The NIF-sponsored declaration about the Tuba Zanghariya incident, signed by 1000 rabbis, makes it clear that they oppose bad behavior by Israelis:
We condemn those in Israel who exacerbate conflict and strife, and who insist that only one people or religion belongs to this land. (my emphasis)
But why do you think those two boldfaced words are there?
Perhaps the NIF didn’t want to contradict the official Palestinian Authority (PA) TV station which, shortly after Mahmoud Abbas’ appeal to the UN for statehood, broadcast this map, showing all of the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean (except the Golan Heights) wrapped in a Palestinian flag (the key symbolizes Palestinian Arab ownership of the land they were ‘expelled’ from in 1948).
Statements like this one are crafted very carefully. I do not believe that those two words are there by accident. They are there to tell us that the statement does not condemn those outside of Israel — which includes all of the Palestinian leadership, the PLO and Hamas — who think that only the Arabs “belong to the land” (a strange locution in itself).
This isn’t surprising in light of the Wikileaks cable which quotes an NIF official as saying that “the disappearance of a Jewish state would not be the tragedy that Israelis fear since it would become more democratic.”
I wonder if any of the liberal American rabbis (some of whom I know) who signed the statement noticed this?
Technorati Tags: NIF, Israel, Palestinian Authority