NGO bent on holding anti-Israel event at landmark

The third International Conference on the Return of Palestinian Refugees will take place at a controversial venue this year: The Eretz Israel Museum Tel Aviv (also known as the Land of Israel Museum).

The radical left-wing NGO Zochrot, which will organize the conference in March, said the location was important because of the symbolism. In the official invitation to the conference, Zochrot says the museum sits on the "lands of the [Arab] village of Al-Shaykh Muwannis, which was located there till the Nakba." The term "Nakba," which means catastrophe in Arabic, is used by anti-Israel groups to describe the displacement of Palestinian Arabs during Israel's War of Independence.

Zochrot Director Liat Rosenberg said Tuesday that holding the conference at the Eretz Israel Museum would show defiance in a "reality where cultural institutions and intellectuals feel persecuted and intimidated as a result of controversial events, and are afraid to make political statements." She added that "Zochrot has made a point of having the Nakba and the right of return be part of the public discourse in the very places that do not want us partaking in their events."

Rosenberg explained that after the Haifa Cinematheque refused to host a film festival about the Nakba, the group simply paid a rental fee and held the festival as a private event.

The museum's director general, Ilan Cohen, has distanced himself from the conference. On Tuesday, he said that "the museum and the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality will not review the subject matter in that conference, just like it does not interfere with the actions of any other group." He further noted that the museum often rents out its halls.

Meanwhile, the executive director of Breaking the Silence, Yuli Novak, went on the attack Tuesday, lamenting the recent right-wing campaign casting her and her colleagues as "foreign agents" because of their criticism of the Israel Defense Forces.

Speaking at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, she said the campaign against her organization was designed to "destroy the organization and make us buckle under the pressure, in the hope that this would send a message to anyone who opposes Israel's policies in the territories." She vowed that her organization will remain defiant. "We will not buckle; we will not be destroyed, we will not back away from the truth and the values that guide us -- not even one bit," she said. "The campaign was based on a deluge of lies and disinformation regarding this organization. We do not attack IDF soldiers, not in Israel and not overseas; none of the testimonies we published have ever been debunked, and we have published an exhaustive list of donors; we are very proud of that list."

She also accused the Right of trying to infiltrate her organization in order to sabotage it from within by tainting it with ethical lapses. "Perhaps the most troubling aspect of all this was to discover that the right has tried to use undercover agents inside human rights groups, us included, to monitor and track members, with the help of hidden cameras and recording devices," she said.

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