JNF: Remaking the Map of Palestine.

Mar 25, 2022

On 23rd September 1980, in Derry, a new play opened in the Guildhall. Nothing remarkable there you might think, except that a military helicopter was flying overhead, and the audience in this occupied city had to run a tight security gauntlet.

The play was “Translations” by Brian Friel of the Field Day Theatre Company. The historical setting was the English cartographical expedition of 1822-42. This military mission was disguised as a benign operation, clarifying and transcribing Gaelic names into the English language. Carried out by soldiers with some local support, the process signalled an approach to colonialism that reached far deeper than military conquest alone into the realms of language and identity; as one character in the play remarked, “It’s a kind of eviction.”

This word, replete with historical resonance in Ireland, exposes the politicisation of cartography by imperial forces, the erasure of historic names with their cultural associations, and the imposition of the stamp of imperial ownership, a claiming of the land by linguistic means.

As the medieval linguist Antonio de Nebrija said, “Language has always been the perfect instrument of empire”.

Scroll forward to Kuwait, 2022. Dr Salman Abu Sitta, who knows full well the operations of empire, sits at his desk mapping his homeland, reclaiming it from Zionist settler colonialism, reasserting the Palestinian past and – we trust – prefiguring its future.

Dr Salman’s latest venture, adding to the magisterial “Atlas of Palestine” he has already produced, is the mapping of JNF Parks and Forests: – 46 of the 68 “leisure” facilities of the JNF lie over ethnically cleansed Palestinian land. Salman patiently peels away the layers of Zionist colonial impositions on Palestine, and, with no great drama, resists the attempted erasure of Palestine from the river to the sea by Israel and its leading agent, the JNF. Names are restored to their original, legitimate form.

Cartography, like archaeology, has been subordinated in Israel to the Zionist imperative of wiping Palestinians off the map, both literally and figuratively. A recent book, “Erased from Space and Consciousness: Israel and the Depopulated Villages of 1948” by Noga Kadman, offers insights into this little publicised aspect of the JNF’s work.

Maps of Palestine published by the British Mandatory authority showed thousands of Arabic names for communities and geographical locations. A tiny percentage (5%) were in Hebrew; some of these Hebrew names were ancient, some ascribed to new Jewish communities by the Jewish National Fund Naming Committee, founded in 1925. When the new state was formed in 1948, these Hebrew names were vastly outnumbered by original Arabic ones. Ben Gurion said of these names: “We must remove the Arabic names due to political considerations; just as we do not recognise the political ownership of Arabs over the land, we do not recognise their spiritual ownership and their names.”

From this point, the process of re-naming Palestine began, an exercise in colonial power and an assertion of ownership, as in Ireland, deracinating (or trying to deracinate) the people from their homeland. The work involved was carried out by a sequence of groups like the Negev (sic) Committee, established in 1949. Ben Gurion called the process the removal of “the infamy of alienage and foreign tongues…. Liberating the Negev from foreign rule.” The committee’s remit later expanded beyond the confines of the Naqab. 

Later, in 1951, the JNF’s Naming Committee and the Negev Committee merged to form the Government Names Committee, which is active to this day, still with JNF involvement. The ideology of this committee is to “revive” Hebrew names in an attempt to assert a right to the land, a “right” rooted in a remote past, connecting new immigrants to the land by obliterating evidence of Palestinian ownership of the land across millennia.

The committee tried first to find ancient Jewish connections in Arabic names and then to “revive” these. Where this proved impossible, the Arabic was Judaized or transliterated to make it sound Hebrew, foisting a false identity on the landscape. Thus, Tall Abu Huraya (named after one of the Prophet’s companions) was changed to Tel Haror – a name with no Hebrew meaning, but with a Hebraic phonology. 

Other strategies were adopted to eradicate the Arabic identity of the land; new Jewish communities were linked with biblical names or names alluding to the Zionist war against the British, symbolic names hinting at redemption, the ingathering of Jewish people, or names of Israeli heroes. Arabic street names in cities were changed to suit the national narrative: Independence Street, In-gathering of Exiles Street, Return of Zion Street (all in Haifa).

