This year, Jewish and Palestinian community groups have upped the ante in their bid to challenge Israel’s annual event in Yerba Buena Garden, saying there’s more to protest than ever.
Of particular concern is the role of Israel’s Jewish National Fund, an organization operating in the US, which collects $50 million which aids in the displacement of Palestinians from their homeland.
The protesters’ activities drew attention to the Jewish National Fund’s practice of covering demolished Palestinian villages with pine trees to hide the evidence of their existence and make return by displaced Palestinians more difficult.
This practice has been dubbed ‘greenwashing,’ for giving the appearance of environmentalism to ecological and humanitarian destruction.
June 5th, the date of Israel’s celebration, falls on the date that refugees from three displaced Palestinian villages, Beit Nuba, Imwas and Yalu march from Ramallah, in the Palestinian West Bank, march toward “Canada Park” where the Jewish National Fund plants trees which camouflage the Israeli destruction of their villages in 1967.
Last month, during the 63rd commemoration of the catastrophe of 1948, during which nearly 800,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes to establish an Israeli state in Palestine, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and the West Bank headed toward home. Tracing the footsteps of their parents and grandparents, they marched on borders, checkpoints and military lines that separate them from each other and from their places of origin.
Today’s USPCN community protest picked up where these left off, calling on people of conscience to boycott cultural events by Israel and the Jewish National Fund until justice is achieved for Palestinians.
Slogans used at the protest:
63 Years of Resistance
Israel’s Jewish National Fund: de-forestation
Israel’s Jewish National Fund uproots Palestinian trees and villages
Israel’s Jewish National Fund: bulldozes peace
Israel’s Jewish National Fund: undermining peace one bulldozer at a time
