In an official university email, Tel Aviv University has issued a call for submissions of films on the topic of the “Nakba and the return of Palestinian refugees.” The films are to participate in a film festival organized by the radical leftist group Zochrot, about the so-called “Nakba,” or catastrophe, as nationalist Arabs call the 1948 war for the independence of Israel. The call for entries for the festival, which was sent to students and graduates of the university's film department, reads: “Zochrot’s initiative aims to promote the recognition and responsibility of the Jewish public in Israel for the Nakba, the perception that a return [of Arabs to the Land of Israel – ed.] would be a correction of the Nakba, and the opportunity for a better life.” Grassrotts Zionist group Im Tirtzu sent a letter to the president of Hebrew University and to its major donors saying: “We are dismayed to see the distribution of this call for film submissions on an official distribution list of students and graduates. This encourages university students to take part in a propaganda festival calling for destruction of Israel and its citizens. Therefore, we demand that the president of the university strongly and unequivocally condemn this action and ensure that it is not repeated.” In a letter to the President of Tel-Aviv University, Prof. Yosef Klepter, Im Tirtzu CEO Matan Peleg wrote: "There is no argument that flooding the State of Israel with millions of Palestinians means not only turning the state into an Arab country, but also into a battlefield between different religious communities just like what is happening in the Middle East.” The “massive distribution” of the call for entires by the University, on its official mailing list to students and graduates, “is severe and unheard of,” ha added. “This action encourages university students to take part in propaganda festivals calling for the destruction of Israel and its citizens. Therefore, we demand that the president of the University unmistakably condemn this action and take responsibility that incidents like these will not be repeated.” A special report released by NGO Monitor last year included Zochrot among three groups that actively promote a "one-state" bi-national Israel, in order to erase the country's Jewish nature. NGO Monitor noted that the NGO works to "recognize and materialize the right of return," meaning the flooding of Israel with roughly 5 million descendants of Arab residents who left Israel at the founding of the state. The call for a "return" is widely recognized as a demographic attempt to destroy Israel as a Jewish state. An estimated 850,000 Jewish refugees were forced out of Arab lands in the same time period of the founding of Israel, a similar or larger figure than the number of Arab residents who left Israel.
