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EXTENSION READING: “This is not charity: The JNF and the Israeli military” by Greg Dropkin, with translation by David Sheen.
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The Electronic Intifada has published a version of this article:
The Bedouin village of al-Araqib has been repeatedly destroyed The Jewish National Fund, or KKL-JNF, has a network of national JNF organisations in over 20 countries including the US and Britain. The JNF-UK, like others, promotes itself as a charity developing Israel through social and environmental programmes. But tucked away in its accounts and reports, is evidence of extensive current JNF collaboration with the military and future plans to settle 1.5 million Israelis in the Negev and Galilee, in collaboration with alumni of the signals intelligence Unit 8200. As the Israeli equivalent of the US National Security Agency, Unit 8200 spies on Palestinians, and its veterans have spawned cybersecurity firms implicated in spying on human rights activists. Otzem One strand of the story begins in Gaza, in a former Israeli settlement Atzmona in Gush Katif. There, in 1993, Rabbi Rafi Peretz founded the Otzem Pre-Military Torah Academy, for youth from the religious Zionist community. In 2005, Israel “withdrew” from Gaza, while retaining complete control over the Strip. The Gush Katif settlers were “uprooted”, and moved to the Western Negev / Naqab desert as “pioneers”. Otzem was relocated in Naveh, a new agricultural settlement in the community of Halutzit. An Otzem brochure proclaims “If you seek a uniquely Israeli experience – then Otzem is the place for you!” above a photograph of two young men clutching machine guns ready to fire. Peretz became Chief Military Rabbi of the IDF from 2010-2016. He now leads the religious nationalist Jewish Home party, and is a member of the Knesset. In May 2020 he became Netanyahu’s minister of Jerusalem, heritage and national projects. In July 2019, as Minister of Education, he compared intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews to a “second Holocaust” and endorsed gay conversion therapy, claiming to have given it. A spreadsheet and a 2015 and 2017 brochure from the KKL-JNF show that JNF-UK donated in 2015-16-17, funding a venue for the Naveh-Otzem pre-Army programme. Earlier, JNF-UK had funded a boys’ dormitory for this all male Yeshiva. Otzem has also received funding from the Ne’eman Foundation in Canada. At least 5 other pre-military programmes, or mechinot, have received funding listed in the JNF-UK accounts. These include Ein Prat, Derech Eretz, Nachson, Meitarim Lachish, and Or Me’Ophir as well as the Benji Hillman Foundation which provides housing for “Lone Soldiers”. As the Foundation explains, Lone Soldiers are “young men and woman from abroad who have chosen to leave everything behind and come to Israel on their own to enlist in the IDF, or Israeli born young people from disadvantaged backgrounds or estranged from their families”. Ein Prat sponsors “North American youth who volunteer for the Israel Defense Force”, and their Lone Soldiers mechinot “benefit both the people who graduate from them and the army… Over thirty-five percent of our graduates gain officers positions in the IDF.” Derech Eretz, which received £464,000 from the JNF-UK in 2016-18, organises “events that specifically assist our graduates at crucial times in their active duty, including right after basic training, at the point when they decide if to go into command positions, and more.” Houses of Excellence – the true realization of Zionism today Kiryat Malachi is an underdeveloped area in the northern Negev / Naqab where the JNF has funded many projects. One of these, due to go live on 1 Sept, is a “House of Excellence”. The JNF-UK describes it as an amazing after-school centre that provides Israeli teenagers with all the best support and latest technology, tuition in core academic subjects, but also training in career skills such as design and coding. Kiryat Malachi is the second of 10 “Houses of Excellence” being set up in the Galilee and Negev / Naqab. Activities at KKL-JNF houses are “in cooperation with former IDF Unit 8200 soldiers and with outstanding teachers.” During the COVID-19 pandemic, Unit 8200 helped students in Kiryat Malachi and elsewhere. “After missing two months of school, Israeli students will receive online help and support for their matriculation exams from graduates of IDF Intelligence Corps Unit 8200, in conjunction with KKL-JNF.” And, as KKL-JNF World Chairman Daniel Atar explained, “Educational collaboration with Unit 8200 has been in place for over three years now. KKL-JNF has decided to invest heavily in education in order to close the gaps – in education especially – between Israel’s northern and southern peripheral regions and the center of the country.” When the collaboration was launched in 2017, Atar proclaimed: “we are going to create activity centers in the peripheral regions of the Negev and Galilee that will locate the country’s best minds to lead it forward. KKL-JNF’s proven abilities, together with the skills of Unit 8200, will help foster Israel’s future generation in the fields of cyber, hi-tech, technology and innovation. This is the true realization of Zionism today.” Unit 8200
