#BDS: Stop JNF – Help dismantle a colonial pillar of the Israeli Apartheid regime

"Occupied Palestine, March 26^th 2011 – Commemorating the Palestinian Land Day and the Global BDS Day of Action[1], the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), on behalf of its constituent organizations and unions representing the majority of Palestinian civil society, together with many partners around the world, particularly the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) and the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, is hereby officially launching an international campaign to Stop the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and strip it of its charity status everywhere. The BNC calls on people of conscience around the world to take civil and legal steps to oppose the presence and activities of the JNF in their countries due to its long-standing and intricate role in crimes of colonization, ethnic cleansing and apartheid against the Palestinian people. As a key pillar in Israel’s system of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid, the JNF should lose its charitable status anywhere; it should also be comprehensively boycotted by international civil society and by governments that consistently uphold the primacy of international law.

Established in 1901 with the primary objective to “purchase, take on lease or in exchange or otherwise acquire lands….in the prescribed region [Palestine and the surrounding areas]…for the purpose of settling Jews on such lands”,[2] the JNF (also known as Keren Kayemeth L’Yisrael or KKL) [3] has been a chief partner in the Zionist colonial drive to dispossess indigenous Palestinians of their land, culminating in the Nakba of 1948 when Zionist militias and later Israel expelled a majority of the Palestinian population in order to establish a state with a Jewish majority. Shortly after the Nakba, the government of Israel transferred the ownership of lands from 372 of the 522 ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages to the JNF-KKL in order to hold them “in the name of the Jewish people in perpetuity” and prevent the return of the rightful Palestinian owners."

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