MONTREAL — Nathan Eisner had one simple agenda as he travelled to Toronto and Montreal recently from Israel: to convince local Jewish communities to reclaim agricultural land that he and others believe is rightfully their own people’s, in Israel’s Galilee region.
It is land that he and others associated with Israel’s non-profit B’Ahavat Yisrael (With Love of Israel) organization contend is being bought up and “taken over” by the Israeli-Arab population.
And according to Eisner, it is being financed and made possible, they additionally claim, by using “oil sheikh” Saudi money, coercive tactics, and even illegal construction on state land owned, for example, by the Jewish National Fund.
Sometimes, Eisner said, the land is taken over merely by illegally “squatting” on property while authorities turn a blind eye.
“A lot of the land is being destroyed,” said Eisner, a 61-year-old native of Toronto who made aliyah 20 years ago, in a telephone interview with The CJN. “The majority of the land is now owned by [Israeli-]Arabs. We’re trying to stem the tide.”
B’Ahavat Yisrael’s also sees a similar trend taking place in the Negev region of Israel.
Eisner, now retired, lives in Ginot Shomron, part of the Karnei Shomron region of the West Bank. He came to Canada with B’Ahavat Yisrael executive director Joel Busner. They first met when Busner – whose Hebrew name in Yosef Ben Tzion – was a client of Eisner’s when he worked at Bank Mizrahi.
In Toronto, Eisner’s early-February appearance was sponsored by the Jewish Defence League.
In essence, Eisner made clear, the purpose of the North American tour – which also included stops in New York City and Florida – was to make new friends and influence people through B’Ahavat Yisrael seminars.
To “stem the tide” of the “Arab takeover” in the Galilee, the organization – which is also involved in helping Israeli accident and terrorism victims, injured IDF soldiers and Sderot resident who’ve been plagued by Katyusha rockets from Gaza – has launched a “Save the Galilee” campaign.
It entails selling as many four-square-metre units of farming land in the lower Galilee as possible.
The land, acre by eventual acre, is then used for B’Ahavat Yisrael’s Avoda Ivrit youth farming project to cultivate olive groves and produce, Eisner said, “boutique olive oil” for sale.
According to B’Ahavat Yisrael’s website, beahavatisrael.org.il, plans are also in the works to build a centre in the Galilee that could serve, in Busner’s words, as “a place where Jewish youth from the Diaspora could come together with Jewish youth from Israel with a common purpose: to rediscover our land, our heritage.”
Eisner pointed out that a related website, called Buy a Piece of Israel (www.buyapieceofisrael.com), also promotes the “Save the Galilee” campaign, “because it’s time to take our country back!,” its home page asserts.
Its mission statement is “to have Jews from all over the world get involved by actually purchasing part or all of large agricultural lots and then create jobs by having all-Jewish labour manage fruit, producing produce with a percentage of yield going to the new land owners.”
The site describes this as a “win-win-win-win” situation.
“First by Jews purchasing the land with a long term goal, the non-Jews cannot. Second, by working the land, Jewish labour and residency in the local areas increase. Third, since the land will be managed regularly, potential squatters will have to look elsewhere.
“And finally, instead of making a donation, the purchaser owns something in the Land of Israel that will give him/her a modest profit and he/she fulfils the commandment of owning land in Israel.”
In Eisner’s view, Israel’s media and its powers-that-be are “pretty much ignoring” Israeli-Arabs’ flagrant encroachment on Jewish land – to Israel’s demographic peril.