Around 60 people turned out today to protest against the Jewish National
Fund Conference ( http://indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/12/443227.html), where
ex-Israeli foreign minister and current Kadima party Leader Tzipi Livni
was due to address the attendees.

Livni pulled out for reasons unknown so two members of the international
Solidarity Movement, who had managed to obtain tickets to the event,
instead heckled the Israeli ambassador to the UK Ron Proser, calling him
an “apologist for war crimes” and an “accomplice to ethnic cleansing”
before being dragged out by security chanting “free Palestine”. One
heckler was punched and kicked as he was being dragged out but neither was
arrested.

The aim of the conference was to organise support for JNFs Negev project,
in which they aim to bring 300,000 Jews to the area in the next few years.
Very little was mentioned of what will happen to the Bedouin population
already living there, the issue was only dealt with very briefly by one of
the speakers who parroted the usual colonial myth that they will “benefit
from the development we will bring them”.

The JNF had attempted to keep the location of the conference secret but
pro-Palestine activists had managed to find the venue details only a few
days before the event, and in a short space of time mobilised enough
resistance to it to thoroughly ruin their day!