And so it continued. The Nakba villages were, of course, problematic.  Those villages which fell in the Nakba and were settled by Jewish people had to have their names Judaized. But the names of demolished villages were a problem. Some urged that they should not appear on any map at all, until they were settled by Jews, at which point they would be renamed. Eventually it was agreed to assign Hebrew names to Palestinian villages which absolutely needed to appear on the map.

Noga Kadmon tells us that the majority of depopulated Palestinian villages (302) were never assigned an official name in Israel; they were wiped off the map. Of the 116 that were named on maps, 69 were given names indicative of their ruined status, ignoring the cause of their ruination. For instance, Kudna under British Park was labelled ‘Iyei Kidon, (“Iyei” indicates ruins). Only 13 retained the original Arabic name.

These naming committees, still working today, with the JNF playing its usual role of Zionist agency, strive to consign the Arabic past to oblivion. In a manner analogous to the faux archaeology of the City of David theme park, Naming Committees have desperately dug about in history, seeking to leap over the Palestinian presence and connect today’s Zionist enterprise with a redemptive biblical/ancient past.

The effort of these bureaucratic committees is, indeed, to “redeem” – but, on a more significant level, it is increasingly impossible to rescue Israel from its settler colonial self, to drag the JNF from its fundamental racism and to salvage a scrap of decency from the ugliness and cruelty of the Zionist project.

Stop the JNF: Once More to the Charity Commission. March 9th 2022.

Mar 25, 2022

Last week, a group of activists gathered outside the London headquarters of the Charity Commission to hand in a petition signed by 4000+ people, calling on the Commission to strip JNF UK of its charity status. They were joined for the hand-in by Tommy Sheppard MP.

The petition was circulated after the  Commission opened a regulatory investigation into JNF UK because of the racist and Islamophobic remarks made by a number of members of their board.

The petition demanded that the Charity Commission’s investigation doesn’t end with these comments – because the foundations and ongoing activities of the organisation are rooted in anti-Palestinian racism.

While handing the petition in, statements were read out from several Palestinians, both in their homeland and in exile, speaking to the reality of the JNF’s role in ethnic cleansing, and the maintenance of Israel’s system of apartheid. They spoke of the JNF’s afforestation of ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages and of the JNF’s contemporary role in dispossessing Palestinians in the Naqab and in Jerusalem.

The statements also spoke of the inspiring resistance to the JNF and Israel’s colonial project across Palestine. We will continue to stand in solidarity with Palestinians struggling for liberation, and demand that the JNF UK is stripped of its charitable status.

Stop the JNF – Join the British Park Campaign.

Mar 25, 2022

JNF UK’s leisure facility, British Park, is a crime scene, created on the lands of 7 Palestinian villages, emptied in the Nakba. After 1948, the JNF helped Israel dispose of the stolen lands by creating parks and forests: 46 of JNF’s 68 parks or forests are on ethnically cleansed land. The rightful Palestinian owners still claim their Right of Return.

The JNF’s role in ethnic cleansing did not begin – or end – with the Nakba. From its inception in 1901 to this day, the JNF worked to acquire Palestinian land, to remove the indigenous people from that land, and to replace them with Jewish people only – building Israeli apartheid, advancing settler colonialism.

British Park campaign links JNF’s crimes of the past with its crimes today as seen in the Naqab and East Jerusalem.

Stop the JNF’s British Park team has joined with Palestinian partner (Badil, Stop the Wall, Zochrot and grass roots activists) to expose and challenge the crimes of the JNF and the complicity of the British state.

Join the campaign and say “NOT IN OUR NAME” to the JNF and Israel. To request a meeting for your group, email england@stopthejnf.org  Find out more about the campaign  here

The activities of the KKL-JNF in the Amnesty Spotlight. February 2022

Feb 24, 2022

In the Amnesty International Report “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians”, published on 1st February 2022, the KKL-JNF – the Jewish National Fund as we know it – is mentioned on many occasions. At other times the report uses expressions like “Jewish national organisations” or “semi-governmental land institutions” of which the KKL-JNF is the major element.

