Thread by @ArielElyseGold

A 🧵about the history and present-day operations of the Jewish National Fund (@KKL_JNF @JNFUSA) which is right now trying to ethnically cleanse Palestinian Bedouin communities from their homes & agricultural lands in the Negev/Naqab (Southern Israel). Protests are ongoing.
1/17

The JNF was founded in 1901 via a motion by Theodore Herzl at the Fith Zionist Congress to establish a fund to purchase land in historic Palestine — then under Ottoman empire rule — so as to remove the indigenous Palestinian population and create a Jewish state
2/17

.@jjz1600, in his book Invisible Victims, describes the blatant exclusivity that the JNF was founded on. Charter declares: “all land taken in the name of the JNF shall be… held as the inalienable property of the Jewish people.” Only Jewish labor was to be used on the land.
3/17

By 1920’s JNF Blue Boxes could be found in 100s of 1000s of Jewish homes, schools, synagogues, public buildings, & businesses. The JNF had purchased 25,000 acres of land in Palestine.
JNF was incorporated in the US in 1926. In 2018 alone the US JNF NGO raised $72 million
4/17

In the years leading up to the establishment of the state of Israel, the JNF meticulously charted topography, roads, land, and water sources and profiled the entire Palestinian population by age, political affiliations, and hostility to the Zionist project.
5/17

Known as the Village Files, these JNF documents became a crucial military tool for Jewish militias, who in 1948 burned villages, carried out massacres, and drove around 750,000 Palestinians out of their homes and villages, making them refugees.
6/17

After the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel, or Nakba (catastrophe), as Palestinians refer to it, the JNF planted pine trees on the ruins of destroyed Palestinian villages to prevent Palestinian refugees from returning to their homes.
7/17

Since Israel occupied E Jerusalem in 1967, the JNF, through subsidiary, Hemnutah, has assisted in seizing Palestinian properties that had belonged to Jews before 1948 but were legally settled by Palestinian families after being displaced from their W Jerusalem homes in 1948
8/17

Think of the current ethnic cleansing/Judenization in #Sheikh Jarrah, and now you know what the JNF has been doing in East Jerusalem since 1967

In the 80’s, the JNF established forests/parks surrounding Jerusalem, in the south Hebron Hills, the Negev, Be'er Sheva.
9/17

In E. Jerusalem's Silwan neighborhood, a Palestinian family has been waging a 20yr legal battle due to their house being transferred to the JNF after it was declared an absentee asset.
10/17
haaretz.com/opinion/.premi…

The JNF’s website describes their "Yatir Forest" in the West Bank South Hebron Hills as the largest block of forest area in “Israel,” encompassing about 10,000 acres of “diversified” pine, eucalyptus trees, and other flora.
11/17

The JNF leaders had chosen pine trees bc they reminded them of their European homelands.
The pines trees have been described as each tree being “like a gallon of petrol." The pines leave little sunlight for lower shrubs & shed blankets of needles, preventing other plants.
12/17

The drop of a cigarette in JNF pine forests can result in a massive forest fire. Israel experiences a massive wildfire every few years, with especially large ones in 1989, 1995, 2010, 2016, 2019, 2021.
Now, to the Eucalyptus trees:
13/17

Eucalyptus trees, brought from Australia, replace other local vegetation. Their leaves produce chemical substances that contaminate the soil.
They've been planted in Negev/Naqab where Israel is trying to prevent Bedouins communities from being able to graze & grow food🤔
14/17

Just like when Israel declares parts of the West Bank "firing zones" to prevent Palestinians from being able to live & farm on their lands, the JNF afforestation project in the Negev/Naqab aims to move the Bedouin from independent lives and ancestral nomadic customs
15/17

Israel aims to move the Bedouins—who are Israeli citizens—to government housing to be cheap labor. Think of how in the W. Bank, Palestinians end up being employed building the very settlements that oppress them
The Bedouin al Araqeeb village has been destroyed over 100x
16/17

Join CODEPINK's campaign to demand that the JNF CEASE AND DESIST their ethnic cleansing activities.
17/17 End.
codepink.org/jnf