Protest outside the office of Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig. (Photo: Bud Korotzer)
Dozens of protesters gathered outside Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig’s office in Midtown Manhattan today to ask him to intervene in the upcoming Hebron Fund fundraiser to be held at Citi Field, the home of the New York Mets, this Saturday. To make matters worse, the event benefitting the notoriously racist settler community in Hebron will be held right above a rotunda named for Jackie Robinson, the legendary Brooklyn Dodgers player who broke baseball’s segregation barrier in the 1940s. This point was made by protesters through some pretty creative chants:
To the tune of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame":
Mets, please boot the Hebron Fund,
Racism is a shame;
There’s no place for segregationists,
Jackie Rob-in-son would pump his fists
If you don’t eject the Hebron Fund,
Citi Field goes to shame.
And we’ll have to root for the Yanks,
Or a different game.
A press release from the protest organizers says that over 2,600 individuals have emailed the Mets asking them to cancel the event, and Jay Horwitz, the Vice President for Media Relations for the team, told one caller that the Mets are being "bombarded" by phone calls (keep it up).
The growing campaign against the fundraiser continues to get media attention. In addition to the story on the cable news network NY1, it has also been covered by New York Magazine and the New York Daily News. Rebecca Vilkomerson, from Jewish Voice for Peace, and Neil Strauss, a legal fellow at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, write today in in the Huffington Post:
Where do the millions of dollars raised in the United States by the Hebron Fund go? The organization does not publicize details, but it does brag in its publicity materials about its support for illegal purposes, such as "establishing facts on the ground," which is code for settling Jewish Israelis on occupied Palestinian land, or otherwise prejudicing peace negotiations by creating obstacles to Israeli withdrawal. . .
The Mets should act in the spirit of Jackie Robinson and cancel the Hebron Fund fundraiser. There is no question that if Palestinians attempted to hold an analogous fundraiser, it would have long since been shut down. We urge the US government to examine the appropriateness of US non-profits receiving tax breaks for providing funds to Israeli settlements that undermine US foreign policy and hopes for peace in the Middle East.
Protest organizer Andrew Kadi of Adalah-NY echoed this point today, “Institutions like the Mets and Major League Baseball should not allow groups like the Hebron Fund to use their facilities, and organizations like the Hebron Fund should not be given tax-exempt status as nonprofits by the US government to carry out settlement activities that contradict US foreign policy, violate international law and destroy any hope for peace in the Middle East.” Meanwhile Donna Nevel, from Jews Say No!, was a bit more blunt, "The Mets claim it is a business decision, that they are a private organization that rents out their space to a variety of groups. But they would never rent it out to white supremacists or the KKK."