Unit 8200 is an Israeli Intelligence Corps unit responsible for collecting signal intelligence (SIGINT) and code decryption. It is subordinate to Aman (AMN), the military intelligence directorate. The unit is often described as Israel’s equivalent of the US National Security Agency or Britain’s GCHQ. It intercepts email, phone calls and social media as well as military and diplomatic traffic. Immediately after the 2014 war on Gaza, forty-three veterans of Unit 8200 wrote an open letter refusing to serve in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. They revealed that Unit 8200 personnel were instructed to keep any damaging details of Palestinians’ lives they came across, including information on sexual preferences, infidelities, financial problems or family illnesses that could be “used to extort/blackmail the person and turn them into a collaborator”. Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who leaked hundreds of thousands of documents to expose its labyrinth of spying on US citizens, told the NY Times that the NSA was routinely passing along the private communications of Americans to Unit 8200. Snowden stressed that the transfer of intercepts to Israel contained the communications – email as well as phone calls – of countless Arab- and Palestinian-Americans whose relatives in Israel and the Palestinian territories could become targets based on the communications. “It’s one of the biggest abuses we’ve seen,” Snowden said. Unit 8200 is composed primarily of 18–21 year olds. In 2015, the Financial Times explained how the unit relied on the recruitment of young Israelis through “Magshimim”, the three-year after-school programme for 16 to 18-year-old students with exceptional computer coding and hacking skills. The programme was pioneered by the private philanthropic Rashi Foundation and piloted for two years before the Israeli government adopted it in 2013. The Foundation explains: “In view of the growing need for cyber specialists, the Magshimim program was initiated in the belief that nurturing the talents of youth in the periphery will expand the pool of candidates to serve in the IDF’s elite technological units, particularly in the Intelligence Corps, and eventually to lead the high-tech industry in Israel.” The JNF Houses of Excellence in the Negev and Galilee are a similar project, now part of a “2040 Plan” to develop Israel’s periphery. JNF 2040 The ambitious JNF “2040 Plan” is described on its Hebrew language KKL 2040 website as: “expanding the borders of the ‘start-up nation’, a technological ecosystem in the periphery that will bring about demographic and economic change and encourage the settlement of 1.5 million Israelis in the Galilee and the Negev – turning the periphery into the engine of Israel’s growth for the next two decades.” The role the JNF envisages for itself is equally modest. “The JNF will serve as an operative integrator that will lead the program and coordinate the activities of all the partner organizations: the Israeli government, the academy, the IDF and the business sector in Israel and the world – thanks to its performance capabilities, resources, strategic vision, settlement experience, Diaspora ties and more.” Writing in English last June, KKL-JNF World Chairman Daniel Atar waxed lyrical on the IDF connection: “The Negev – in conjunction with the IDF’s technology units, which are moving their bases to the South – will make it into a capital of cybertech, security and defense industry, and artificial intelligence.” The Negev plans match Atar’s vision of the Houses of Excellence training youths in cybertech, guided by Unit 8200. Another IDF technology unit, 9900, specialises in computerised vision, as used in autonomous driving, satellite and high altitude surveillance, image recognition, GPS, mapping, virtual reality. These military technologies also interest Google, Uber, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and hundreds of Israeli companies working in computer vision, navigation, and image