The following press release was issued by the National Lawyers Guild International Committee and the Stop the JNF Campaign:
Today, Palestinian Land Day, the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) submitted a regulatory challenge to the IRS requesting an investigation into the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) on grounds of discrimination and contravention of U.S. policy.
In a legal complaint accompanying the regulatory challenge, the NLG outlined several reasons why the IRS should revoke the JNF’s tax-exempt status, including the fact that the organization does not have a charitable purpose and engages in activities that violate US policy and international law.
The regulatory challenge is part of a larger international Stop the JNF Campaign that seeks to end the JNF’s role in Israel’s continuing displacement of Palestinians. Efforts targeting the JNF are part of a growing boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement in support of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice, and equality. The campaign is calling for people to take part in Days of Action from March 30-April 18 (Tax Day) to pressure the IRS to respond to the regulatory challenge and launch an investigation into the JNF.
The JNF’s mandate is to promote racist and discriminatory policies such as forcibly displacing Palestinians from their lands to make way for Jewish-only housing developments, including inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders.. The JNF’s support for settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem also means its activities violate longstanding official U.S. policies against settlements, as well as international law.
“The IRS has an obligation to revoke the JNF’s status because of its involvement in displacing Palestinian Bedouins from the Negev Desert and elsewhere, and because of its support for illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank,” said Andrew Dalack, one of the co-chairs of the NLG’s Palestine Subcommittee and member of the Guild’s International Committee. ”How can the IRS certify with a straight face that the JNF is organized for a charitable purpose when it engages in conduct that violates international law and well-established U.S. foreign policy?“
Founded in 1901, the JNF is a quasi-governmental Israeli agency that has played a major role in the dispossession of the Palestinians people, planting forests to help cover the reality of the more than 400 Palestinian towns and villages destroyed when Israel was created in 1948. Today the JNF continues to play an important role in the dispossession of Palestinians in both Israel and the occupied territories.
“The JNF and it’s Transfer Department in the early 1900s was responsible for removing Palestinians from Palestine,” said Kristin Szremski, director of media and communications for American Muslims for Palestine. “And today the JNF is still planting forests to erase those depopulated Palestinian villages and helping to establish settlements on Palestinian land, in direct contravention of U.S policy and international law. They should not have tax-exempt status.”
The complaint was filed on Land Day because on this day Palestinians commemorate the day in 1976 when Israeli troops killed six Palestinian citizens of Israel who were peacefully protesting the appropriation of their land.
“For nearly 70 years Palestinians have been resisting Israel’s continued theft of our land,” said Nick Sous of the US Palestinian Community Network. “So many Palestinians have been directly impacted by Israel’s stealing their land with the support of the JNF and it is shameful that the IRS actually awards people who donate to support these illegal actions by allowing them to get a tax write-off.”
“One can find little blue JNF boxes in many Jewish households and so many of us put our pennies and dimes into them because we were told we were contributing money to a worthy cause,” said Sylvia Schwarz, of the Stop the JNF Campaign and a Fallen Donor. “We were not told that the JNF is instrumental in removing Palestinians from their homes and denying them their right of return. There is nothing charitable about this.”
Knocking another brick out of the wall. Thank you.
From its earliest days the JNF used posters to promote its various fictions such as that historic Palestine was empty of inhabitants and that all that was needed was for Jewish immigrants to come and “redeem” the land. The Zionist policy towards the use of posters was discussed at the highest policy levels:
“Commercial propaganda essentially aspires to achieve the same goal we are trying to achieve, and that is to arouse as many people as possible for a known purpose to do something they would not have done without the propaganda; buy some given product, prefer a certain well-known firm. …We also wish to cause the large Jewish multitudes to remember the JNF at all times.”
Source: Karnenu (Our Fund) Year 3 (1926), no. 5-6, p.5
“We must inundate the Jewish people with slogans and pictures, to rivet their attention, to create an atmosphere of unrest…[to distribute the pictures and slogans] in every place a Jew sets foot in: in communal centres, lodges, places of business, society and union centres, the offices of charity organizations, mutual aid societies, rabbinical offices, libraries, theatres, bath houses and rest houses, shelters, hospitals, pharmacies, clinics, synagogues, seminaries, schools, doctor’s waiting rooms, restaurants, hotels, pensions…leave no place where there is no illustrated poster with a clear and brief text….”
