Letter to the Canadian Museum of Civilization
Friday, November 21, 2008
Dr. Victor Rabinovitch
President and CEO
Canadian Museum of Civilization
Gatineau, Quebec
Dear Mr. Rabinovitch,
The International Jewish anti-Zionist Network is writing to express how disturbed we are by the granting of permission to the Jewish National Fund to hold its annual Negev fundraising dinner at Canada’s Museum of Civilization.
It is our understanding that a founding principle of the Museum is to insure that activities which promote intolerance will not be supported. We are therefore confused that you would choose to support an event being organized by the Jewish National Fund (JNF). The JNF is a quasi-governmental organization whose historic and continued role has been to acquire land for Jewish-only settlements. It is one of the key mechanisms through which Israel’s agenda of ethnic segregation, transfer and expulsion of Palestinians is carried out. Two-thirds of JNF land was forcibly taken from Palestinian refugees.
One such example is “Canada Park,” maintained through JNF-Canada contributions, and built on the site of three Palestinian villages captured in 1967, whose 10,000 residents were expelled, and all their homes razed to the ground. The existence of Canada Park and the financial support it continues to receive from the Jewish National Fund of Canada breaches Canada’s charitable status laws, which prohibit charities from violating Canadian public policy. At the same time, Canada Park is only one part of the JNF’s practice of expropriation of Palestinian land in Israel and throughout the West Bank for exclusive use by Jews.
The JNF is a political organization, and as such should not hold charitable status in Canada. By allowing the JNF to hold this fund-raiser, you are supporting and therefore a party to Israel’s institutionalized racism and ethnic cleansing.
We believe that it is not in the interest of Canadians to allow for the use of the Museum of Civilization as a stomping ground for the JNF. Now that we have brought this to your attention we expect the Museum to live up to it's stated principles and cancel. Not to do so means that the Museum is in violation of its own founding principles, and is complicit in the continuing violations of the rights of Palestinians to their land and resources.
Respectfully yours,
Sue Goldstein and Naomi Binder Wall,
Canadian members of the International Coordinating Committee,
International Jewish anti-Zionist Network
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