Below are the parts of the report, quoted verbatim, that refer to it and to the operations it is directly involved in.

  1. The land regime established soon after Israel’s creation, which was never dismantled, remains a crucial aspect of the system of oppression and domination against Palestinians. It consisted of legislation, reinterpretation of existing British and Ottoman laws, governmental and semi-governmental land institutions, and a supportive judiciary that enabled the acquisition of Palestinian land and its discriminatory reallocation across all territories under its control.
  2. Between 1948 and the early 1950s, Israel instituted a series of emergency regulations and laws to seize the land and property belonging to the Palestinian population and to formally transfer the ownership of this land to the State of Israel, and from the state to the Jewish National Fund (JNF), known in Hebrew as Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (KKL), municipal councils, Jewish localities and Jewish individuals and companies. Three main pieces of legislation made up the core of the Israeli land regime and played a major role in this process: 1) the Absentees’ Property Law (Transfer of Property Law) of 1950; 2) the Land Acquisition Law of 1953; and 3) the British Land (Acquisition for Public Purposes) Ordinance of 1943. The laws and their subsequent amendments, which remain in force, were instrumental in expropriating and acquiring Palestinian land and property, leading over the years to their exclusive ownership by the Israeli state and Jewish national institutions.
  3. Since East Jerusalem’s annexation in 1967, the entire Israeli land regime has been utilized in East Jerusalem for the expropriation of Palestinian land and its conversion mainly to state land. Israeli authorities have also enacted additional legal tools that affect Palestinian land and housing rights in East Jerusalem.
  4. In parallel, the Israeli government enabled Jewish localities and settlements to use the expropriated lands. In Israel and East Jerusalem, it transferred from the state to Jewish national organizations and institutions, many of which serve Jews only, while the legal title of the land remained in the state’s name. In the rest of the OPT, the Israeli government adopted policies that allowed the allocation of state land almost exclusively to Israeli state institutions and organizations, state and private companies, for the benefit of Jewish Israeli citizens only.                                                                                                                                                                      
  1. Jewish national bodies generally do not lease land to non-Jews and do not accept them in the housing projects and/or communities they establish on state lands that have been developed specifically for new Jewish immigrants. About 13% of state land in Israel, or over 2.5 million dunams, is owned and administered solely through the Jewish National Fund for exclusive use by Jews.
  2. The Negev/Naqab is a prime example of how Israel’s discriminatory planning and building policies aredesigned to maximize land and resources for Jewish Israelis at the expense of Palestinian land and housing Instead of zoning Palestinian Bedouin villages in the Negev/Naqab as residential areas, since the1970s, the Israeli authorities have zoned the villages and the lands around them for military, industrial or public use. Over the years, Israel has recognized 11 of these villages but 35 remain “unrecognized” with residents considered to engage in “illegal squatting” and unable to apply for a building permit to legalize their established or new homes as the lands are not designated as residential. The buildings of whole communities have been repeatedly demolished as a result. By contrast, Israeli courts have retroactively approved Jewish communities built without outline plans and building permits in the same area. The lack of official status also means that the Israeli authorities do not provide these villages any essential infrastructure or services such as healthcare or education, and residents have no representation in the different local
    governmental bodies as they cannot register for or participate in municipal elections.
  3. Israel’s control of water resources and water-related infrastructure in the OPT results in striking inequalities between Palestinians and Jewish settlers. The Israeli authorities restrict Palestinians’ access to water in the West Bank through military orders, which prevent them from building any new water installation without first obtaining a permit from the Israeli army. They are unable to drill new wells, install pumps or deepen existing wells, and are denied access to the Jordan River and freshwater springs. Israel even controls the collection
    of rainwater in most of the West Bank, and the Israeli army often destroys rainwater-harvesting cisterns owned by Palestinian communities. Meanwhile, in the Gaza Strip, the coastal aquifer has been depleted by Israeli over-extraction and contaminated by sewage and seawater infiltration, resulting in more than 95% of its water being unfit for human consumption.