Source: Karnenu (Our Fund) Year 4 (1927), no. 1, p.6
This poster by acclaimed Zionist poster artist, Franz Krausz (he created the now iconic originally-Zionist-poster-now-Palestinian-nationalist-property-poster, “Visit Palestine”
http://www.palestineposterproject.org/special-collection/remixvisit-palestine) no Palestinian villages or people are depicted: only a scene of latent fertility that merely “awaits redemption by the people of Israel”:
http://www.palestineposterproject.org/poster/redeems-the-land-of-israel-for-the-people-of-israel
One can follow graphically the evolution of the JNF’s various colonization and land exploitation projects by viewing its posters thematically, such as these which all depict happy Jewish children in some nation-building activity such as:
Building terraces with stones that might have come from destroyed Palestinian villages:
http://www.palestineposterproject.org/poster/and-build-our-village-with-joy-and-pride
Planting trees and shrubs that might mask de-populated and/or destroyed Palestinian villages:
http://www.palestineposterproject.org/poster/and-we-will-set-down-roots-here
This JNF poster exudes the expansionist colonial attitude of Zionism with its clarion call to settle the Galilee shown here as almost impossibly lush and inviting with no trace of Palestinian history or presence anywhere to be seen:
http://www.palestineposterproject.org/poster/on-to-galilee
The JNF’s use of posters to propagandize to Jewish communities around the world grew from the four point Basel Program of 1897 and the JNF took seriously the call to “inundate the Jewish people with slogans and pictures”.
View 300 historic JNF posters here:
http://www.palestineposterproject.org/special-collection/jewish-national-fund
This morning on Palestinian Land Day, the Stop the JNF Campaign and National Lawyers Guild (NLG) together submitted a regulatory challenge to the IRS requesting an investigation into the charitable status of the Jewish National Funds (JNF) on grounds of discrimination and contravention of U.S. policy.
Please consider signing the petition to amplify calls to the IRS to revoke the JNF’s tax-exempt status! We need signatures to pressure the IRS to investigate!
■ PETITION – http://org.salsalabs.com/o/641/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=19467
The Legal Complaint is very careful with the facts such that it sometimes underestimates JNF violations. For example, JNF confiscated over 2 million donums of Palestinian refugees’ land in 1949 and 1950, not one million as in the report. JNF actively directed Haganah (IDF) operations in 1948 to dispossess Palestinians of lands coveted by JNF and coordinated with IDF a coherent plan for ethnic cleansing. Details are in
Financing Racism and Apartheid: JNF Violation of International and Domestic Law:
http://plands.org/pdf/JNF%20Report.pdf
and
https://www.academia.edu/5294971/Financing_Racism_and_Apartheid_the_Jewish_National_Fund_s_Violation_of_International_and_Domestic_Law
This is not to mention their recent role in the infamous Prawer Plan designed to dispossess Palestinians of their land in Beer Sheba, which was withdrawn after protests in 31 cities around the world, perhaps temporarily until it is dressed up in a new garb.
It is to be hoped that this complaint fairs better than a similar one in the UK against JNF. A complaint made to the charity Commission and subsequent appeal were rejected because the complainant had not provided any evidence to back up the complaint and that the complainant did not have ‘standing’ http://www.civilsociety.co.uk/governance/news/content/17132/stop_the_jnf_campaign_goes_to_charity_tribunal_to_argue_for_removal_of_jnf_charities
whereupon an appeal was made to the charities Tribunal
The Charity Tribunal found that not only were the papers filed out of time but that the complainant also lacked standing, see procedural issues JNF appeal in this roundup .http://www.bwbllp.com/file/bwb-charity-commission-charity-tribunal-pdf
Must confess I have not followed this up closely so any other information would be appreciated.