Tomorrow the High Court of Justice will hear a petition against the Jewish National Fund (JNF) from Arab citizens who have been barred from acquiring land in Carmiel, because the JNF does not lease land to non-Jews. That the heart of an Israeli city holds land intended for Jews only 60 years after the establishment of the state is inconceivable. The petition opposes wrongful state discrimination against Arab citizens by means of the JNF.

To make things more difficult for the High Court, the Knesset approved by a large majority (64 to 16) a bill in its preliminary reading stating that discrimination against non-Jews by the JNF is not wrongful discrimination. The JNF is a private corporation, founded to buy land for the Jewish people, and that is its purpose to this day. The attorney general believes this is wrongful discrimination as 13 percent of Israel's land belongs to the JNF, and he supports the petitioners against that body.

Facing off against the attorney general is a group of contributors, among them former chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon, Rabbi Yoel Ben-Nun and Nobel laureate Robert (Yisrael) Aumann, who argue that they themselves donated money to the JNF because they believed it would go to Jews only, and therefore their contributions cannot be used for non-Jewish communities. It turns out that if Ya'alon, Ben-Nun and Aumann thought that an Arab would live in Carmiel, they would not have placed even one cent in the JNF's blue box in school.