On March 13th, the “The Great Israeli Real Estate Event,” is coming to Avenue N in Midwood, in the heart of New York’s 9th Congressional District. At this event, Israeli real estate companies are going to market and sell homes built on illegal West Bank settlements by a nation that is right now engaging in ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Palestinian people. As District 9 constituents and as neighbors, we are appalled that this event, which glibly advertises itself as “your chance to own a piece of the holy land,” is taking place in our community. We are demanding that it be canceled.

Israel’s regime of West Bank settlement on stolen, occupied Palestinian land is widely recognized as a war crime and a violation of international law. Palestinians in the West Bank report persistent settler violence and land theft - in the past few months alone, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed and over 1,000 have been displaced from their homes in the West Bank.

Even the Biden Administration, which has armed and supported Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza, says that the settlements are illegal. Biden and his cabinet have issued sanctions against Israeli settlers and called on the far-right Netanyahu government to stop their ongoing reckless expansion, which is designed to further diminish the ability of Palestinians to exercise self-determination in their own homeland. One of the settlements advertised on the Great Israeli Real Estate Event website is Ma’ale Adumim, which has been called “the settlement that broke the two-state solution,” as its geographic location cuts off Palestinian freedom of movement between the northern and southern halves of the West Bank.

Another settlement to be promoted at the Real Estate Event on the 13th, Neve Daniel, sits on land stolen from the Palestinian town of Wadi an-Nis, which is now deeply impoverished, separated from most of its crop and grazing land by an Israeli segregation wall, and struggling to access basic resources like water. Expansion of the Neve Daniel settlement threatens the continued existence of the Palestinian-owned Tent of Nations educational and environmental farm. Though the Tent of Nations motto is “we refuse to be enemies,” they have faced countless attacks on their land from settlers, as well as a Kafkaesque legal battle with occupation authorities.

For an Israeli company to market “a piece of the holy land” to Americans while Israel is perpetrating an ongoing US-backed genocide against Palestinians is immoral and unacceptable. Even within its 1967 borders, Israel continues to perpetrate redlining and ethnic cleansing, wielding the levers of municipal power to, in the words of Palestinian urban planner and activist Orwa Sweitat, “erase, destroy, deform and privatize the Arab-Palestinian identity.” To promote land sales in the occupied West Bank is particularly beyond the pale.

The planned event for March 13th is illegal, wrong, and harmful to our community. We call upon Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, City Council Member Farah Louis, and Congresswoman Yvette Clarke to use their collective power to ensure the event is canceled. We further call upon New York Attorney General Letitia James to investigate potential violations of state and federal anti-discrimination laws in relation to the event.

No to land theft: not in our borough, not in our neighborhood, not in our city!

Sincerely,
NY-09 Neighbors, Brooklyn residents, and members of the broader New York community