JNF UK's charity status helps fund Israel's settler enterprise

The Jewish National Fund’s charity status allows it to use UK taxpayer money to fund green colonialism, illegal settlements, and militias, writes Tayab Ali.

The UK’s stance is a far cry from the likes of Slovenia, Ireland, Malta and Spain, who are amongst nine countries that have recognised Palestine this year alone. Even Canada, which by no means has a government sympathetic to Palestinians, said it would pause future arms sales to Israel.

And now, Canada has gone further. The recent decision by the Canadian Revenue Agency to revoke the Jewish National Fund’s (JNF) charitable status is a symbol of hope that the legal and moral compass of the international community is slowly shifting to recognise the reality of Israeli policies which routinely violate international law.

Shockingly, the JNF has even been lauded for their supposedly ‘progressive’ nature. For instance, the JNF’s ‘reforestation’ efforts, including the planting of 240 million trees, have been hailed by some. Still, this praise overlooks the historical context: many of these forests are established on the ruins of destroyed Palestinian villages, such as the Birya Forest, which took the place of six Palestinian villages, one of which was ‘Ayn Zaytun, Spring of Olives, a farming village which was home to over a thousand people.

Even beyond the historical context, this ‘greenwashing’ or ‘green colonialism’ isn’t even positive from an environmental perspective. They are named ‘forests’, but they are actually monoculture tree plantations — non-native pine trees are planted en masse, posing fire risks, destroying biodiversity and uprooting and taking the place of indigenous plants – perhaps slightly too obvious of a metaphor.