Op-ed calls for “Arab Keren HaYesod” to “save the Jewish Arabs from the hell of Zionism”
Excerpt of an op-ed by Muwaffaq Matar, regular columnist for the official PA daily
Headline: “An ‘Arab Keren HaYesod’ is needed – the resettlement of the Arab Jews, final part”
“In the final part of our article we must focus attention on the Zionist ‘Keren HaYesod’ (i.e., the United Israel Appeal, an official fundraising organization established to support Jews returning to live in Israel), so that those who have not read the first part will be able to get an idea of the goal and title of the book An Arab Keren HaYesod Is Needed, which was written by [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas in the mid-1980s, and which is published on the president’s website.
The Zionist movement established what is known as the Keren Kayemeth [LeIsrael] (i.e., the Jewish National Fund) and Keren HaYesod. The first name is of an association that works to train Jews of the world to accept the Zionist movement’s ideas, while [Keren] HaYesod is tantamount to a company that was responsible for uprooting the Jews from their homelands and ensuring their arrival and housing in what the Zionist movement described as ‘the Promised Land’ (Palestine) [parentheses in source]…
The gist of the first part of our article, which focused on the president’s book in all that is related to content, is that the Jews – and particularly the Arabs among them (sic., Jews who had lived in Arab lands), the Sephardi Eastern ones, and those from among the Western Ashkenazi ones who were misled – were victims of the Zionist movement, and that most of them began to search for ways to be released from its chains shortly after arriving in our occupied land.
The Jewish Arabs and the ‘Sephardi’ Eastern ones understood that the Zionist movement used them as a pawn when their hopes and dreams, which the Jewish Agency had promised, began to fade away immediately after leaving their countries of origin. They began to understand the Jewish Agency’s true goal. It was enough that they were housed in colonies and border areas in order to absorb the fire, while the Ashkenazim (the Western Jews) [parentheses in source] were busy planning to take over roles and rise to the throne of power…
Today, 37 years after the first edition of President Mahmoud Abbas’ book and eight years after the second edition, we say that it is necessary to establish an Arab fund, or an ‘Arab Keren HaYesod,’ in order to save the Jewish Arabs from the hell of Zionism and resettle them in their countries of origin from which they were uprooted as part of the gravest plot in the history of humanity, after the crime of annihilating the Indians on the land of what is now called ‘the United States of America.’
We must always remember that the Zionist movement did not succeed in achieving the goal of annihilating the Palestinian people, but the inheritors of its plans have not stopped and also will not stop attempting to achieve two goals: first, to uproot us, the Palestinians, from our land and cause us to migrate; and [second], to uproot the Jewish Arabs and citizens of other states from their countries and force them to migrate to the occupation state (lesser Israel) [parentheses in source) by exerting pressure. This is through the saying that ‘They hate the Jews in the world’ (Antisemitism) [parentheses in source], and through the echoes of the explosions that are harming their institutions in the cities of the world where they are located in large numbers – explosions which it was proven that senior officials in the Jewish Agency and in the organization ‘the Mossad’ (Israeli Secret Intelligence Service) of ‘the State of lesser Israel’ were partners in their planning in order to push the victims into their hell.
Today we demand an Arab plan and an Arab fund to support the Jewish Arabs who aspire to return to their lands, their roots, and their culture…
We want to liberate the Jewish Arabs from all the chains that have forced them, of their own will or against their will, to be on the side that is hostile to us. We started to officially establish the means of interaction with them when the PLO founded the Committee for Interaction with Israeli Society in 2012, although everyone knows that the real interaction began many years before the idea became accepted by the Palestinians and even by the Arabs…
President Mahmoud Abbas wrote an epilogue for his book Zionism – A Beginning and An End, which is also published on his website. In its fifth paragraph is written: ‘Zionism began foreign, and it will reach its end foreign. It appeared predestined to us, but its end has become predestined. The Jews are its victims, and we are also its victims. We and the Jews will be responsible for its elimination, so that after it we will live in an expansive homeland that is full of all that is good, which has enough for everyone…’
The Arabs at the official level can revoke all of the laws so that these [Jews] will be able to return to their Arab cities and their homes in their neighborhoods, and to live in peace and security. They can also do a service to the Palestinian cause if they provide the Jewish Arabs with aid in recovering their possessions and creating a new image, which will pave the path for their integration without cultural or political barriers. Democracy is a great idea that includes the principles of equality, justice, and integration, but money is the influential material factor needed to implement this. Therefore, we need an ‘Arab Keren HaYesod.’”