
Activists call on Hilton Anatole to cancel scheduled JNF conference
Dallas’ Hilton Anatole hotel, located at 2201 N. Stemmons Freeway, is slated to host the Global Conference for Israel Nov. 14-17. But a statewide coalition of pro-Palestine and anti-war organizations are calling for the hotel to cancel the event, and the organizations have called for a “statewide anti-genocide protest” at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 16, in front of the hotel if the conference is not canceled, according to a press release by organizers.
A “major boycott” of the Hilton Anatole by wedding vendors has also been announced, according to the press release, with 24 wedding vendors already having signed on and another 40 having “expressed interest in no longer working with the Hilton Anatole unless this conference is canceled.
Organizers say that almost 1,200 people have already emailed the hotel’s management, asking them to drop the conference, and activists have “attempted peaceful meetings with the management at the Hilton Anatole to address serious concerns about the conference and its hosting organization, the Jewish National Fund,” the press release noted.
“These concerns have so far been ignored, and a group of coalition representatives were even escorted out by security,” according to the press release, with “other activists subsequently engag[ing] in disruptions with the hotel.”
Members of the pro-Palestine/anti-war coalition claim that the Jewish National Fund has been “complicit in the violent land theft and ethnic cleansing of Palestine since its founding in 1901 by working to secure land for a Jewish supremacist state,” according to the press release. “The organization helped to facilitate the Nakba of 1948 and is complicit in the expansion of Jewish-only settlements across historic Palestine that are deemed illegal under international law.”
Coalition members also claim that many of those scheduled to speak at the conference have made “openly racist, genocidal and anti-Palestine remarks,” including Israeli journalist Yoseph Haddad who allegedly compared Palestinians to animals, saying that such a comparsion is “actually insulting the animals.”
Another scheduled speaker, Shae Davidai, is a former assistant professor at Columbia University who called on the university’s president at the time to “eradicate all pro-terror student organizations from campus,” referring to those protesting “ongoing violence in Gaza,” the press release notes. Davidai was also temporarily barred from the campus for “repeatedly harass[ing] and intimidat[ing] University employees.”
The press release quotes North Texas-based organizer and activist William Josef of Jewish Voice For Peace as saying, “We see it as our mandate to decouple our rich religious and cultural heritage from the settler-colonial ideology that is Zionism.
“The JNF has lied to our people, pretending that their blue boxes in many of our synagogues merely raise funds to plant trees in the Holy Land — ignoring the fact that these trees are planted on stolen land, often to cover up the ruins of displaced Palestinian villages.”
Josef said coalition members have “attempted to express our concerns” to management at the Hilton Anatole, but “the Hilton Anatole’s management has rebuffed us, making clear their support for the JNF’s ecocide and ethnic cleansing.”
The coalition calling for the conference to be canceled includes Texas chapters and national bodies of Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestinian Youth Movement, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Democratic Socialists of America, DFW Anti-War Committee, Veterans for Peace, CodePink, Austin for Palestine Coalition, About Face: Veterans Against War, U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Dallas Peace and Justice Center and National Students for Justice in Palestine.
The Jewish National Fund, according to Wikipedia, is “a non-profit organization founded in 1901 to buy land and encourage Jewish resettlement in Ottoman Syria (later Mandatory Palestine, subsequently Israel and the Palestinian territories) for Jewish settlement.”
“By 2007, JNF owned 13 percent of the total land in Israel, and since its inception, the JNF has planted more 240 million trees, built 180 dams and reservoirs, developed 250,000 acres of land and established more than 1,000 parks in Israel,” the Wikipedia site notes.
Through the years, JNF has been embroiled in numerous controversies and legal conflicts, including allegations regarding the organizations transparency regarding how donations are used and civil rights complaints over the agency’s policy allowing only Jews to buy, mortgage or lease JNF land.
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