MERCAZ USA Newsletter — Summer 2005

MERCAZ Backs Decision on Sale of KKL Lands to Uphold Jewish and Democratic Values

MERCAZ Olami delegates to the Keren Kayemet LeYisrael/ Jewish National Fund Board of Directors have come out in vocal support of the compromise solution proposed by Israeli Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz regarding the sale of KKL land to non-Jews. Mazuz' recommendation, which runs counter to the position of the elected KKL Board Chairman, ends decades of discrimination against Israeli Arab citizens.

At stake is the question as to whether all Israeli citizens can bid on lands being marketed by the Israel Lands Authority (ILA) that include parcels owned by the KKL. Currently, the Keren Kayemet owns 13% of the lands in the State of Israel. According to the KKL's charter passed in 1901, these properties, purchased prior to 1948 with funds raised from the worldwide Jewish community, may be sold (actually, 49-year renewable leasing) only to Jews.

However, since the early 1960's, the KKL has not marketed its own property but turned over authority to the ILA, a state-sponsored agency holding title to its own land parcels, to serve as the sole authority handling the sale of public lands. While Israeli law prohibits discrimination in the sale of "state" land, the ILA has maintained a policy for the past 40 years of disqualifying Israeli Arabs from participating in those particular land sales that include KKL parcels.

The issue arose as part of a suit brought against the ILA by civil rights groups representing Israeli Arabs. When the High Court of Justice called on Attorney-General Mazuz to prepare a defense of the state-sponsored agency, the Attorney General concluded that the ILA's position, despite the special nature of the Jewish People's relationship with KKL land, violated Israeli law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of ethnic or national identity.
At the same time, Mazuz recognized the KKL's right to receive replacement land from the Israeli government for any parcels that might be purchased by non-Jews, in order to maintain the 13% land share owned by the Jewish People.

While many people, including the KKL leadership, attacked the Attorney General's decision, labeling it anti-Zionist, the MERCAZ representatives on the KKL Executive, Dr. Alon Tal and Dr. Eilon Schwartz, have publicly championed the compromise solution.

In an article published in The Jerusalem Report, Dr. Tal wrote: "As a boy growing up in North Carolina, I remember learning in a Conservative religious school that protecting the "foreigner, widow and orphan" was the most commonly cited mitzvah in the Bible. To argue that KKL's Zionist mission is incompatible with human rights is an insult to Zionism which truly is not racism."

Similarly, Dr. Schwartz took the KKL Chairperson to task for insisting that the KKL Charter, passed by the Zionist Congress in 1901, was immovable: "As Conservative Jews, our commitment to both tradition and change demands that we reexamine laws passed in 1901 and that we ask ourselves whether they are still valid in 2005 in the sovereign State of Israel."

As MERCAZ USA President Rabbi Vernon Kurtz noted: "There are those who believe that Judaism and democracy are mutually exclusive terms. Our vision of Zionism upholds both values as equally binding and sees no contradiction between them."

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