As COP 26 approaches, check this link COP 26 flyer for a short summary of information about assembly points, national hubs for finding rallies near you, leaflets, the important People’s Summit events and other key pieces of information.
The Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) has announced that it will fund land confiscation in the West Bank, in defiance of international law. Its board of governors voted through the allocation of NIS 38 million to acquire land to expand Jewish-only settlements.
Your MP can ask the Attorney General to ensure their charity status is investigated. Take action here…
See the statement issued by Stop the JNF and read more in this influential article by Gideon Levy, aptly entitled “Jewish national Fund for Apartheid.”
URGENT: the Jewish National Fund (JNF) is trying to evict a Palestinian family from their East Jerusalem home. We have made it simple for you to write to your MP to exert pressure on Israel to support the Sumarin family.
EDM 529: Eviction of Palestinian family from East Jerusalem
That this House strongly condemns the ongoing attempts of the Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) to evict the Sumarin family from their home in East Jerusalem; recognises this within a broader context of the Israeli government’s efforts to demographically alter the population of Jerusalem, and the controversial use of Israel’s Absentee Property Law to dispossess Palestinians of their land; notes the Sumarin family have lived at their property, with deeds of ownership, for over fifty years; reiterates that ethnic cleansing is one of the most serious crimes, and that the UK is committed to upholding international law; urgently requests the Government to intervene on behalf of the Sumarin family, and calls on the Charity Commission to review the charitable status of JNF UK.
69 MPs have signed as of 9am on Thursday July 23rd
Is your MP one of them? Find out here
The 2014 Annual Congress of the University and College Union Scotland Congress (UCU Scotland) today voted unanimously to condemn the planned visit by Israeli war criminal Tzipi Livni. The Israeli politician was given a rare diplomatic passport by the UK Government in 2011 specifically to protect her from the risk of arrest and prosecution for complicity in Israeli war crimes. Livni is planning to speak at a provocative Nakba Day meeting of the racist JNF (Jewish National Fund) at a secret central London venue on Thursday 15th May. UCU Scotland Congress called on Theresa May to refuse Livni entry to the UK.
On Nakba (“Catastrophe”) Day, Palestinians remember the wave of Zionist ethnic cleansing that engulfed Palestine in 1948, and created the world’s largest refugee population. Every year on 15th May Palestinians and human rights supporters protest Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing programmes, house demolitions and Israel’s apartheid system, of which the JNF is a central pillar.
Stop the JNF UK supports the demonstration called by Palestine Solidarity Campaign of England and Wales and the London Palestine Action in Central London on Thursday May 15th to protest the racist JNF and its war criminal guest, Livni.
In late 2009 Livni cancelled a scheduled visit to London when she discovered an arrest warrant had been issued against her on the grounds she had been a member of the Israeli war cabinet which organised the massacre of more than a 1400 Palestinians.
30 March 2013
Stop the JNF UK
On 30 March 1976, thousands of Palestinians living as a minority in Israel mounted a general strike and organised protests against Israeli government plans to expropriate almost 15,000 acres of Palestinian land in the Galilee. The Israeli government, led by prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and defence minister Shimon Peres, sent in the army to break up the general strike. The Israeli army killed six unarmed Palestinians, wounded hundreds and arrested hundreds more, including political activists. All were citizens of Israel.
Palestinians who were internally displaced or managed to remain in their homes during the Zionist ethnic cleansing of 1948 were given citizenship of Israel but kept under military rule until 1966. During those years expropriation of Palestinian land accelerated and Jewish settlement building increased while the Israeli government crushed political organisation and resistance by Palestinians, now a minority on their own land.
On what became known as Land Day, 30th March 1976 was the first time since 1948 Palestinians inside Israel demonstrated mass resistance against Zionist colonisation and systematic dispossession of Palestinians.
Today, Palestinians are 20% of the population of Israel and they, together with Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, continue to struggle against land expropriation, dispossession and systematic segregation, or apartheid. Until today the Israeli government with the help of Zionist organisations such as the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund (JNF) are working to drive Palestinians from their homes and their land to replace them with Jewish settlers and colonies. The JNF is a racist organisation that is complicit in ethnic cleansing and whose activities are an obstacle to a just peace.
The JNF branch in the UK has registered charity status despite JNF UK aims and activities violating charity law and the public benefit requirement. While we send our greetings of solidarity on Land Day to Palestinians protesting and in struggle against the colonisation and occupation of their lands, it is important we work here to end JNF UK charity status.
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. Palestinians continue to resist Israeli occupation, apartheid and colonisation. For most of the time since their founding, the UK branch of KKL-JNF has enjoyed charitable status and the resulting subsidies from British taxpayers. The KKL-JNF branch in Israel functions as an arm of the Israeli State in the enforcement of an apartheid system of land control and population segregation, and has played a major role in the refinement of this system over the years. JNF UK exhibits a large display at the ‘British Park’ in Israel, built on the ethnically cleansed and stolen lands of four destroyed Palestinian villages, boasting that the land is a ‘Gift of the Jewish National Fund of Great Britain’.
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. Last year, 68 MPs signed a motion stating “there is just cause to consider revocation of the JNF’s charitable status in the UK”.
The irrefutable case for stripping JNF UK of its charitable status is being presented formally today to Charity Commission offices across England and Wales, in London, Newport, Liverpool and Taunton. A submission to the Scottish Charity Regulators will follow shortly. It is important that many concerned citizens and institutions write to the Charity Commission adding their own and their friends’ voices to the call for the JNF UK to be struck off the charities register as a sham charity.
Today, March 21st, is International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, called by the UN General Assembly in commemoration of the massacre of 69 peaceful protestors in Sharpeville in 1960, 53 years ago today. Sharpeville marked a turning point in the struggle against apartheid South Africa, whose government and institutions found themselves increasingly isolated. Palestinians have suffered almost 100 ‘Sharpevilles’ since October 2000, including 22 ‘Sharpevilles’ of children alone.
Inspired by the South African resistance against apartheid and struggle for freedom, and in response to the Palestinian civil society call for a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, we call for your participation to help stop JNF UK receiving subsidies from UK taxpayers.
