funds for projects in Israel that promote the ‘Judaisation’ of areas of Israel that the Israeli Government believes has too many Arabs.
Ex-US President Jimmy Carter recently said that ‘Palestinians are treated like animals’ and the JNF is one of the organisations here that builds the cages. The JNF is nakedly racist: non-Jews may not under any circumstances lease or benefit from JNF-owned and controlled land, which amounts to over 90% of 1948-67 Israel. (Since Israel is constantly expanding, we need to specify a time for any mention of Israel’s size.)
The Bonnyton golf game was to raise funds for a project in the Galilee, where the Zionist ethnic cleansing of 1948 was only partly successful, leaving behind Palestinian communities inside Israel. The JNF is funding the construction of the Gazit reservoir there. Israel uses its control of water to divert this precious resource to Jewish-only settlements and away from Palestinian farms and communities.
An Israeli Government project is currently under way to ‘Judaise’ the Galilee in order to neutralise a ‘demographic threat’ of too many Arabs living there. The JNF fundraisers are a UK contribution to this racist campaign. It is a scandal that the JNF in Scotland enjoys charitable status under its Patrons Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg. Charitable status means that we are all subsidising the racist campaign against the Palestinians of the Galilee.
The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign asks for your support in their campaign to remove charitable status from the racist JNF.
Please help: campaign@scottishpsc.org.uk