- "It takes an extraordinary amount of sanitization,
and indeed self-delusion, for staff at the Jewish National Fund for Israel
to declare that destroying trees is a violation of sacred Jewish law, while
feigning ignorance that each and every day Israel lays waste to the land
and its people and at the same time claims to act in the name of Jews all
over the world."
-
- The Israeli army has destroyed hundreds of thousands
of Palestinian olive and citrus trees throughout the Occupied West Bank
and Gaza Strip in recent years. Yet in a startling admission, a staffer
at the Jewish National Fund for Israel (JNF) has written that, "it
is against Jewish halachic law to uproot fruit bearing trees."
-
- The Jewish National Fund for Israel is a quasi-official
Israeli state organization, founded in the early twentieth century to acquire
land in Palestine for the Zionist movement. EI co-founder Ali Abunimah
sent an e-mail to the JNF website asking, "Could you provide me with
statistics on the number of olive and citrus trees destroyed by Israel
in recent years?"
-
- Zachary Lerner, of the JNF's "Marketing and Communications"
department responded, "Thank you for contacting Jewish National Fund
with your inquiry. Please note that it is against Jewish halachic law to
uproot fruit bearing trees. Jewish National Fund is committed to caring
for the land of Israel."
-
- Lerner's e-mail then detailed some of the JNF's work
in "ecology" and concluded with the claim that, "[d]ue to
JNF's vital work, Israel has a green lung with parks and forests and is
the only country in the world to end the 20th century with more trees than
it had at the beginning."
-
- The JNF advertises itself as "the caretaker of the
land of Israel, on behalf of its owners - Jewish people everywhere."
As such, it provides one of the main mechanisms through which Israel's
system of ethnic segregation and discrmination is enforced, because land
that the JNF purports to "own," especially land that was forcibly
taken from Palestinians, can by JNF statutes only be leased or sold to
those Israel recognizes to be Jews.
-
- The JNF has also played a central role in Israel's colonization
of Palestinian land after 1967. As the organization enthusiastically recounts
on its website, "The Six Day War of 1967 started a fresh page in the
history of Israel, and JNF was enlisted to develop new areas for settlement."
-
- Although the JNF's basic mission has since its founding
been to change the demographics of Palestine, replacing non-Jews with Jews
in as many areas as possible, it markets itself in the United States as
a sort of gentle Israeli companion to the Audubon Society, or Friends of
the Earth. The JNF's American arm is a US non-profit corporation which
raises about $30 million annually, much of it through its "Trees for
Israel" program in which supporters make a donation, and receive a
paper certificate on which the JNF claims to have planted a tree in Israel
in honor of the donor or a named loved one. Buying these certificates (a
sort of Zionist indulgence for Jews who wanted to support Israel but felt
guilty that they did not want to move there) was long a formative part
of the experience of young American Zionists.
-
- Nowhere on its website or in its fundraising literature
does the JNF mention that, in fact, Israel has engaged in the massive,
systematic destruction of Palestinian fruit-bearing trees, all over the
occupied territories, and in parts of Palestine in which Israel was established
in 1948.
-
- The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture reported in February
2002, that in the sixteen months up to 31 January 2001, almost 500,000
olive, citrus, date, almond, banana and other trees were uprooted by the
Israeli army in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip ("Palestinian
farmers recall pain of losing centuries-old family land," Agence France
Presse, 1 March 2002)
-
- In a detailed report on Israel's destruction of homes,
land and crops, Israel's B'Tselem human rights organization documented
systematic destruction of trees ("Policy of Destruction: House Demolitions
and Destruction of Agricultural Land in the Gaza Strip," B'Tselem,
February 2002).
-
- Israel's then defense minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer
admitted in a 29 November 2001 letter to an Israeli member of parliament
that in Gaza, in the first few weeks of Israel's violent repression of
Palestinian protests that began in September 2000, "[i]n total, some
5,500 dunam (one dunam=one quarter acre) of orchards of all kinds on the
Palestinian side were uprooted and 4,500 dunam of planted fields and uncultivated
land were destroyed" (cited in B'Tselem report). Ben Eliezer's estimate
of the destruction was far less than that documented by human rights organizations
and Palestinian farmers who suffered the losses, but at least he admitted
the destruction took place.
-
- B'Tselem concluded, "Israel's policy ... flagrantly
violates international humanitarian law. The demolition of houses and the
destruction of agricultural land causes extensive damage to the civilian
population, which will bear the consequences for many years to come. Injury
of this kind to the civilian population cannot be justified on the grounds
of "pressing military necessity," as Israeli officials contend.
-
- "Israel's actions constitute collective punishment
because these Palestinians were not involved in the combat against Israel
even according to Israeli officials. Also, Israel did not give the residents
any warning before damaging their property, and thus denied them the opportunity
to state their claims before the relevant officials and entities. Despite
these violations of international humanitarian law, Israel refuses to compensate
the Palestinians whose property it damaged in these actions."
-
- As of June 2003, when Israel accelerated its construction
of its separation barrier, almost entirely within the Occupied West Bank,
it has uprooted more than 100,000 more trees, according to PENGON (the
Palestinian Environmental NGO Network) and the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign.
In its Weekly Reports, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) documents
the ongoing Israeli destruction of trees and crops, as well as houses and
other civilian property. As of early 2003, PCHR estimated that ten percent
of Gaza's arable land had been destroyed by Israel since September 2000.
-
- The policy of deliberate destruction of trees by Israel
has a long history. Meron Benvenisti, a former Israeli deputy mayor of
Jerusalem, and prolific author, recounted the systematic destruction of
citrus and olive groves left behind by their expelled Palestinian caretakers
and owners in the years immediately after Israel was founded in 1948. Benvenisti
wrote: The destruction of hundreds of thousands of dunams of fruit-bearing
trees does not fit Israel's self-image as a society that knows how to "make
the desert bloom." And the contention that the green Arab landscape
had been destroyed because of the necessity of adapting the crops to the
agricultural practices of the Jews only underscores the conclusion that
it was not the war that had caused this devastation, but rather the disappearance
of the specific human community that had shaped the landscape in accordance
with its needs and preferences. ("Sacred Landscape," Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2000; p. 165)
-
- The Jewish National Fund has played an essential role,
first in acquiring already inhabited land from its Palestinian owners,
and afterwards in attempting to conceal the disappearance of this human
community by creating "parks" on the ruins of ethnically-cleansed
villages. Benvenisti notes that "[i]t is ironic that the JNF, which
took such an active part in the destruction of the Arab landscape, is energetically
involved in the preservation of its remnants. The greenery, buildings,
and agricultural equipment, it seems, merit proper maintenance, but of
course there is no mention of the uprooted villagers; the landscape has
been sanitized." (Benvenisti, p.169)
-
- It takes an extraordinary amount of sanitization, and
indeed self-delusion, for staff at the Jewish National Fund for Israel
to declare that destroying trees is a violation of sacred Jewish law, while
feigning ignorance that each and every day Israel lays waste to the land
and its people and at the same time claims to act in the name of Jews all
over the world.
-
- - Ali Abunimah is a co-founder of The Electronic Intifada
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- ©2000-2004 electronicIntifada.net
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- http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2378.shtml
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