  4. Another major transfer of Palestinian refugees’ land was from the Israeli government to the JNF/KKL, known as the “two million deal”. The first million dunams (more precisely 1,109,769 dunams) were transferred in January 1949, a month after the passage of UN Resolution 194 on the right of return for Palestinian refugees. The second million dunams (more precisely 1,271,734 dunams) were transferred in October 1950. The JNF/KKL worked with the Israeli government to make these lands available for Jewish settlement and forestation. Thus, the land of the Palestinian “absentees” was transferred to various Jewish institutions, governmental bodies and municipal councils, and then leased to individual Jewish Israelis who either lived in the houses or apartments of Palestinians or leased the land for industrial or agricultural purposes. By 1950, the JNF/KKL owned 2.1 million dunams and the state claimed ownership of 16.7 million dunams of land.
  5. From the late 1950s, Israel used the ordinance to expropriate massive areas of privately owned Palestinian land and transfer it for the building and development of Jewish cities, towns and settlements by allocating it to the JNF/KKL.
  6. As pointed out in 1957 by Yosef Weitz, a pivotal JNF/KKL official who became the first director of the Israel Land Administration: “The aim of work until now has been to secure state ownership of its lands. The aim now is Yihud ha-Galil [Judaization of the Galilee] …
  7. As a result, individuals living in the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem) who wished to register previously unregistered land had to do it privately under a procedure known as “first registration”. However, the large amount of evidence required to prove both possession and continuous cultivation of land, the high costs involved and the length of the procedure meant that it was inaccessible for most Palestinians. The procedure therefore mostly benefited Israeli settlers and companies who wanted to register the ownership of land that they had bought, or claimed to have bought, in the West Bank. Amongst such companies are subsidiaries of the JNF/KKL whose presence and activities were facilitated through Israeli military orders and amendments to Jordanian laws.
  8. The Israel Land Authority, a state body that succeeded the Israel Land Administration in 2009, administers state land in Israel and its Council determines how the land is managed and allocated. The Council is made up of 14 members including the minister of housing as chair, seven representatives of government ministries and six representatives of the JNF/ KKL, making it a national institution that explicitly privileges Jews.
  9. In 1901, the WZO established the JNF/KKL specifically to acquire land in Palestine for “the purpose of settling Jews on such lands and properties.”
  10. Before 1948, the JNF/KKL acquired a little over 800,000 dunams in Palestine. Following the establishment of Israel, the JNF/KKL continued to act as a custodian and trustee of “Jewish national land”. The JNF/KKL also played a crucial role as a company registered in Israel that performed certain state functions on the basis of the Jewish National Fund Law of 1953. The law grants the JNF/KKL a special status in designing Israel’s land policies in general and entitles it to tax breaks and financial benefits, while retaining semi-governmental functions. Its remit includes the purchase and acquisition of lands and assets in areas in Israel or “in any area subject to the jurisdiction of the Government of Israel” for the purpose of settling Jews on them, and the reclamation and development of land in Israel. After the purchase of 2 million dunams (the “two million deal”) from the state in 1949 and 1950, the JNF/KKL became the largest agricultural landowner in Israel, serving Jews only, as per its charter. In addition, the JNF/KKL purchased some 360 properties in the West Bank and claims to be able to prove ownership for approximately 170 of them. Most of these purchase deals were completed by Himnuta, a subsidiary of JNF/KKL.
  11. About 13% of state land in Israel, or over 2.5 million dunams, is owned and administered solely through the JNF/KKL for use by Jews.
  12. Land and property grabs by settler organizations have taken place with the assistance of state institutions, including the Custodian General, the JNF/KKL and the judiciary.
  13. A JNF/KKL report shows the strong connection between the JNF/KKL and Elad in transferring properties to Elad and facilitating its Jewish settlement enterprise in Silwan.
  14. In 1981 for example, 81.15% of farmland was located on state land owned by both the Israeli state and the JNF/KKL. Of this, only 0.17% was allocated to Palestinian farmers.
  15. The plan to build the Jewish community of Hiran is supported by the JNF/KKL and key NGOs, including the OR Movement.

