Since 1901 KKL-JNF, known as Jewish National Fund (JNF) in the UK, has worked successfully for the ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine and their project has not been completed… Today sees a fresh and determined initiative to strip JNF UK of its charitable status. This effort can succeed with your help, for the JNF UK is vulnerable as never before. Whereas this racist body used to enjoy virtually automatic patronage from the leaders of all three major UK political parties, today Cameron, Clegg and Miliband have each turned their back on this openly racist ‘charity’ as being increasingly impossible to defend.
JNF
In recent years, the government has adopted the so-called Prawer Plan, reversing several earlier decisions to recognize unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev desert. The new plan, explained by Association for Civil Rights in Israel lawyer Rawia Abu Rabia, will relocate 40,000 Bedouins in southern Israel for the establishment of 10 Jewish villages in their place.
The Jewish National Fund (JNF), that ownes 13% of Israeli lands, forbids the sale or lease of its lands to any but Jewish owners. Many are now joining a global campaign against this policy whose roots come from expropriated Palestinian Land. The Real News’ Lia Tarachansky looks at the history of JNF land acquisition from the land taken from 1948 refugees in the village of Ma’alul, 1967 refugees on whose land Canada Park was built, and the Bedouins of Al Araqib on whose land the JNF is attempting to build the Ambassador’s Forest.
IOA Editor: An outstanding report by Lia Tarachansky where she puts current events in their historic, political, institutional, and legal context: How the repeated destruction of the Beduin village of al-Araqib fits in the Palestinian history of the Nakba, post-1948 confiscation of Palestinian lands within Israel, and the destruction of the Latroun villages after the 1967 War — all with the full involvement of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), a tax-exempt organization in the US.
On March 30, 2011, join the international campaign to Stop the Jewish National Fund. A key pillar of the colonization of Palestine – from the founding of the State of Israel to the present – has been the Keren Kayemet LeIsrael (KKL), commonly known in English as the Jewish National Fund (JNF). The JNF enjoys charity status in over 50 countries. This is despite its role in the on-going displacement of indigenous Palestinians from their land, the theft of their property, the funding of historic and present-day colonies, and the destruction of the natural environment.
Half a million trees planted over the past 18 months on the ancestral lands of Bedouin tribes in Israel’s Negev region were bought by a controversial Christian evangelical television channel that calls itself God-TV.
Israeli historian Tom Segev: “Who does this country belong to?”
Should Mr al-Uqbi win his case, tens of thousands of Bedouin … could be entitled to repossess their agricultural lands… Theoretically, it might also open the door to claims by millions of Palestinian refugees scattered across the Middle East.
In addition to its plating activities, JNF also holds studies on forestation and ecology and hosts delegations from around the world interested in learning plating methods in dry conditions and forest protection.
IOA Editor: The JNF’s greatest contribution to the success of Zionism and the State of Israel has been the facilitation of the replacement of Palestine’s Arab population by a Jewish population, a process that is generally termed Ethnic Cleansing. Starting well before the establishment of Israel, it peaked after 1948 and continued on.
JNF eBook, Vol. I: JNF – Colonizing Palestine since 1901
Edited by Mortaza Sahibzada
Introducing the Jewish National Fund
“We are deeply critical and indeed shocked by the decision of the JNF to donate thousands of trees, grown with money donated by Jews from around the world, to the PA,” [said] ZOA national president… “Has it really come to this? That a venerable Zionist organization with only one purpose – the building-up of a sovereign Jewish national existence – takes money from Jews and then uses [the] funds to make a gift of trees to Israel’s unreconstructed enemies?”
IOA Editor: Founded in 1901, the Jewish National Fund (JNF), that “venerable Zionist organization,” is a quasi Israeli government agency in charge of land development for Jewish-only use, funded by Zionist donors world-wide. From its inception, it has been at the forefront of a campaign of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from approximately 500 towns and villages, and their replacement by legally-binding, exclusively-Jewish land ownership and use. It is indeed peculiar that the JNF got involved in tree planting on the West Bank while Israeli settlers, at the current forefront of the Zionist colonization program, are busy destroying Palestinian olive groves nearby. However, no number of freshly planted trees can redeem a century of crimes perpetrated by the JNF against the Palestinian people.
