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Jewish National Fund – Colonizing Palestine Since 1901 Greenwashing Apartheid: the Jewish National Fund's Environmental Cover Up

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Jewish National Fund – Colonizing Palestine Since 1901 Greenwashing Apartheid: the Jewish National Fund's Environmental Cover Up Jewish National Fund – Colonizing Palestine Since 1901 Greenwashing Apartheid: The Jewish National Fund's Environmental Cover Up JNF eBook (Volume 4, May 15, 2011) This publication may be freely printed/distributed for education/campaigning. © 2011 Each of the Contributors Separately, All Rights Reserved © 2011 Moral Rights of the Editors, All Rights Reserved Publisher: International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network Layout: Lisa Nessan Filename: JNFeBookVol4.pdf (15 May 2011, MS) ISSN: 2042-9045 / http://jnfebook.net JNF eBook Vol. 4 Jewish National Fund – Colonizing Palestine Since 1901 Greenwashing Apartheid: The Jewish National Fund's Environmental Cover Up JNF eBook (Volume 4, May 15, 2011) Edited by: Jesse Benjamin M.B. Levy S. Kershnar M. Sahibzada Contributing authors: Salman Abu-Sitta Corey Balsam Jesse Benjamin Max Blumenthal Judy Deutsch Coya White Hat-Artichoker Sara Kershnar Joel Kovel Mich Levy Akram Salhab Eurig Scandrett David Schwartzman Ismail Zayid and additional contributors JNF eBook Vol. 4 JNF eBook Vol. 4 CONTENTS 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 1 Sara Kershnar, Mich Levy, and Jesse Benjamin of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network 2. Open Letter to the Environmental Movement .................................................................... 11 Eurig Scandrett 3. JNF Greenwash .................................................................................................................... 22 Judith Deutsch 4. The Path to Climate Security Passes through Gaza: a Prologue to Rethinking Strategy ..... 38 David Schwartzman 5. The Carmel Wildfire is Burning all Illusions in Israel ............................................................ 43 Max Blumenthal 6. The Denied Inheritance: Palestinian Land Ownership in Beer Sheba ................................. 49 Salman Abu Sitta 7. Orwell’s ‘Green Patrol’ and the Relentless Racialized Illogic of Ethnic Cleansing in the Name of Environmentalism ................................................................................................. 87 Jesse Benjamin 8. Tree Planting as Pedagogy ................................................................................................... 97 Corey Balsam 9. Canada Park: Canadian Complicity in a War Crime ........................................................... 109 Ismail Zayid 10. Drying and Re-Flooding Lake Huleh: JNF's Colonial Designs in Indigenous Landscapes ... 115 Akram Salhab 11. First Nations-Palestine Solidarity Statement ..................................................................... 122 Coya White Hat-Artichoker 12. Take Action ........................................................................................................................ 126 13. Afterword: The Jewish National Fund and the Contradictions of Zionism ....................... 129 Joel Kovel SUPPORT MATERIALS I. Moshav Yishi: An Arab-Free Environment ......................................................................... 132 II. David Cameron – Second Letter ........................................................................................ 133 III. Philadelphia Protest Against Jewish National Fund Poker Tournament ........................... 134 IV. Ismail Zayid 70s correspondence ....................................................................................... 136 V. Early Day Motion: UK Parliament ...................................................................................... 140 VI. Notes on Jewish National Fund Contraventions of UK Charity Law .................................. 141 VII. Stop the JNF Campaign Materials ...................................................................................... 142 JNF eBook Vol. 4 Introduction 1. Introduction1 Sara Kershnar, Mich Levy, and Jesse Benjamin of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network The goal of this JNF eBook is to show how Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid are served by and depend on the environmental racism and destructiveness of the Jewish National Fund (JNF). The struggle for home, land and justice by Palestinians is understood as inherently connected to struggles around the world against historic and contemporary forms of colonialism and racism, against militarism and war, and against foreign interventions, including in Southwest Asia/North Africa. Understanding the environmental racism practiced by the JNF also helps us to see how the Palestinian struggle is integral to movements for environmental justice and ecological