- Founded in 1901 at the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) is a quasi-governmental agency that has played a central role in the Zionist movement and subsequently the Israeli government’s dispossession of indigenous Palestinians and illegal colonization of Palestinian land in order to establish and maintain a Jewish-majority state in Palestine.
- The JNF-USA is a registered 501(c)(3) organization in the United States, meaning American taxpayers are subsidizing the JNF’s activities. (In 2024, the Canadian government revoked the tax-deductible status of the JNF Canada due to its funding of projects involving the Israeli military in violation of Canadian law.)
- Since its founding, the JNF has raised money abroad with its “Blue Box” campaign, taking in huge sums in the U.S. and other countries. In 2024 alone, the JNF-USA had more than $224 million in revenue.
JNF’s role in the dispossession of Palestinians & ethnic cleansing during Israel’s establishment
- In its early years, the JNF worked to acquire land in Palestine for European Jewish colonists, often purchasing it from large Ottoman Turkish landowners who lived abroad, dispossessing Palestinian peasant farmers in the process.
- To establish a state with a Jewish majority in Palestine, which was overwhelmingly Muslim and Christian, the JNF and other Zionist leaders advocated for the “transfer” of Palestinians, a euphemism for what would be called ethnic cleansing today.
- In August 1937, David Ben-Gurion, head of the Zionist leadership in Palestine who would become Israel’s first prime minister, alluded to the JNF’s role in dispossessing Palestinians while arguing in favor of larger-scale ethnic cleansing during a meeting of the Twentieth Zionist Congress in Zurich, Switzerland, stating:
- “You are no doubt aware of the JNF’s activity in this respect. Now a transfer of a completely different scope will have to be carried out. In many parts of the country new settlement will not be possible without transferring the Arab fellahin [peasants]... Jewish power [in Palestine], which grows steadily, will also increase our possibilities to carry out this transfer on a large scale.”
- In 1940, Joseph Weitz, director of the JNF’s Lands Department, wrote in his diary:
- “There is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, and to transfer all of them, save perhaps for [the Arabs of] Bethlehem, Nazareth and Old Jerusalem. Not one village must be left, not one [Bedouin] tribe.”
- Following Israel’s establishment in May 1948, by which time Zionist militias had violently expelled more than a quarter million Palestinians from their homes in the preceding months, the new Israeli government set up an unofficial body, a three-member “Transfer Committee,” including the JNF’s Weitz, to oversee the systematic destruction of Palestinian towns and villages or their repopulation with Jews to prevent Palestinians from returning. In a report to Prime Minister Ben-Gurion in June 1948, while the newly-established Israeli army was still in the process of ethnic cleansing Palestinians, the committee called for the “destruction of villages as much as possible during military operations.”
- In total, Zionist militias and the Israeli army ethnically cleansed approximately 750,000 Palestinians and systematically destroyed more than 400 Palestinian towns and villages during Israel’s founding. In many areas, the JNF planted forests to cover the ruins and evidence of the Palestinian society that Israel was built on.
JNF’s role in Israel’s dispossession of Palestinians & settlement enterprise today
- Today, the JNF continues to play a major role in the discriminatory allocation of Israeli state lands and Israel’s systematic dispossession of Palestinians both inside Israel and in the occupied Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Discrimination against & dispossession of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship
- The state of Israel directly controls 93% of all the land in Israel and occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem. Almost half of the members of the governing body of the agency responsible for managing and distributing this land, the Israel Land Authority, belong to the JNF. The JNF directly controls 15% of the land in Israel, “for the purpose of settling Jews,” according to its mandate from the government.
- As noted by the JNF in response to legal petitions accusing the organization of discrimination against Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, the survivors of the ethnic cleansing of 1948 and their descendants who today make up more than 20% of Israel’s population:
- “[The JNF] is not a public body that works for the benefit of all citizens of the state. The loyalty of the JNF is given to the Jewish people and only to them is the JNF obligated. The JNF, as the owner of the JNF land, does not have a duty to practice equality towards all citizens of the state.”
- Together with so-called “Admissions Committees,” which prevent Palestinians and other non-Jews from living in more than 400 small towns in Israel (amounting to more than 40% of all residential areas) the JNF and Israel’s discriminatory land policies make it extremely difficult for Palestinian citizens of Israel to gain access to state lands for residential, commercial, agricultural, or other uses.
- In places like the Negev (Naqab to Palestinians) desert in southern Israel, the JNF works with the Israeli government to force Palestinian Bedouin citizens of Israel out of their homes and destroy their communities in order to replace them with Jewish Israelis.
Dispossession of Palestinians & funding illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank & East Jerusalem
- The JNF also works closely with the Israeli government and right-wing settler groups like the Ir David Foundation (known as Elad) to force Palestinians out of their homes and off their land in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank and to acquire land to build or expand settlements in violation of international law.
- Through subsidiaries like Himanuta, which was established in 1938 to get around institutional and legal restrictions on its activities, the JNF has acquired more than 16,000 acres of Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and carried out numerous campaigns to destroy Palestinian homes and/or forcibly displace Palestinians to make way for Jewish settlers.
- The Israeli government has frequently used Himanuta to take over Palestinian land in the occupied territories without officially going through the JNF, which owns 99% of Himanuta’s shares.
- The JNF/Himanuta’s methods of acquiring Palestinian property include using Israel’s discriminatory legal system, including the so-called “Absentees’ Property Law” passed in 1950 to transfer ownership of property belonging to Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed during Israel’s establishment to the state or Jewish Israelis, and using fraud and shady middlemen who don’t disclose to the Palestinian owners that settlers are the buyers.
- In 2011, a member of the JNF-USA’s board, Seth Morrison, resigned in protest over the JNF’s campaign to force the Sumarin family from their home in Silwan in occupied East Jerusalem. Explaining his decision, Morrison wrote:
- “[This] is not an isolated case. JNF has gained ownership of other Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem and, in many instances, then transferred these properties through its subsidiaries to Elad, a settler organization whose purpose is to ‘Judaize’ East Jerusalem.”
- “...the expulsion of the Sumarin family is a violation of human rights. But it is also part of the systematic transfer of Palestinian property to ideological settlers who wish to put facts on the ground that hinder a lasting peace agreement.”
Go deeper
- Quick Facts: The Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe)
- Fact Sheet: Is Israel an Apartheid State?