recognition. Opportunities The KKL2040 website includes an Opportunity Map Israel 2040. The southernmost flag in the Negev is for JC Tech Dimona Yeruham, a Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center. The nuclear research complex which developed the nuclear weapons programme, is nearby. As the flag caption indicates, the Dimona Yeruham Center was established in collaboration with the Center for Digital Innovation, launched by Ben Gurion University of the Negev in 2015 with the involvement of Sharon Sasportas, former Head of Operations for the Planning Department of the IDF. An article on the KKL2040 website entitled “High-tech, education and 1.5 million settlers” explains the strategy “to transform the Galilee and the Negev into engines of Israel’s economic growth within two decades… attracting no less than 1.5 million new settlers by 2040, making Israel a more stable and demographically balanced country, economically and socially.” “The Galilee will turn into a global power for food-tech, agri-tech and bio-tech. An industrial park in the central Galilee will contain advanced high-tech industries and a research and development center. In the Negev, high-tech and cyber centers will be established in cooperation with the IDF’s technological units (which are transferring their bases to the South) and the security industries. According to the plan, the JNF will also expand its support for pre-military academies, which foster excellence amongst youth and encourage social and civil engagement” Young Israelis are attracted through the prospect of launching their own start-up companies. The House of Excellence in Nof Hagalil (formerly Upper Nazareth), is described by the JNF as “a hub that equips youth in Israel’s outlying communities with the tools to take part and excel in Start-up Nation”. Activities include hackathons with Unit 8200 and visits to leading local and international high-tech companies. Unit 8200 Start-ups Unit 8200 veterans have launched many start-up companies, mainly cybersecurity firms, some later bought by transnationals. The most notorious of these is the NSO Group, whose Pegasus software invades mobile phones. Accused of spying on human rights activists including murdered Saudi dissident Jamal Kashoggi, NSO Group simply blamed the governments to which they sold Pegasus. But in April, WhatsApp filed new documents, alleging that NSO “used US-based servers and was ‘deeply involved’ in carrying out mobile phone hacks of 1,400 WhatsApp users, including senior government officials, journalists, and human rights activists.” Victims received phone calls using its messaging app, and were infected with Pegasus. Then, “NSO used a network of computers to monitor and update Pegasus after it was implanted on users’ devices. These NSO-controlled computers served as the nerve centre through which NSO controlled its customers’ operation and use of Pegasus.” This Spring, NSO capitalised on COVID-19 to rebrand its spying activities as a way to beat coronavirus. Another 8200 veteran set up the cyber division of Elbit Systems. Elbit makes drones sold to the IDF and used to attack Gaza. The JNF Houses of Excellence gently introduce teenagers to the world of Unit 8200 veterans. Charity So far, repeated attempts to challenge the charitable status of the JNF-UK have perished in the legal fog. Recently, the charity’s Finance Director wrote to Paul Kelemen of the Stop the JNF campaign stating “All funding was for philanthropic projects and none had a military connection. For these reasons JNF CT was not in breach of the Codes referred to.” This interesting statement implicitly acknowledges that funding with a military connection would breach Charity Law. Last year, the Canada Revenue Agency stripped another charity of its status, partly due to ties with the Israeli army, but the CRA has not acted on the JNF Canada despite detailed evidence. It is easy to imagine how seductive the world of elite intelligence units and profitable hi-tech start-ups might appear to teenagers wondering if they’ll ever get a job. The House of Excellence in Be’er Sheva, due to open in October, is described on the Opportunity Map as “Academic reinforcement and technology guidance for hundreds of high school students in collaboration with AMN“. AMN is the Hebrew acronym for Aman, the Intelligence Department of the Israel Defense Forces General Staff, which oversees Unit 8200. Aman are also responsible for selecting Palestinian targets for assassination. Behind the glitter, this is a recruitment drive for military units which bend the computer skills and imagination of youth, into tools for war crimes. That’s not charity. |
