The Charity Commission has announced that it will examine whether “regulatory action is required” in respect of the Jewish National Fund UK following Islamophobic statements by its longstanding head, Samuel Hayek. This coincides with the revelation that the Honorary Treasurer of the JNF UK, Gary Mond, had expressed support for Islamophobic statements in his social media postings. In the past, the Charity Commission has summarily dismissed calls to investigate the JNF’s funding for projects that, in clear violation of international law and the professed policy of successive British governments, have promoted the expansion of Jewish settlements and their armed vigilantes.
It is not Hayek’s and Mond’s repugnant views that make the JNF racist. Racism is integral to the JNF. It exists to promote the Israeli state’s policy of building Jewish ethnic supremacy in Israel and the West Bank at the expense of the Palestinians. As the Charity Commission turns its attention to the racism of JNF officials, Bedouin villagers in the Negev are resisting their dispossession by the JNF’s forest planting which its fundraising publicity, in this country, claims to be for environmental improvement. On 15th January, the Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz, reported: “Police disperse hundreds of protesters with stun grenades and tear gas, as Israel’s Negev erupts in protest over Jewish National Fund’s tree-planting on land used for agriculture by local Bedouin.” As an editorial of the same newspaper (13th January) stated: “Only the naive can believe that planting the trees near the Bedouin villages Mulada and Sawa area was meant to celebrate Tu Bishvat (Jewish Arbor Day) or to improve the ecological fabric of the Negev.” The JNF, through a front organisation called Himnuta, is also pressing to expel Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah and other neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem. These land confiscations which will cause further bloodshed stem from Israel’s policy of concentrating the Palestinian population into ever smaller urban ghettos.
In an announcement last year, the JNF stated its intentions openly to acquire land across the Green Line, dispensing with the services of proxy agents and signalling an escalation of land confiscation from Palestinians.
The Charity Commission is a British government agency that approves the JNF UK’s fundraising as a charitable activity. However, the Commission far from ensuring that the JNF complies with charity laws and regulations has assisted the JNF to circumvent them. The Commission’s 2005 report on the JNF following its “review visit”, noted: “We recommended that the trustees review the JNFCT [JNF Charitable Trust] website and all other information they publish. They should try to ensure that such information refrains from indicating a moral/political support for the state of Israel, but rather explains the focus of the charitable activities currently being funded by the Trust”. The Commission did not demand that the JNF cease to fund projects that support the Israeli state but merely that it should describe them differently because “such language has arguably given ammunition to those wanting to question the legitimacy of the charity’s work”.
In 2018, that legitimacy was challenged by Kholoud Al Ajarma, a Palestinian woman. She was from a family that had lived in one of the seven villages that, in 1948, Zionist forces ethnically cleansed and were subsequently planted over by the JNF UK sponsored British Park to prevent the villagers’ return. The Commission was able to protect the JNF from scrutiny by successfully arguing at a First Tier Tribunal hearing that Ms Al Ajarma had no legal standing to challenge the Commission’s original decision to dismiss her case, which had called for the deregistration of the JNF UK as a charity. In a subsequent correspondence with a person querying the JNF’s charitable pretention, the Commission wrote: “In simple terms, the test for charitable status is a test of what an organisation was set up to do, not what it does in practice”. For a regulatory body that supposedly exists to monitor what charities do in practice, such an argument is risible. It is also untenable even on its own terms. The JNF is doing precisely what it was set up do and, by any standard definition of the term, it is not charitable. It promotes taking over Palestinian land to make it available exclusively for Jewish settlement. This is now widely acknowledged to be instrumental in the Palestinians’ ethnic cleansing.
Given the Commission’s track record, the outcome of its current inquiry into the JNF leadership’s racism can be safely predicted. It will recommend to the organisation how to revamp its tarnished image. What the Commission will not do is expose to the British public the JNF’s role in entrenching Israel’s system of apartheid. Like Humpty Dumpty, the JNF has had a fall. The Charity Commission can be counted on to help put it together again but it will be still racist.
On Tuesday 27th April, the New York based Human Rights Watch declared that Israel’s rule over the Palestinians constitutes the crime of apartheid, a crime of the highest order. The criminality applies both at the collective level (to the state of Israel) and to named individuals within that state for their role in the crime.
Significantly, the report acknowledges the Jewish National Fund’s (JNF) central role in Israel’s system of apartheid.
The report notes how “semi-governmental bodies like the JNF, Jewish Agency, and WZO that serve the Jewish community and no other constituency” ensure Palestinians are excluded from land in Israel.
Moreover, the report analyses the JNF’s contemporary role in advancing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem.
