A Jewish member of Fatah was nominated on Saturday for the organization’s Revolutionary Council, the Bethlehem-based Ma’an news agency reports. Dr. Uri Davis stated that he doesn’t see anything special to his nomination, as each member has the right to run, despite religion, race, or color. If elected, the Jerusalem-born Davis would become the first Jewish member of the Revolutionary Council.
Despite his parents’ immigration to Israel in 1935, Davis has rejected Zionism. “It violates the Human Rights Convention because it is racism. It legalizes oppression,” he said. He rejected joining Israeli left-wing parties “because all of them are Zionist parties.” Instead, he joined Fatah, “because it contained a liberal framework that encompasses contradictory yet harmonious ideologies.” Davis is a professor of Peace Studies at Britain’s University of Bradford, and the founding member of the Movement Against Israeli Apartheid in Palestine (MAIAP) and of Al-Beit, the Association for the Defense of Human Rights in Israel. He lives with his Arab wife in Ramallah.