The Fanonite

[Following is a briefing paper I had prepared two years back for the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Some sections need updating. For more on the JNF, check the perceptive call by Uri Avnery to Abolish the JNF]  

1. The JNF (KKL) is an agency of ethnic cleansing

The JNF – henceforth referred to as JNF (Israel) – is a quasi-official organisation of the Israeli state entrusted with the purchase of land to settle Israeli Jews. All Israeli Arabs are barred. The Israeli state effectively subcontracts the enforcement of a key part of its apartheid system to the JNF. Prominent Israeli scholar Ilan Pappe has described the organization as a “colonialist agency of ethnic cleansing”.

2. The JNF’s activities not regarded as charitable under UK law

The JNF Charitable Trust – henceforth referred to as JNF (UK) – is registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales as charity no. 225910. It claims to promote “exclusively charitable projects in Israel”. Its official website states that the funds it raises are remitted to its “agents in Israel” the largest of them being Keren Kayemeth Leisrael (KKL). The JNF is well aware that “KKL carries out some activities, which would not be regarded as charitable under UK law” (http://www.jnf.co.uk).

3. The JNF knows its political stance risks loss of charitable status

According to JNF (UK)’s website, “any funds remitted by the charity to KKL, or to any other agent in Israel, are used only for projects which are charitable under UK law” but it disingenuously fails to mention that ‘Keren Kayemeth Leisrael’ is Hebrew for ‘Jewish National Fund’. The link for the UK branch on KKL-JNF’s website leads one back to the JNF (UK)’s website. Publicly, JNF (UK) does not wish to be seen as simply a fundraising “chapter” of JNF (Israel), since according to its president, Gail Seal, it would put them “in danger of losing [their] charitable status in the UK”, given the overtly political practices of JNF (Israel).

The two organizations cannot be seen as independent of each other since even if the funds remitted to JNF (Israel) are used strictly according to British Law, they inevitably free up more for activities which would certainly “not be regarded as charitable”. The accounts of their activities in the following section should serve as a legal as well as moral case for divesting JNF (UK) of its tax-exempt status.

4. Israeli legal forms with apartheid content - courtesy of the JNF

The JNF was established by a decision of the fifth World Zionist Congress that met in Basel in 1901, to raise money from all over the world to purchase land in Palestine for the establishment of a national home for the Jews. With the establishment of the state of Israel in ’48, the JNF lost its raison d’etre and was nearly abolished. When UN General Assembly Resolution 194, however, granted ethnically cleansed Palestinian refugees the right of return, the JNF became an indispensable tool in the Israeli state policy of stealing Arab land to make it available for Jewish immigrants. Still wary of the UN, and not yet imbued with its present sense of impunity, the Israeli state got the land off its hands by passing it on to the JNF. This transfer ensured that huge amounts of Arab-owned land stayed in exclusively Jewish hands since the JNF’s charter prohibits the sale, lease or settlement of its land by non-Jews.

The enactment of the so-called Absentee Property Law ensured the permanent disposession of about 970,000 Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed, just under a quarter of whom – 220,000 – ended up inside the borders of 1948-67 Israel. (Ha’aretz, February 10, 2005).The JNF, along with the Israeli Lands Administration (ILA) and the Israeli Defence Forces, has continued its openly-declared, anti-Arab policy of “Judaizing” the Galilee, the Negev, and East Jerusalem. The ILA controls nearly 93% of all the land of 1948-67 Israel and half its seats are always held by the JNF, which thus enjoys enormous influence.

Early this year Israel’s attorney general determined that all land managed by the Israel Lands Administration, including land owned by the JNF, must be marketed without discrimination or limits including to non-Jews but the JNF and the Finance Ministry are discussing ways to separate the JNF from the state in order to allow it to continue selling land to Jews only. In apartheid South Africa, 87% of all property was reserved in law for whites; in Israel 93% of all property is reserved for Jews only.