The JNF is a racist organisation, which is complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, both during the Nakba of 1948, and with the land seizures and house demolitions that have continued relentlessly.
The JNF established the British Park on three destroyed and ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages. It is active in the destruction of Palestinians villages like Umm al Hiran, replaced by an exclusively Jewish village, and Al Araqib, destroyed 185 times to make way for a JNF ‘forest’.
Despite this, the JNF’s UK branch is a registered charity.
Defining Israel as a state practising apartheid brings responsibilities for the international community to end their complicity. This includes the removal of the JNF UK’s charitable status.
Israel’s Supreme Court backed down from evicting the Sumarin family and passed the decision to the representative of the state, the Attorney General, in a move which clearly indicates where the responsibility lies for demolition of Palestinian homes throughout the Occupied Territories: with the Israeli apartheid regime itself and its willing agents, JNF and Elad.
Jerusalem protest in support of the Sumarin family April 5th .
On April 5th, the Supreme Court was supposed to hear the Sumarin family’s appeal against the ruling ordering their eviction from their home in Silwan in favour of the Jewish National Fund (the JNF, or KKL).
But, at the beginning of the hearing, the judges announced that they had decided to request the Attorney General to state his position on the matters discussed in the case, and consequently no hearing took place. The Judges gave the Attorney General 60 days to give his opinion. After the state’s opinion is filed, the two sides (the JNF and the Sumarin family) will have a chance to respond, and then a hearing will be scheduled.
Hagit Ofran, of Peace Now, offered this comment on the significance of the Supreme Court’s move: “The Israeli government cannot continue claiming that eviction of families in East Jerusalem is “only” a legal matter between settlers and Palestinians. The government’s fingerprints are all over the Sumarin case. This is a political matter in which governmental apparatus, such as the Custodian of Absentees’ Properties, the Israel Land Authority and the JNF, have been utilized to dispossess Palestinians from their properties in East Jerusalem and to replace them by settlers.”
The 30-year long fight of the Sumarin family to keep their home in East Jerusalem offers a window into the Israeli policy of the Judaization of the whole of historic Palestine, a policy which necessitates ethnic cleansing, and which has as its handservants agents such as the JNF/Himnuta and Elad, the radical settler organisation.
The Sumarin family are not alone in facing the loss of their home: across the West Bank, in East Jerusalem and in the Naqab, Palestinians are facing eviction and the demolitions of their homes on an ever-increasing scale. This family has a high profile, supported by an international coalition, and are exemplars of the Palestinian people, who collectively face illegal and inhumane acts of cruelty, acts which build and sustain the apartheid regime of the state of Israel.
What’s happening to the Sumarin family has attracted international attention and this has proved effective in creating a nervousness in the JNF/KKL. The organisation took fright at the massive support for the Sumarin case and sought to freeze the Sumarin family’s eviction in July last year, anxious about the international ramifications of this blatantly unjust action for its world-wide branches. This nervousness has now affected even the Supreme Court of Israel as yesterday’s highly unusual decision reveals.
Here in the UK, EDM 529 (2020) strongly condemned the JNF for its ongoing efforts to evict the Sumarin, pointed out that this case is just one strand of Israel’s policy of demographic engineering and ethnic cleansing and urged the Charity Commission to remove charitable status from the JNF UK, the British office of the JNF/KKL.
72 MPs supported this EDM and, as we reported, the Israeli Embassy tried to distance the fate of the Sumarin from the state, saying, “The Government of Israel is not a party to the ongoing legal proceedings involving the Sumarin family.”
The excuse was a transparent attempt to deflect responsibility then and is now impossible to sustain, as it is the state which must determine the fate of the family.
Last month, for the first time in its long history, the Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) openly declared 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 take over land, previously confiscated by the Israeli state, to expand Jewish-only settlements yet further. All Israeli settlements, based on stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank, constitute a war crime under international law. Yet the British arm of KKL-JNF, JNF UK, continues to be a registered charity, enjoying tax exemption to raise funds for its parent organisation.
This decision is not an aberration, or a reversal of existing JNF policy, but a clear indication that the settlement expansion driven by Israel’s far right government and emboldened by the support it received from the Trump administration, is set to continue, more blatantly than previously.
Last year, it was revealed that over a two-year period JNF-KKL secretly acquired West Bank land earmarked for the expansion of illegal settlements, while its subsidiary Himnuta spearheaded fresh attempts to force Palestinians from their homes in annexed East Jerusalem. Himnuta and the right-wing settler group Elad have long cooperated to force Palestinian families to leave East Jerusalem. Their eviction has been condemned by a cross-party group of MPs, in signing EDM 529.
