Activists call on Hilton Anatole to cancel scheduled JNF conference
Dallas’ Hilton Anatole hotel, located at 2201 N. Stemmons Freeway, is slated to host the Global Conference for Israel Nov. 14-17.
But a statewide coalition of pro-Palestine and anti-war organizations are calling for the hotel to cancel the event, and the organizations have called for a “statewide anti-genocide protest” at 1 p.m.
on Saturday, Nov. 16, in front of the hotel if the conference is not canceled, according to a press release by organizers. A “major boycott” of the Hilton Anatole by wedding vendors has also been announced, according to the press release, with 24 wedding vendors already having signed on and another 40 having “expressed interest in no longer working with the Hilton Anatole unless this conference is canceled.
Organizers say that almost 1,200 people have already emailed the hotel’s management, asking them to drop the conference, and activists have “attempted peaceful meetings with the management at the Hilton Anatole to address serious concerns about the conference and its hosting organization, the Jewish National Fund,” the press release noted. “These concerns have so far been ignored, and a group of coalition representatives were even escorted out by security,” according to the press release, with “other activists subsequently engag[ing] in disruptions with the hotel.” Members of the pro-Palestine/anti-war coalition claim that the Jewish National Fund has been “complicit in the violent land theft and ethnic cleansing of Palestine since its founding in 1901 by working to secure land for a Jewish supremacist state,” according to the press release. “The organization helped to facilitate the Nakba of 1948 and is complicit in the expansion of Jewish-only settlements across historic Palestine that are deemed illegal under international law.” Coalition members also claim that many of those scheduled to speak at the conference have made “openly racist, genocidal and anti-Palestine remarks,” including Israeli journalist Yoseph Haddad who allegedly
