Talk of new proposal to ‘transfer’ non-Jews from historic Palestine

Israel’s Deputy Mayor of Occupied Jerusalem, Aryeh King, is helping an anonymous philanthropist to transfer non-Jews from historic Palestine and relocate them to a foreign country. The 49-year-old is a right-wing activist and politician. His parents emigrated from England and settled on a Kibbutz in historic Palestine.

“A Jewish Zionist philanthropist contacted me; he is looking for a manager with a can-do attitude, for the benefit of a business initiative whose purpose is to encourage the emigration of non-Jews, outside the borders of the land of Israel” said King on Facebook. “The intention is to encourage non-Jews to relocate outside the borders of our country.” King urged his followers to contact him if they were “suitable” and that he would arrange a meeting with the representative of the anonymous philanthropist.

The Jerusalem Post reported an interview between King and an Israeli radio station about his comment. King was asked if the plan is a “laundered” version of a proposal by former Tourism Minister, Rehavam Ze’evi, to transfer Palestinians to Arab nations in the region.  The 2007 proposal was designed to solve what is frequently referred to as Israel’s demographic concern. Palestine say that this is a polite way of concealing the inherent racism of the country which views non-Jews as a problem that needs to be solved by moving them out of their ancestral homeland.

Read: Population swap: From apartheid to something worse

Ze’evi’s proposal offered a million Palestinian residents of refugee camps in Judea and Samaria incentives totalling as much as $50 billion to leave the area. Apparently $50,000 to $100,000 was to be offered to each refugee if they agreed to emigrate. There are currently as many Palestinians in historic Palestine as there are Jews. Israel’s racist “law of return” has denied a further six million Palestinians the right of return to their home and territory from which they were ethnically cleansed.

King rejected that the new plan is a revival of the 2007 proposal. “It’s very much not laundered. It is most clear and clean, like our Law of Return” King is reported to have said to the Israeli radio station. “Essentially the idea comes from the Law of Return”.

Read: Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is ongoing; we need a united response

“The Law of Return is a racist law” King admitted. “It doesn’t allow everyone to immigrate to Israel. So we said anyone to whom the Law of Return doesn’t apply and is already in Israel, we’ll encourage him – by helping him find work or studies or any other way – to leave the country. Win-win.”

King went on to say that preserving the Jewish majority was more important to him than democracy. “It is not written in the Declaration of Independence that Israel is a democratic state, it is a Jewish state where the minority has rights. It is more important to me that the country be Jewish than democratic.”