At the Fifth Zionist Congress, held in Basel in 1901, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) was founded. Its aim: to redeem lands in the Land of Israel for Jewish settlement. These lands, according to Benjamin Zeev -(Theodor) Herzl, were to be the "eternal property of the Jewish people." And as though he had foreseen what was to happen 106 years later, he stipulated: "The Jewish people will be not only the founder [of the JNF], but also its owner in perpetuity. In that way, use [of the lands] for aims other than the founder?s will be prevented."

Next Monday, the High Court of Justice will deliberate on a petition against the JNF by Adalah - the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI). Their demand: to revoke the provision in the JNF's charter whereby it is not allowed to hand lands over to anyone who is not Jewish, on the grounds that this provision discriminates racially.

It is a pity that the High Court did not immediately reject this petition, which is asking the Supreme Court of the Jewish state to issue a ruling in principle that the Jewish people does not have a right to possess lands of its own in its own nation-state. The High Court knows, after all, that the real purpose of the petition is to further erode the legitimacy of a Jewish nation-state in the Land of Israel. Fact: In the proposed constitution that it published recently, Adalah rejected Israel's existence as a Jewish state.