Source: Middle East Monitor
The Jewish National Fund–JNF (or Keren Kayemet LeYisrael–KKL) is a unique colonization tool. The adjective "unique" is usually associated with positive distinction, not in this case.
The European colonization projects are abound and full of examples of brutality, evil and dispossession. Some even appealed to God and claim that Divinity has sanctioned their acts of murder and looting. This, and much more, has been used by JNF.
Let us take some examples.
The French had colonized Algeria for about 150 years. Their policy was to make French citizens of Algerians. They brutally killed those who rebelled against them. They used Algerians as cheap labour and seized some of their property for the benefit of selected colonists (Pieds Noirs).
The Dutch in Indonesia (Netherlands East Indies) did the same but mixed freely with the "natives" and intermarried.
The Dutch of South Africa ('the Afrikaans' or the Boers) carried the gun in one hand and the Bible in the other and used both to kill the Africans, dispossess them of choice property, used them as cheap labour and herded them into segregated enclaves.
The British in India had a single major objective: economic gains. Other than that, they kept Indian property, population, local regimes, culture and language almost intact, except in so far it interfered with their objective.
The European settlers in North America and Australia came in several waves from several European countries for various objectives including flight from religious persecution, pure colonialism and adventure or as, in Australia, they came in chains as convicted criminals. They expanded their influence gradually over the continent both geographically and temporally. This vast continent was much larger than mere absorption of their ambition and greed, even though they killed millions of the "natives" and seized their property.
JNF uniqueness stands out in many ways although its aim is basically the same, to colonize.
First, JNF as an arm of Zionism, mobilized God as the prime colonizer. According to atheist Zionists, God told them to go and colonize Palestine as a gift from God, above the heads of the Palestinians, the natural inhabitants of the country. Other settlers were not as crude as to recruit God in this way.
There are many more differences. The beneficiaries of the loot and plunder in Palestine were not few selected European settlers or colonial departments who will disappear after colonization departs. The beneficiary for JNF is an imaginary, nebulous body, which does not die or disappear, named "the Jewish People". This body is claimed to be represented by an administration not universally elected by "the Jewish People", whose existence, other than as adherents of Judaism as a religion, does not have any legal meaning. Thus, those actual beneficiaries of JNF are real people representing an imaginary body. The term of their land tenure is "eternal", that is, the holders of the property are assumed not to die or depart. In fact those actual beneficiaries do.
Other colonists, at the end of their tenure, return to France, England or Holland. The Zionist colonists could return to many countries in Europe and to the USA. Thus, their origin is multi-national. This is very useful for them. While they can always claim they have another distinct nationality, namely Israeli, they can also claim, when the chips are down, as some do now, that they are British, French, British, Dutch… etc. This unique characteristic was denied to poor old settlers in Algiers and Cape Town.
None of the old settlers had a grand scheme to colonize the country. They did so in fits and starts. They learned as they went. They developed plans largely on the field from direct experience.
Zionism had a grand scheme hatched before it had a foot in Palestine. It was developed with predetermined intent. The support for the scheme was sought from well-established colonial powers at the time. Most declined to help Zionism until Britain adopted their plans in 1917. Since then, the other colonial powers followed Britain in indecent haste. Now they fall on each other heals to support Palestine's colonization, not to be outdone except by the members of the US congress who pay tribute on the slightest provocation to their mammon of Jewish money. Talking of money, there has never been any colonization enterprise richer than the Zionist one. While settlers in Algiers and South Africa had to survive with what they could snatch from the "natives", Zionist colonization has the tremendous wealth of European Jews behind it. It is no wonder therefore that Jewish spending in Palestine during the Mandate was several times larger than the Palestine Government budget.
It is to be remembered that Zionism was created essentially in Basel in 1897 by wealthy European Jews, with the Rothschild family as one of the leaders, in their eagerness to build a colony for themselves, having financed Europe for so long to fight wars and gain colonies.
All colonization projects needed naked force to kill, steal and dispossess. As Jabotinsky has candidly noted, no people on earth would willingly accept foreign domination. All other settlers were protected by the garrisons of their country's regular army, which was busy in other duties. In the case of Zionism, it created a full-fledged army of its own, first under British patronage, which grew to be strong enough to challenge the British, their erstwhile protector. None of the other settler movements had such an independent political and military power.
All other settlers were content to reap the fruits of their regular soldiers. JNF participated actively in the war against Palestinians. They committed war crimes of ethnic cleansing, of directing military operations to seize coveted land, of actively expelling Palestinians from their villages, of destroying Palestinian villages and looting their property.
No other settler movement has depended on a vast array of myths, lies and misinformation, fuelled regularly by willing media and paid politicians. They did not need them. Zionism did. Its policy and practice flies in the face of every principle of international law and basic facts of history and geography. Although new Israeli historians in the last eighties exposed much of the fallacy of Israeli narratives about its establishment, they merely gave credence to the silenced Palestinian story which was known since 1948.
JNF was and is still active in erasing and distorting Palestine's history and geography. No other settlers' enterprise went to such length of erasing a well-documented history.
There is a further anomaly with JNF's uniqueness. As an arm of anachronistic settler project, it came late in the day. By the mid-twentieth century, the European colonial soldiers were packing their bags and returning to Europe after countries in Asia and Africa fought for and won their independence. At that very moment, the Jewish European soldiers sailed to Palestine in the opposite direction and practically emptied the country of its people in the largest, longest, most comprehensive and continuous ethnic cleansing in history.
As a result, the political wrath of the decolonized countries is understandable. In the last century's sixties and seventies, the flood of UN resolutions, covenants and treaties condemning colonization, racism and Apartheid remains a thorn in the side of Zionism to this day in the world's courts. But it is not enough.
As the book (JNF: A Charity Complicit with Ethnic Cleaning, Uri Davis, PRC, London 2015) clearly describes, JNF is still actively pursuing its racist policies and Apartheid. Its violations of international law are an integral part of its being.
Thus to eliminate all these JNF violations, past and present, atone for its crimes and make reparations, JNF must be abolished. So must its source: Zionism.
What can ordinary people, who have no army, political clout and unlimited funds, do?
They can do a lot. In simple practical steps they can do the following:
- Join, support and expand Boycott, Disinvestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign, now growing in the western world with increasing success. It is peaceful, legal and practical.
- Mobilize human rights NGO's all over the world to explain the plight of the Palestinians and to expose the Israeli policies abroad.
- Encourage individuals, groups and delegations and high-profile personalities from Europe and USA to visit Occupied Palestine to see for themselves and report back to their constituencies.
- Similarly, arrange for ordinary Palestinians to speak in the west about their experience as refugees and under Israeli occupation.
- Provide material for writers, columnists and opinion formers to present the true situation and respond to any misinformation.
The list is endless. But the creativity of justice seekers is also endless.
Let us remember that justice will always prevail and injustice has a short life.
Let the flag of Justice fly over Palestine and let its people reclaim their life in freedom and democracy.