London, Oct 7, IRNA – The new leader of Britain’s Labour Party was urged Thursday not to follow the example of his predecessors and distance himself from supporting a leading Jewish charity linked with the development of illegal Israeli settlement.
The call on Ed Miliband not to become a patron of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) is being lead by nearly 50 peace campaigners, pro-Palestinian activists, academics, lawyers and trade unionists.
“The JNF is actively complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians,” the campaigners warned in a joint letter. “The JNF was founded in 1901 with the aim of purchasing land ‘for the purpose of settling Jews on such lands and properties’, it said.
“To this day it refuses to lease or rent land to anyone who is not Jewish. In 1953 and 1961, Israeli legislation made the JNF responsible for the land allocation policies of the state itself,” their letter said.
The previous two Labour leaders, former prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were both patrons of the JNF, which describes itself as “Israel’s leading humanitarian and environmental charity.”
The campaigners welcomed Miliband’s statement after his election as the new party leader last month that Labour’s foreign policy should be ‘based on values, not just alliances.’
“For too long Britain has blindly followed the US in supporting Israel, right or wrong,” they said, adding that cutting support for the JNF was “one, immediate decision Ed Miliband can make which will show that these are not empty words.”
“Miliband stood as the candidate of change in the Labour party. Now is the time to show that these weren’t just words of spin,” their joint letter said, published in the Guardian newspaper.
Among Jewish signatories were Professor of Philosophy Moshe Machover, folk singer Leon Rosselson, founder of Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods (J-BIG) Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi and Israeli human rights activist Ruth Tenne among others.