As the JNF continues its rampage in the West Bank, CRA ruling offers Palestinians hope

 

The charity continues expanding Jewish-only land while skirting international and charitable law in the US and Canada

“They are using these tactics because they are scrambling. We know we will get our land back, it is only a matter of time.” Alice Kisiya’s words ring fierce against the still night sky framing her wind whipped hair. Since 2012, her family in the West Bank village of Beit Jala has faced demolitions and evictions since their restaurant was first destroyed in 2012. Both a journalist and activist, she has spent her entire adult life fighting against ethnic cleansing on her family’s ancestral land. While ultimately backed by the Israeli army and state, the enemy she faces daily is the Jewish National Fund (JNF), a charity that has been operating in Canada for nearly a century, and the “hilltop youth” they send to “rehabilitate” in the West Bank.

The frontline of settler expansion in the West Bank is almost always young men. These settlers are often transplanted from other communities in Israel. Many come from homes struggling with substance use, mental health, and poverty, and are often caught up in the criminal justice and social welfare system. As a response to this growing social problem in Israel, group homes, vocational centres, and yeshivas (Torah study schools) have been set up to provide homes and education for these troubled youth. Seemingly innocuous, the service homes tend to be operated by right-wing groups and rabbis in the occupied West Bank. Touted as offering holistic job programs and social enterprises for at-risk youth, the outposts help displace Palestinians and claim large swaths of formerly Palestinian farmland. This pathway towards occupation allows for funders like the JNF to uphold their public mandate of building social service infrastructure for Israelis, while also fulfilling their underlying goal of Israeli expansion. For JNF Canada, which has been under audit by the Canada Revenue Agency for several years over its non-compliance with Canadian charity law—which prohibits funding foreign armies—its website and public discourse relies heavily on funding such ‘social service’ projects.

While this strategy is employed all over the West Bank, the current tensions in Bethlehem have propelled these youth and their funders into the spotlight.  (more...)

As the JNF continues its rampage in the West Bank, CRA ruling offers Palestinians hope