“This is from your country!”: The Canadian money propping up illegal Israeli settlements

 

Canada’s Jewish National Fund has tried to hide its support for Israel’s colonization of Palestinian land. But Israeli organizations are evading soldiers and settlers to expose their projects

We pile into Dror Etkes’ rental car early on Sunday morning in mid-July. 

The executive director and main field researcher of Kerem Navot, an Israeli organization that monitors the country’s land policy in the Palestinian territories, stresses the need to remain discreet as we drive out of Jerusalem, toward the militarily-occupied West Bank.

That or find the money for another car, he quips. It is expensive to book rental cars and buy insurance to travel to Area C, the parts of the West Bank where most illegal Israeli settlements are located and that are highly restricted or off-limits to Palestinians—and where his organization tries to carry out their research, undetected by the Israeli military. 

I sit in the backseat of a nondescript beige SUV that looks like it has taken a few beatings. This morning, Etkes and his colleague have invited us on a day-long excursion, to look into the operations of the Jewish National Fund of Canada, an organization whose stated purpose is developing “environmental and social service infrastructure projects in Israel.” 

For decades, JNF Canada had received charity status from Canada’s Revenue Agency (CRA), but this August, the CRA officially revoked it. 

After an audit, the CRA concluded that the JNF Canada used tax-exempt money to fund Israeli army bases, which is illegal under Canadian law. It also found the organization couldn’t prove how Canadian money was used in Israel, and did not justify why financial records were only kept in Israel, among other disqualifying concerns.

Palestinian solidarity advocates in Canada have long campaigned for this outcome, pointing to the charity’s role in building parks over Palestinian land and its discriminatory leasing of land within Israel.

For years dogged by CRA investigators, JNF Canada had pledged to the tax revenue agency in 2021 that it “will not fund projects in the disputed territories.”

But the paper trail simply became more hidden. 

Lately, Etkes tells us that it has become more difficult to document JNF Canada’s operations. Tracing how it funds parks and trails in the West Bank often requires risky trips like the one we’re on, encountering Israeli soldiers and extremist settlers. And the organization has become more careful in advertising their involvement on the ground.

JNF Canada is now taking the CRA to court over its decision to revoke its charitable status, claiming the decision was “biased” and “unjust.” But on my tour in the occupied West Bank, I found plenty of the organization’s projects that continue to advance the interests of illegal settlement expansion.  (more...)

“This is from your country!”: The Canadian money propping up illegal Israeli settlements