 

The activities of the KKL-JNF in the Amnesty Spotlight.

Feb 9, 2022

February 2022:  In the Amnesty International Report “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians”, published on 1st February 2022, the KKL-JNF – the Jewish National Fund as we know it – is mentioned by name on many occasions. At other times the report uses expressions like “Jewish national organisations” or “semi-governmental land institutions” of which the KKL-JNF is the major element.

Below are the parts of the report, quoted verbatim and with the specific page number in the report itself, that refer to it and to the operations it is directly involved in.

 

  1. In 1901, the WZO established the JNF/KKL specifically to acquire land in Palestine for “the purpose of settling Jews on such lands and properties.” (p129)
  2. Before 1948, the JNF/KKL acquired a little over 800,000 dunams in Palestine. Following the establishment of Israel, the JNF/KKL continued to act as a custodian and trustee of “Jewish national land”. (Later) The JNF/KKL also played a crucial role as a company registered in Israel that performed certain state functions on the basis of the Jewish National Fund Law of 1953. The law grants the JNF/KKL a special status in designing Israel’s land policies in general and entitles it to tax breaks and financial benefits, while retaining semi-governmental functions. Its remit includes the purchase and acquisition of lands and assets in areas in Israel or “in any area subject to the jurisdiction of the Government of Israel” for the purpose of settling Jews on them, and the reclamation and development of land in Israel. After the purchase of 2 million dunams (the “two million deal”) from the state in 1949 and 1950, the JNF/KKL became the largest agricultural landowner in Israel, serving Jews only, as per its charter. In addition, the JNF/KKL purchased some 360 properties in the West Bank and claims to be able to prove ownership for approximately 170 of them. Most of these purchase deals were completed by Himnuta, a subsidiary of JNF/KKL. (p129)
  3. The land regime established soon after Israel’s creation, which was never dismantled, remains a crucial aspect of the system of oppression and domination against Palestinians. It consisted of legislation, reinterpretation of existing British and Ottoman laws, governmental and semi-governmental land institutions, and a supportive judiciary that enabled the acquisition of Palestinian land and its discriminatory reallocation across all territories under its control. (p22)
  4. Between 1948 and the early 1950s, Israel instituted a series of emergency regulations and laws to seize the land and property belonging to the Palestinian population and to formally transfer the ownership of this land to the State of Israel, and from the state to the Jewish National Fund (JNF), known in Hebrew as Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (KKL), municipal councils, Jewish localities and Jewish individuals and companies. Three main pieces of legislation made up the core of the Israeli land regime and played a major role in this process: 1) the Absentees’ Property Law (Transfer of Property Law) of 1950; 2) the Land Acquisition Law of 1953; and 3) the British Land (Acquisition for Public Purposes) Ordinance of 1943. The laws and their subsequent amendments, which remain in force, were instrumental in expropriating and acquiring Palestinian land and property, leading over the years to their exclusive ownership by the Israeli state and Jewish national institutions. (p114)
  5. From the late 1950s, Israel used the ordinance to expropriate massive areas of privately owned Palestinian land and transfer it for the building and development of Jewish cities, towns and settlements by allocating it to the JNF/KKL. (p122)
  6. In parallel, the Israeli government enabled Jewish localities and settlements to use the expropriated lands. In Israel and East Jerusalem, it transferred from the state to Jewish national organizations and institutions, many of which serve Jews only, while the legal title of the land remained in the state’s name. In the rest of the OPT, the Israeli government adopted policies that allowed the allocation of state land almost exclusively to Israeli state institutions and organizations, state and private companies, for the benefit of Jewish Israeli
    (p126)                                                                                                                                                                           
  7. Jewish national bodies generally do not lease land to non-Jews and do not accept them in the housing projects and/or communities they establish on state lands that have been developed specifically for new Jewish immigrants. About 13% of state land in Israel, or over 2.5 million dunams, is owned and administered solely through the Jewish National Fund for exclusive use by Jews. (p130)
