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by Dr. Rafael Medoff
The London borough of Hackney has decided to cancel its twin-city relationship with Haifa.
The twinning agreement was signed back in 1968. Hackney’s new mayor, Zoe Garbett, leader of the local Green Party, says she canceled it as a demonstration of “international solidarity.”
Solidarity with whom? With those who want to destroy Israel.
Haifa, after all, is not a “settlement.” It’s not in “occupied Palestinian territory.” It’s within pre-1967 Israel.
Arabs are 12% of Haifa’s population.
At the University of Haifa, 44% of the students are Arabs, which is the highest proportion of Arab students at any university in Israel.
Between 30% and 40% of the medical staff at Haifa’s Rambam Hospital are Arabs.
Four members of the Haifa City Council are Arabs. There are also three Green Party representatives on the council.
In short, if there is any city in Israel with which Hackney’s Green Party mayor should be comfortable, it’s Haifa.
But she’s not. Because it is Israel’s very existence that makes the Hackney Greens uncomfortable. That’s why they’re canceling their 58 year-old relationship with Haifa.
The party platform of the Hackney Greens in their recent election declared that “In Haifa, Palestinian people live under occupation and apartheid.”
So there you have it.
If Haifa, which is in pre-1967 Israel, is “occupied territory,” that means Israel itself has no right to exist.
The Hackney Greens don’t just object to “Netanyahu’s policies” or “illegal settlements.” In their eyes, Haifa itself is an illegal settlement.
What the British far left which rules Hackney wants — and what so many of their comrades elsewhere want — is not Arab-Jewish coexistence, not even a Palestinian Arab state next to Israel, but the destruction of Israel itself.
Dr. Medoff is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, and the author of more than 20 books about Jewish history, Zionism, and the Holocaust. Follow him on Facebook to read his daily commentaries on the news
