Dark side of Jewish dream

Last month Israel's parliament overwhelmingly endorsed the first stage of a bill which would formally allow the JNF to continue its established practice of barring non-Jews from leasing land and housing held in its name - 13 per cent of the area of Israel, much of it now prime real estate. The Knesset bill has led to renewed accusations both in Israel and abroad that the JNF denies Israel's 20 per cent Arab minority access to what is in practice state land. Under the headline "A Racist Jewish State" an editorial in the center-left Israeli newspaper Haaretz wrote that "the Jewish National Fund's land policy counters the interests of the state and cannot discriminate by law against the minority living in Israel.