sanity. The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) is honored to publish this volume of the JNF eBook as we embark with other organizations on an internationally coordinated campaign to Stop the JNF. Publishing on the JNF, Israel and environmental racism is fitting work for IJAN as an international network of Jews who concentrate on the Palestinians’ struggle as part of our uncompromising commitment to the interdependent struggles for human emancipation. Our commitment is to the dismantling of Israeli apartheid, the Palestinian refugees’ right to return, and the ending of Israel’s colonization of historic Palestine. Toward these ends, IJAN coordinates, urges and supports Jewish participation in local and international efforts to challenge Zionism, Islamophobia and other racism, separatism and militarism, and works towards a society premised on the economic, political, social, cultural and environmental rights of all people, beginning with those whose rights are most violated. For IJAN, there cannot be ‘two sides’ to a ‘Palestinian-Israeli conflict’ that assumes each party is an aggressor actively violating the rights and safety of the other. Rather, we see what is obvious: Palestine is occupied and colonized. We oppose that occupation and colonization as we oppose any occupation and colonization. Because Zionist institutions, including the JNF, propagate that myth that all Jews are Zionists, unless we pronounce otherwise, we lend legitimacy to their endeavors by the mere fact of our Jewish identities. They offer our Jewish histories of struggle for survival as justification for institutionalized Jewish power over others. It is, in part, to defend these legacies of struggle that our Palestine solidarity work – and social justice work more broadly – includes a challenge to Zionist institutions, to the ideological foundations on which they are built, and to the very real impact they have on people’s daily lives and futures. Created in 1901 to purchase land for a Jewish State in Palestine, the JNF is most commonly known for its century-old campaign to ‘plant a tree in Israel’ in order to ‘make the desert bloom.’ Contrary to the deception propagated by the JNF, Israel and Zionist mythology, the trees are not planted in a barren desert empty of inhabitants that Jewish people have come to populate and make flourish. Lands were, and still are, obtained from their Palestinian inhabitants through exploitative land sales, forced removal or the State imposition of other apartheid policies. In its Memorandum of Association, two of the JNF’s stated objectives are to: 1 JNF eBook Vol. 4 “…purchase, acquire on lease, or in exchange, or receive on lease or otherwise, lands, forests, rights of possession, easements and any similar rights, as well as immovable properties of any class…for the purpose of settling Jews on such lands and properties” [Article 3(a)] and be of “benefit, whether directly or indirectly, to those of Jewish race or descendency” [Article 3(c)]. As the Palestinian refusal to succumb to colonial rule and expulsion perseveres, decade after decade, intifada after intifada, it sheds unavoidable light on the dark underbelly of ‘making a desert bloom’ in a place that is fully inhabited. In the Jewish communities where Zionism and Jewish identity became conflated, donating money to the JNF became an integral part of Jewish life. The mass-produced blue JNF collection boxes were distributed as early as 1904. The JNF Blue Box became one of the most familiar symbols of Zionism and is taken to be the symbol of world Jewry's support for Israel. Trees were planted in Palestine, and then in Israel, in honor of births, bar and bat mitzvahs, marriages and deaths. For many Jewish households and establishments, money collected was not seen as a donation, but as an investment; the JNF was understood to be contributing to the well-being of Jews, and therefore it was only natural and right that Jews invested in it. Pride was taken in these acts, reflected in the seemingly endless JNF plaques imprinted with the names of those who donate money and those in whose honor or memory the money is donated. In his piece, “Tree Planting as Pedagogy,” Corey Balsam describes the role of the JNF in investing Jews in Zionism: “In addition to serving as the ‘principal Zionist tool for the colonization of Palestine,’ the JNF has played a fundamental role as an agent of Jewish-Zionist education around the world… As recent JNF director of fund-raising Yechiel Leket once proclaimed, ‘we are not only raising funds but we are also raising people […] to raise people is more important than to raise funds.’” Balsam also quotes Israeli geographer Yoram Bar-Gal: According to the JNF, “the donation in its purest form” was a highly efficient means for the accrual of money for the Zionist movement. Donation of this sort strengthened national consciousness, so one should consider this, not the collection of funds, as the success
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