So what does the Jewish Nakba mean to you?

...Had the Arabs won the 1948 war, members of Zochrot, along with all the Jews of Israel, would surely have ended up at the bottom of the Mediterranean sea. And what did Zochrot think about the Jewish Nakba, I asked — the 870,000 Jewish refugees driven and dispossessed from Arab countries?

Lyn Julius..
Times of Israel..
04 May '15..

The merry month of May is upon us, and thoughts on the anti-Zionist lunatic fringe turn to Nakba Day on May 14. Time for the Zochrot organization to plan their annual stunt in memory of the ‘catastrophe’ or Nakba, of the flight of 600,000 Palestinian Arabs and the creation of Israel 67 years ago.

This year activists are organizing a ‘Public Apology Ceremony‘, funded by EU money and the lucre of earnest but misguided churches and NGOs, to commemorate the Nakba at the former site of the village of Lubya, near Tiberias. The organization says that the ceremony is to apologize for Israel planting trees in the area.

Last year they held a conference at Tel Aviv University, the putative site of the ruined Arab village of Sheikh Munis. There Zochrot laid out their ugly vision of what ‘the right of return’ for Palestinian Arabs to what is now Israel would mean. It was, in anybody’s book, a recipe for bloodshed and mayhem.

Zochrot have produced a short video clip to promote their mission: “So wait a moment, what is the Nakba?” Unsuspecting Israelis strolling on the Tel Aviv tayelet are quizzed on what the Nakba means to them.

I don’t know what is more worrying. The appalling ignorance of the Israeli public in this video — or the fact that Zochrot are asking the question in the first place.

Lyn Julius - When Return is a Recipe for Mayhem

...When Levana Zamir of the Association of Jews from Egypt in Israel suggested cooperation to fight for the rights of both sets of refugees, the Zochrot conference speakers at first expressed public enthusiasm. In the coffee break, however, they mumbled their excuses: no cooperation would be forthcoming. One assumes they would rather stick to their sickening recipe for mayhem and strife.

Lyn Julius..
Times of Israel..
06 October '13..

Last week, a ghoulish spectacle played itself out in Ramat Aviv. On the supposed site of the Arab village of Sheikh Munis, abandoned in 1948, a conference ‘realising the return’ of Palestinian refugees, organised by the radical-left organisation Zochrot, planned the minutiae of the demise of the Jewish state. Under the guise of securing justice for Palestinian refugees (scandalously – funded by European governments – but that’s another story), conference speaker after speaker charted the systematic ‘decolonization’ of Jewish Israel.

One can picture Arab families shattering the demure chatter in the cafes in North Tel Aviv, trudging through the streets loudly demanding back homes now lived in by Israeli Jews. The ‘Israeli occupiers’ would have the right to decide to leave their homes or stay and pay the ‘Palestinian refugee owner’ the ‘market value’ of their house. The ‘Palestinian refugee owner’ would decide between recovering ‘his’ house or taking the money, with all that entailed. The children of the Israeli ‘occupiers’ would not be allowed to inherit their homes.

How gracious. This is what the ‘one state solution’ would look like: Arabs reclaiming rights ‘misappropriated’ by the Jews.

Lest you dismiss all this talk of Return as the fantasies of a tiny minority of Israeli anarchists, let me tell you the unpalatable truth: a majority of Palestinians polled in 2011 – 89.5 percent – support a ‘right of return’ to Israel proper.

Zochrot did not for a moment pause to ask itself whether the Palestinians had a legal ‘right of return’. It took such a right for granted.

When "peacemakers" incite to conflict they make murder respectable.

...By dressing up as “peacemakers” the Christian aid societies supporting Israel’s demise bear truth to George Orwell who wrote, “Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

A protester from the World Council
of Churches demonstrates with
Women in Black in Jerusalem. 
Photo: Seth J. Frantzman

Yitzhak Santis..
Op-Ed Contributor/Post..
30 September '13..

It has become axiomatic in some circles that the sole cause of the Arab- Israeli conflict is Israel, by which is really meant Israel’s existence. For many holding this view the “solution” is a single “binational” state as opposed to the two-state solution favored by the international community. These “one state” proponents also insist on a “right of return” for 1948 Palestinian refugees and their millions of descendants, amounting to a call for the elimination of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

A conference promoting this vision, funded mostly by Protestant and Catholic groups, is being held this week in Tel Aviv. These Christian groups are themselves largely funded by European governments that officially support the two-state solution. The conference, then, undermines these governments’ own policies.

The event, “From Truth to Redress: Realizing the Return of Palestinian Refugees,” is organized by Zochrot, a tiny Israeli fringe group.