The KKL-JNF decision brings into the open what it has, for decades, been doing behind closed doors, or through a nexus of subsidiaries. In fact, KKL-JNF has been deeply complicit in the ongoing colonisation and settlement of Palestinian land, since its foundation in 1901. As Peace Now confirm, in the past decades KKL-JNF have acquired at least 65,000 dunams (16,000 acres) of land for settlements. The KKL-JNF has acted as a parastatal partner in the consequent forced displacement, occupation and apartheid policies of the state.
Here in Britain, JNF UK supports numerous KKL-JNF projects on both sides of the Green Line and is listed as KKL-JNF’s office in the UK. Much of JNF UK’s activities have been presented either as benign environmental projects or disguised through front organisations.
Once more, we call for the Charity Commission to remove JNF UK’s charity status, as a step towards holding UK businesses and organisations accountable for their complicity in Israeli violations of international law.
Duvdevani has spent his long career supporting illegal Israeli settlements and promoting Palestinian dispossession. In his new role as global chairperson of the Jewish National Fund, he will be doing much the same. (Mondoweiss December 1st 2020)
After an unusually fierce debate within key Zionist institutions, the World Zionist Organisation (WZO) has officially confirmed that its outgoing chair, Avraham Duvdevani, (above), of the religious Mizrachi slate, has been elected as the new global chairperson of the KKL-JNF.
Duvdevani replaces Danny Atar, a former Zionist Union MK, whose campaign for a second-term at KKL-JNF had the support of Israel’s Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz.
So, who is this new man at the top of the organization that owns 13% of the total land of Israel?
Before becoming the head of the World Zionist Organisation in 2010, spearheading the WZO’s growth subsequent to its split with the Jewish Agency, Duvdevani spent a long stint as the head of the WZOs settlement division. Established in 1971, the settlement division’s role is to finance illegal Israeli settlements on stolen Palestinian land, in close cooperation with the Israeli state, who grants it the entirety of its funding.
Boasting of the WZO’s role in implementing the Israeli government’s policy of settlement expansion in occupied East Jerusalem, Duvdevani commentedin 2002 that it “was very easy to get permission from the minister of defense and the government to build settlements that strengthened Jerusalem as the capital and the Jewish majority in Jerusalem and that blocked the option of the Palestinians to build in and near Jerusalem.”
In his roles at the WZO, Duvdevani was an enthusiastic proponent of policies rooted in the view that the indigenous Palestinian population is a demographic threat to be dealt with by increased Jewish settlement. In a speech given in the UK, encouraging Jews to move to Israel, he commented, “every year the [population] gap between the Arab citizens of Israel and the Jewish citizens of Israel is closing by 60,000 a year. So we need 60,000 Jews a year to come to freeze the gap between us and the Arabs.”
Fighting for the interests of Israeli settlers who live on stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem has been a hallmark of Duvdevani’s long career. Alongside his involvement in the WZO, he served on the central caucus of the far-right The Jewish Home party, promoting settler interests. The Jewish Home party, previously headed by former Minister of Defense Naftali Bennett, opposes the creation of a Palestinian state and advocates for unilateral annexation of the occupied West Bank.
For supporters of international law and justice, Duvdevani’s politics are repugnant. However, his support for rampant illegal settlement expansion and systematic discrimination means he will feel right at home in his new office.
Since its foundation in 1901, the Jewish National Fund has served as an agent of colonization, assisting the confiscation of Palestinian land and the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population. Its explicit mandate in controlling this land is to develop and lease it only to Jews, and not to the Palestinian population.
This role continues today. Last year, it was revealed that over a two year period the organization secretly spent tens of millions of shekels in purchases of West Bank land earmarked for the expansion of illegal settlements, while its subsidiary Himnuta spearheaded fresh attempts to force Palestinians from their homes inannexed East Jerusalem. Himnuta and right-wing settler group Elad have long cooperated to force Palestinian families from their homes in Silwan.
Given the role of the KKL-JNF in Palestinian dispossession, which will continue under the helm of its new global chairman, it is deeply disturbing that JNF UK maintains charity status, gaining with it attendant tax and financial benefits.
The campaign to get JNF UK stripped of its charity status is growing in momentum, in light of these new revelations demonstrating the key role the KKL-JNF continues to play in Palestinian dispossession.
As a cross-party group of parliamentarians recently demanded, through signing EDM 529, their charity status must be placed under immediate investigation. You can find out more about the campaign here: https://www.stopthejnf.org/
The following article appeared first in the Electronic Intifada, July 20th 2020
The Bedouin village of al-Araqib has been repeatedly destroyed to make way for a Jewish National Fund forest.