5. “Green” activities – to obliterate blood-soaked crime scenes

The JNF projects itself as an environmentally friendly organization concerned with ecology and sustainable development, planting forests and establishing recreation facilities open to all. According to the Israeli scholar Uri Davis, however,”almost without exception all of these forests are planted on the ruins of Palestinian Arab villages ethnically cleansed in the 1948-49 war” and subsequently. Two cases in particular are noteworthy:

1. The British Park, funded by contributions from JNF (UK), is a landscaping project over the remains of the villages of Ajjur and Zakariyya, ethnically cleansed in 1948 and destroyed. The aims is to make unthinkable the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes and farms by erasing the grim history of Israeli ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
2. Canada Park, funded by contributions from JNF (Canada), is planted over the ruins of three Palestinian villages - Amwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba – ethnically cleansed in 1967. Supporters of the JNF can buy a tree to be planted over the remains. Amos Keenan, who was part of the unit responsible for the expulsion of the villagers recalls old women and children crying and calling out for water during the soldiers grim work.  “Some soldiers cried as we drove them out; they wandered like lost cattle; they died on the road”.

6. A long tradition of assisting illegal occupation

1. The JNF is in clear breach of international law with its purchase of “tens of thousands of acres” in the occupied West Bank and Gaza “on which settlements, industrial zones and roads have been built” by one of its colonising arms, Himnuta, Ltd. (Ha’aretz, 31 January 2005).
2. Canada Park attempts to legitimise the occupation by creating a recreational facility on three destroyed villages in the occupied territories.
3. The JNF was also involved in the construction of the settler city of Yamit in the Sinai, which was dismantled following Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt.

7. “Making the desert bloom” for half an hour

Another JNF ritual, involving donations by children for planting saplings to “make the desert bloom” was revealed by Ma’ariv as a fraud when Yehiel Leket, co-chairman of the JNF, admitted that saplings planted by visitors in a forest near the Jerusalem suburb of Ein Kerem were ripped out moments later to make way for the next group of tourists on a similar mission. A large number of tour groups make a weekly pilgrimage where they get to plant their own tree to “a background of songs, prayers and other ceremonies” for $10 each in JNF forests. Visitors have included “presidents and prime ministers.” (Guardian, June 30, 2000)

Commenting on the dichotomy between the profession of its benign intent and its destructive actions, Meron Benvenesti, a former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem noted, “It is ironic that the JNF, which took such an active part in the destruction of the Arab landscape, is energetically involved in the preservation of its remnants. The greenery, buildings, and agricultural equipment, it seems, merit proper maintenance, but of course there is no mention of the uprooted villagers; the landscape has been sanitized.”

8. The JNF facilitates serious violations of international law

The following constitute gross violations of international law, including UN resolutions relevant to the question of Palestine, and constitute war crimes.

1. The demolition of a civilian locality; the razing to the ground of its residential structures
2. The denial of the right of the civilian inhabitants of the locality concerned to the titles of their properties and to return to the localities where properties to which they hold titles are situated
3. The arbitrary alteration of the usage of the said properties

Israel violates the following Conventions:

1. The Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (Adopted on 12 August 1949 by the Diplomatic Conference for the Establishment of International Conventions for the Protection of Victims of War, held in Geneva from 21 April to 12 August, 1949 and entered into force 21 October 1950)
2. The Convention (No. 169) Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries (Adopted on 27 June 1989 by the General Conference of the International Labour Organisation at its seventy-sixth session and entered into force 5 September 1991), specifically Article No 4:
   1. Special measures shall be adopted as appropriate for safeguarding the persons, institutions, property, labour, cultures and environment of the peoples concerned.
   2. Such special measures shall not be contrary to the freely-expressed wishes of the peoples concerned.
   3. Enjoyment of the general rights of citizenship, without discrimination, shall not be prejudiced in any way by such special measures.

9. British Government complicity in Israel’s ethnic cleansing must be ended

The JNF (UK) must be stripped of its status as a tax-exempt charity, since such status makes the British state complicit in ethnic cleansing and gross violations of international law by Israel.

We also urge every individual and organization to join us in obstructing this racist organization from its unlawful and immoral practices, which have contributed to the impoverishment of millions. The millions of their victims in the Palestinian refugee camps and scattered elsewhere across the Middle East and the world demand justice. What side are you on?