JEWISH NATIONAL FUND LOSES CHARITABLE STATUS

Wed 13 November 2024:

A Canadian court has decided that the Jewish National Fund’s (JNF) charitable status will not be reinstated, for now. An extensive audit laid bare the Canadian organisation’s links to Israeli occupation in Palestine.

The JNF unsuccessfully appealed to the Federal Court. Justice Allyson Whyte Nowak last week turned them away, saying they knocked at the wrong door.

JNF lost their charitable status in July, after an audit revealed that the organisation channelled taxpayers’ money towards infrastructure for the Israeli army. This is illegal.

“There’s been so much pressure and exposure of what the JNF really stands for by grassroots activists and organisers,” said Charlotte Kates, international coordinator at the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network (PPSN), “that the CRA clearly had no choice but to revoke the charitable status of the JNF.”

The JNF was founded in 1901 as a private corporation with the intention of purchasing land in then-Ottoman Palestine.  As of 2007, it owns about 13% of the land and boasts about having 70 percent of the Israeli population living on land it owns.