Image courtesy of Oren Ziv ActiveStills
The Jewish National Fund promotes itself as the “oldest green organization in the world.” By running social and environmental projects, the JNF has diverted attention away from how it has played a central role in the Zionist colonization of Palestine and, by extension, the dispossession of Palestinians.
Almost 120 years after its inception, the JNF remains firmly committed to Zionism, the ideology underpinning Israel’s apartheid system.
And a trawl through JNF documentation reveals that it enables Israeli violence on a massive scale.
Unnoticed by the Western media, the organization – headquartered in Jerusalem – is hoping to implement an ambitious blueprint known as “Israel 2040.” It aims tosettle 1.5 million Israelis in the Negev and Galilee regions over the coming two decades.
The stated reason behind that objective is a desire to make Israel “a more stable and demographically, economically and socially balanced country.”
Judging by the JNF’s activities until now that language appears to be code for subjugating Palestinian citizens of Israel, who are often called a “demographic threat” by Zionists.
The JNF has sought to displace Palestinians so that many parts of their historic homeland are reserved exclusively for Jews. Palestinian Bedouins living in al-Araqib, a village in the Negev, have seen their homes destroyed repeatedly by the Israeli authorities on the pretext of developing a JNF forest.
Capital of weapons industry
The Israel 2040 plan is to be implementedin conjunction with the Israeli military, which is reportedly moving the bases of its “technological units” into southern Israel.
Under the plan, the Negev would become the “capital” of Israel’s weapons industry, Daniel Atar, the JNF’s chair, has said.
Unit 8200 – comprisedof people aged between 18 and 21 – is the best known division in the Israeli military dedicated to technological innovation. Atar stated in May that the JNF has been engaged in “educational collaboration” with Unit 8200 graduates for the past three years.
Atar has depicted the “collaboration” as benign.
Part of it has involved setting up technology-focused youth centers in peripheral regions. Fostering innovation is “the true realization of Zionism today,” Atar said in 2017.
Yet the work of Unit 8200 is far from benign.
In 2014, a group of Unit 8200 veteransissued a letter stating their refusal to join operations in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. The letter revealed that Unit 8200 personnel had been instructed to retain any damaging details of Palestinians’ lives that they came across.
That included information on sexual orientation, financial problems or family illnesses that could be “used to extort/blackmail the person and turn them into a collaborator.”
Unit 8200 graduates have gone on to establish numerous cyber warfare firms, the most notorious of which is NSO Group. That firm’s software has been used to spyon the mobile phone communications of journalists and activists around the world.
Philanthropic?
Based in London, the JNF UK poses as independent of the Jewish National Fund in Jerusalem.
While it may enjoy operational autonomy, the JNF UK nonetheless supports many Jewish National Fund projects. Among them are the construction of an after-school center for teenagers in Kiryat Malachi, a town in the Negev.
This center has been described as a “house for excellence” by the JNF. Activities in the “houses for excellence” network are being developedin cooperation with Unit 8200 graduates.
The JNF UK’s website says that itsupports Zionism as a “philanthropic activity.”
It appears to have a curious understanding of the term “philanthropic.” Accounts for the JNF UK show that it provides financial backing to recruitment drives for Israel’s army – the army which imposes a brutal occupation on Gaza and the West Bank.
Among the beneficiaries of JNF UK funds is Ein Prat, a group which arranges training courses for North Americans who join the Israeli military.
Ein Prat has boasted of how “over 35 percent of our graduates” gain officer positions in Israel’s army.
Derech Eretz is another group that has received funding from JNF UK. According to the group’s website, it runs programs for young Israelis “from the lower strata of society” so that they can be better integrated into the military.
One of the group’sfounders, Avi Cohen, commanded a tank platoon when Israel undertook a large-scale attack against the West Bank in 2002. Almost 500 Palestinians were killed in that offensive.
JNF UK has also given money to Otzem, a school that provides training to boys before they enter Israel’s army.
Otzem was originally formed by Israeli settlers in Gaza during the 1990s. It moved to the Negev after Israel’s government withdrew the settlers from Gaza, while keeping it under military occupation, in 2005.
The school’s founder Rafi Peretz went on to become the chief rabbi in the Israeli army. Today, he heads the far-right Jewish Home party and holds the Jerusalem affairs portfolio in the Israeli government.
Otzem’s ethos is encapsulated in one of its brochures. Above a photograph of young men clutching machine guns, thebrochure promises a “uniquely Israeli experience.”
Violence is indeed an integral part of the “Israeli experience.” That, however, is not a message you are likely to find in the JNF UK’s publications.
The funding which the JNF UK offers to projects aimed at benefiting the Israeli army makes its status scandalous. It is a charity which supports war crimes.
Greg Dropkin is a researcher based in the English city of Liverpool.