  8. The Negev/Naqab is a prime example of how Israel’s discriminatory planning and building policies are designed to maximize land and resources for Jewish Israelis at the expense of Palestinian land and housing Instead of zoning Palestinian Bedouin villages in the Negev/Naqab as residential areas, since the1970s, the Israeli authorities have zoned the villages and the lands around them for military, industrial or public use. Over the years, Israel has recognized 11 of these villages but 35 remain “unrecognized” with residents considered to engage in “illegal squatting” and unable to apply for a building permit to legalize their established or new homes as the lands are not designated as residential. The buildings of whole communities have been repeatedly demolished as a result. By contrast, Israeli courts have retroactively approved Jewish communities built without outline plans and building permits in the same area. The lack of official status also means that the Israeli authorities do not provide these villages any essential infra structure or services such as healthcare or education, and residents have no representation in the different local
    governmental bodies as they cannot register for or participate in municipal elections. (p116)     
  1. Israel’s control of water resources and water-related infrastructure in the OPT results in striking inequalities between Palestinians and Jewish settlers. The Israeli authorities restrict Palestinians’ access to water in the West Bank through military orders, which prevent them from building any new water installation without first obtaining a permit from the Israeli army. They are unable to drill new wells, install pumps or deepen existing wells, and are denied access to the Jordan River and freshwater springs. Israel even controls the collection
    of rainwater in most of the West Bank, and the Israeli army often destroys rainwater-harvesting cisterns owned by Palestinian communities. Meanwhile, in the Gaza Strip, the coastal aquifer has been depleted by Israeli over-extraction and contaminated by sewage and seawater infiltration, resulting in more than 95% of its water being unfit for human consumption. (p28)
  2. As pointed out in 1957 by Yosef Weitz, a pivotal JNF/KKL official who became the first director of the Israel Land Administration: “The aim of work until now has been to secure state ownership of its lands. The aim now is Yihud ha-Galil [Judaization of the Galilee] …(p126)
  3. As a result, individuals living in the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem) who wished to register previously unregistered land had to do it privately under a procedure known as “first registration”. However, the large amount of evidence required to prove both possession and continuous cultivation of land, the high costs involved and the length of the procedure meant that it was inaccessible for most Palestinians. The procedure therefore mostly benefited Israeli settlers and companies who wanted to register the ownership of land that they had bought, or claimed to have bought, in the West Bank. Amongst such companies are subsidiaries of the JNF/KKL whose presence and activities were facilitated through Israeli military orders and amendments to Jordanian laws. (p127)
  4. Since East Jerusalem’s annexation in 1967, the entire Israeli land regime has been utilized in East Jerusalem for the expropriation of Palestinian land and its conversion mainly to state land. Israeli authorities have also enacted additional legal tools that affect Palestinian land and housing rights in East Jerusalem. (p22)
  5. The Israel Land Authority, a state body that succeeded the Israel Land Administration in 2009, administers state land in Israel and its Council determines how the land is managed and allocated. The Council is made up of 14 members including the minister of housing as chair, seven representatives of government ministries and six representatives of the JNF/ KKL, making it a national institution that explicitly privileges Jews. (P129)
  6. About 13% of state land in Israel, or over 2.5 million dunams, is owned and administered solely through the JNF/KKL for use by Jews. (p24)
  7. In 1981 for example, 81.15% of farmland was located on state land owned by both the Israeli state and the JNF/KKL. Of this, only 0.17% was allocated to Palestinian farmers. (p179)
  8. Land and property grabs by settler organizations have taken place with the assistance of state institutions, including the Custodian General, the JNF/KKL and the judiciary. (p23)
  9. A JNF/KKL report shows the strong connection between the JNF/KKL and Elad in transferring properties to Elad and facilitating its Jewish settlement enterprise in Silwan. (p137)
  10. The plan to build the Jewish community of Hiran is supported by the JNF/KKL and key NGOs, including the OR Movement. (p225)

JNF: A History of Deceit

Feb 7, 2022

February 2022: As one of the principal fundraising arms of the Zionist movement, the Jewish National Fund has led a chameleon-like existence, adapting to political developments to sustain its credibility as a benign force above the political fray.  The JNF has played a key role in establishing an apartheid state by acquiring land for state building on the principle of privileging one ethnicity, Jews.  

