Written by: Justin Lam

The Independent Jewish Voices Canada (IJV) launched a campaign called “Stop JNF Canada” to revoke the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund of Canada (JNF).

The JNF is an organization founded in 1901 that aims to preserve the land of Israel through planting trees, building water reservoirs and social service infrastructure.

“Jews around the world have been socialized for generations to see the JNF as a politically benign organization that plants trees, and has made the desert bloom in Israel” said Tyler Levitan, a member of the IJV.

Beneath the box

The Yiddish word, Pushke, was a donation box used by the JNF. The money donated would then be used to plant trees in Israel.

Articles and reports have surfaced which suggest that the JNF was colonizing Israel land under the guise of preservation activities.

“We later discovered a lot of this tree planting has actually been used by the JNF as a tool to appropriate land that has belonged to Palestinians historically,” said Levitan.

The campaign aims to put an end to the JNF colonization of Palestinian land by revoking their charitable status.

The IJV is an organization that advocates principles of equality and human rights for the people in Israel-Palestine.

“These trees have oftentimes been used to cover over the ruins as well of Palestinian villages that have been depopulated and demolished by Israel. And the demolition of many of these villages actually took place with the direct support of the JNF.”

Colonization of Palestine land

Roots of the JNF traces back to the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PICA) formed in 1924. They were responsible for a majority of the Jewish land purchase in Palestine, and eventually the State of Israel, according to “Records of Dispossession: Palestinian Refugee Property and the Arab-Israeli Conflict” written by Michael R. Fischbach.

PICA disbanded in 1957, with most of its land being transferred to the JNF.

“What the JNF has done was to ensure that this land has been permanently transferred out of these people's hands and into the hands of this entity that, in its own bylaws, forbids the lease of these lands to non Jews,” said Levitan.

Making the desert bloom is “really a euphemism for appropriating land from Palestinians who have been driven off of that land over the course of the Zionist colonization of Palestine.”

Three Palestinian villages in the West Bank were also demolished in 1970 with the direct support of the JNF in order to build “Canada Park.” The JNF raised over US$15 million - about US$97 million in today's values - through tax-exempt donations to build the park, according to The National.

“JNF Canada has still never acknowledged that its flagship project covers over the ruins of ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages, and it has continued to fundraise from Canadians through tax deductible donations for this initiative.”

The IJV campaign been running since around 2013, and this year marks the fourth year since the IJV filed a formal complaint about how the practices of the JNF violate Canadian and international law.

“We're trying to expose this truth to more people, both within the Jewish community and to Canadians more broadly,” said Levitan.