Israeli one-state advocates are so few that they have neither a constituency nor influence in Israel. For Zochrot, foreign funding is their lifeline; the conference was “made possible thanks to the generous support of: Misereor, Christian Aid, HEKS-EPER, CCFD, Finn Church Aid, Broederlijk Delen, AFSC, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Mennonite Central Committee, Trócaire, St. Het Solidariteitsfonds, Oxfam GB and private donors.”

NGO Monitor wrote each of the sponsors, and we received several replies.

France’s CCFD and Germany’s Misereor (both Catholic) wrote identical messages – including the same grammatical mistakes. They affirmed they are a “funding partner of Zochrot” and declared “refugee issues and refugee rights all over the world are of utmost importance to us.” But regarding funding they opted for fogginess: “Our privacy policies do not allow to disclose (sic) the amounts given to recipients.”

Belgium’s Broederlijk Delen, also Catholic, wrote a similar response: “We support the work of Zochrot as we believe refugee rights are important in any context and should be openly discussed.”

But regarding funding, they also chose murkiness: “With regard to details on funding, we wish to respect our partners’ privacy.”

What seems to be lost on these Christian groups is they are supported by public funds.

Cloaking the destruction of Israel in an innocuous-sounding title

...Imagine for a moment if a Zochrot-style conference were held in Baghdad, where Jews, who numbered 80,000, were once the largest single ethnic group.

Lyn Julius..
Times of Israel..
5 September '13..

A conference which would certainly trouble the leafy quiet of the prosperous neighbourhood of Ramat Aviv looks likely to go ahead, despite reports that it has been cancelled.

The conference, which is due to be held on 29 and 30 September, is called ‘From truth to redress’. In fact the innocuous-sounding title cloaks in human rights terminology the conference’s real agenda: the destruction of Israel through the ‘realisation of the right of return of Palestinian refugees’.

To most right-thinking Israelis, the ‘right of return’ of millions of Arab ‘refugees’ is a euphemism for the demise of Israel by demographic means. The Zionist group Im Tirzu and Knesset Likud MK Ofir Akunis have been pressing for the conference’s cancellation.

The speakers are a roll-call of the most hard-core of hard-core pro-Palestinian activists from Britain, the US and Israel itself. They are lawyers, human rights activists and academics in the forefront of the BDS (boycott) and Israel Apartheid movements. One speaker, Dr Salman Abu Sitta, is a founder of the Palestine Return Centre – a Hamas front.

It is no accident that the organisers, the Israeli NGO Zochrot, have deliberately chosen to hold their conference in Ramat Aviv: the supposed site of “Al-Shaykh Muwannis” (Sheikh Munis), an Arab village abandoned by its 2,000 inhabitants in 1948. To drive home the delicious irony, Zochrot chose as the conference venue the Eretz Israel Museum. What could be more provocative than a Nakba conference calling for the demise of Israel, at its Zionist heart ?

Who's demonizing who?

Ben-Dror Yemini
Op-Ed Contributor/JPost
07 February '10

The New Israel Fund is angry. It thinks that it is okay to cooperate with the Goldstone commission, even though it was formed by an automatic majority of the benighted countries that control the UN Human Rights Council. The NIF thinks it is okay that Israel cooperate with the commission, even though there is no country in the free world that supported its formation. It thinks it is ok to disseminate unsubstantial accusations against Israel. It thinks it is okay to take part in the demonization campaign being staged by certain NGOs. And it is absolutely legitimate, in a democratic country, to do all these things.

But there is something else that is also legitimate: To reveal the truth about the fund and the groups that falsely claim to be “human rights” organizations. If some of the political organizations supported by the fund do not recognize the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish and democratic state – don’t cry human rights.

Tell the truth: the denial of rights is to Jews only. The Palestinians have a right to a state of their own, as do the Croats, the Hungarians, the Czechs, the Slovaks and other nations – but not the Jews.

The New Israel Fund provides support (though not funding – editor, JPost), for example, the Zochrot organization. This is a nonprofit organization that openly strives to destroy Israel by means of the “right of return.” Not that there is any such right, and not that there ever was another precedent for a mass “return” after a population swap in the wake of war – but this does not bother the New Israel Fund. It will always jump in under the slogan of “human rights.”

All this doesn’t mean Israel is exempt from criticism. After all, out of the hundreds of allegations, there are a few of substance. But if many sane people loathe the human rights organizations, it’s not because they loathe human rights. Just the opposite. It’s because the sane majority is fed up with ‘human rights’ becoming the weapon of benighted forces.

(Read full article)
.