Pre-World War 2, Zionism’s appeal to Jewish communities drew on the imperialist imaginary that European colonisation could take modernity to “backward” parts of the world.  It claimed for Jews the mission to take on the “white man’s burden” in Palestine.  Since the 1970s, with outright colonisation largely discredited, the JNF switched to claiming to protect and nurture the natural environment.  Behind this much trumpeted claim, lies a long and sordid history of complicity in ethnic cleansing.  

Settler colonialism has a particularly bloody record.  The countless massacres and even genocide that European settlers carried out were excused on the political right as part of the Darwinian struggle of races and, on the social democratic left, as the price of progress to a more developed economy.

Zionist ideologues such as Yosef Weitz, who had a formative influence on the JNF, was additionally inspired by the Prussian state’s model of colonisation, which it carried out in the late 19th century to populate its eastern borders with Germans with aim of pushing out Polish peasants from that region.  The JNF transferred this model to Palestine as part of the Zionist movement’s settlement programme.  Once the British took control of Palestine, at the end of the first World War, the JNF was able to proceed under imperial protection.  Yet, the JNFs land purchases until 1947, yielded only about 7 percent of Palestine’s agricultural land.  It was the Palestinians’ ethnic cleansing of 1947-1949 and then of 1967, that proved to be the main mechanism for seizing their land and placing it under Israeli control. To disguise such barefaced colonial conquest, in a period of decolonization, required subterfuge and obfuscation.  The JNF was on hand for this task.

It had been set up specifically for the goal of acquiring land to settle Jewish immigrants in Palestine.  Land that came into JNF ownership was to be in perpetuity and exclusively for the benefit of Jews. It was this ethnic exclusivism inscribed in the JNF’s charter, that proved useful even after the Israeli state was established. Israel had gained control of Palestinian land mainly through military force, but in order to win international acceptance in its independence declaration it professed a commitment to democratic rights to all people under its rule and to abide by international laws.  This stood in contradiction, however, with the Zionist objective of building a Jewish state, which could only be realised by discriminating against Palestinians.  The state tasked the JNF, therefore, with redistributing Palestinian land to Israel’s Jewish citizens while paying lip service to the democratic principles it professed to uphold.  The deceit was useful not only for Israel but also for its Western allies.  The “only democracy in the Middle East” tag was eminently more defensible than the reality of it being an imperial outpost. 

For all the pretence of being a-political and charitable, there can be little doubt that the JNF is an extension of the Israeli state and instrumental in consolidating its apartheid.  It administers 13 percent of the land over which Israel claims ownership and it also nominates 50 per cent of the board members of the Israeli Land Authority, which controls a further 80 percent of the land within Israel’s pre-1967 borders.          

The Israeli state’s subterfuge in outsourcing activities that may provoke international criticism continues in the JNF current practice.  Thus JNF-KKL (the Israeli JNF) has tried to distance itself from illegal land and property grabs that it funds in East Jerusalem and the West Bank by operating through a proxy company called Himanuta.  It has been also revealed to secretly fund Elad, a settler organisation that is seizing Palestinian houses in East Jerusalem on the pretext of recovering land for reconstructing the ‘City of David,’ which no self-respecting archaeologists credit as ever having existed there, if at all.   The JNF’s UK branch, whenever challenged over funding projects that violate international laws and/or charity regulations, claim to operate completely independently of the JNF-KKL, notwithstanding a legally binding collaboration between them since 2008 and countless on-line funding appeals vaunting their close collaborative relationship. 

JNF funded projects are closely aligned with the Israeli state’s plan to break up the last remaining, significant concentrations of Palestinians, which are in the Galilee, East Jerusalem and the Naqab (Negev).  The JNF’s pretence to be a charitable organisation is belied by its history and current practice. Palestinians resisting eviction in East Jerusalem and the Naqab are calling out the JNF’s role in their ethnic cleansing.  At last Amnesty International, too, has called out its role in Israel’s apartheid.  This chameleon has run out of colours to disguise itself.