Genevieve Cora Fraser: Statistics Revised

In the March 8th publication in Al-Jazeerah.info of "Upholding the Rights of Palestine and Israel" (also know as The Oath of Office is to America, Not Israel) by Genevieve Cora Fraser , the editor Dr. Hassan El-Najjar provides additional information and corrections to the Neff quotes. According to El-Najjar, "The Neff demographic figures about the Palestinian people mentioned in the article are incomplete. There are about 1.3 Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship, about 3.3 million Palestinians who do not have Israeli citizenship and live under the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. there are about 3 million Palestinians living forcibly outside Palestine. All of them call Palestine home."

The Neff quotes in the article now read:

Writing for the Guardian, Donald Neff states that there are four distinct classes of "citizenship" found within the present borders of Israel. Class "A" citizenship is reserved for the Jews who are given "privileged access to the material resources of the State and the social as well as the welfare services of the State, including utilization of the 93 per cent of pre-1967 Israel, controlled by the Land Agency." (What Neff does not detail is the discrimination rampant within certain ethnicities of Jewish Israeli society. The Ashkenazi Jews of white European descent have the greatest level of power and property.)

Class "B" citizens are Non Jews/Arabs taxpayers and citizens with voting rights. However, they are "denied the right to utilize the 93 per cent of pre-1967 Israel controlled by the Land Agency. They are also denied equal access to water and social and welfare services. And they are generally not permitted to serve in the military which means they are automatically denied the many social and welfare services available to those who complete compulsory (for Jews) military service."

Class "C" citizenship, also Non Jews/Arabs are taxpayers and citizens with voting rights, but classified as "absentees". These individuals comprise some 200,000 persons and are likewise denied the right to utilize property in 93 per cent of pre-1967 Israel and denied equal access to water and social and welfare services. "They have also been denied all rights to their own property (lands, houses, corporations, shares, bank accounts, bank safes, etc.) that they owned until confiscated by the Jewish state. This theft was made "legal" by the Absentees Property Law of 1950."

The Class "D" category is comprised of approximately 3,300,000 Non citizens (contrary to what Neff said). These are the Palestinians living in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. These are taxpayers, but without voting rights. They are also denied the right to utilize or buy property anywhere in pre-1967 Israel, and have no access to social and welfare services. "Many (mostly those who once lived in pre-1967 Israel) have had all their property confiscated by the Jewish state without compensation and have been forced to live in ghettos spread throughout two areas that today resemble concentration camp," according to Neff.

ENDS

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