What is Stop the JNF?
We have received many letters from readers lately asking us who about this organization” Stop the JNF” (STF) and what is the nature of their politics. Of course never wanting to let our readers down have done research and come up with the answers that you want to know!

(STF) first came onto the agenda of the community after a minor protest against the Reggies chain store for supporting a campaign providing emergency relief after forest fires in the Carmel. The protest ended nearly as soon as it began but got extensive coverage leaving people mildly bemused as to why a group would be protesting a toy store that gives money to a green organization.

A Myshtetl investigation shows that STF is in fact a much larger international Palestinian front organization that works to target Israel by attacking one of key its chief environment and development organization. It especially likes “Jew-washing” its programs with a couple solemn Jewish faces to hide its extremist agenda. This occasionally backfires when these Jews suddenly stop saying that they are Jewish at all, expect for the purposes of the protest. So for instance prominent international STF writer Joel Kovel has said that “I have worked at negating the various threads of my Jewish identity”.

SFT South Africa follows a similar pattern. Their website claims that they were created in 2012 because of Reggies support of JNF “ In response, a group of concerned Jewish South Africans (who do not identify with the JNF nor Israel’s racist policies) spearheaded the creation of a local chapter of the international campaign called "Stop the JNF"”. It is obvious simply from this headline about the extremist nature of the group. Already however some of the lies being perpetrated by the organization become apparent.

Despite their statement a quick internet search already starts to show the lies emerging. A full year before the STF say they were founded it seems they tried to organize a protest against the JNF’s participation at the UN International Climate Change Conference COP17. The story with STF comment was carried by the Islamic Fundamentalist newspaper “Al Qassam”, it also appeared on this Palestinian website http://www.usacbi.org/2011/11/8985/ complete with a photo with no supposed Jewish leaders and no comment from them either.

From this we can see that STF has been operating as part of this fundamentalist agenda for sometime but was apparently “Jew washed” for the Reggies protest when this these faces suddenly appeared front and centre. Further pictures of the protests clearly show members of the Palestine Solidarity Committee an organization whose rallies have attracted the attentions of the South African Human Rights Commission for their hate speech content.

What are the STOP the JNF’s objectives?
Due to the fact that STF is a Palestinian front organization their objective is to undermine Israel in any way that they can. STF is concerned about the environmental successes that have been in Israel and in particular JNF’s role in this process. A spokesperson of STF recently said on Channel Islam recently that they were concerned about the work that the JNF was doing in South Africa

“ In South Africa, it has many ties to businesses. It also has many ties to environmental organisations, environmental organisations particularly with growing food and the JNF looks to help assist them with skills, not necessarily funds, in creating food gardens for more poor communities”…. STF she said was part of “a much broader campaign to completely delegitimize the JNF in South Africa.”

It seems the STF sees environmental issues as a soft target and uses it as an attempt to undermine the JNF and its environmental work, hoping in the process to undermine the right of Israel to exist.

In order to do this their strategy is to try and politicize the work of the JNF to detract from its environmental work. One its most frequent claims, such as in the Reggies protest, is that the JNF is planting on trees on Palestinian land.

On closer inspection however one sees that this land is in fact found on the inside of the armistice line or the Green line. In other words this group is only interested in the destruction of Israel not in the occupation or issues related to Judea and Samaria. In fact STF’s protest against Reggies was based on anger that money had been donated to assist the damage from forest fires in the Carmel, something that the Turks, Jordanians and even Palestinians were willing assist with.

A spokesperson from the JNF confirmed this position stating that “The JNF only plants trees on land that belongs to it or to the state of Israel”.

What about the Bedouin?
Another favorite hobby horse of STF is issues relating to the Bedouin. Due to the fact that their disingenuous land claim campaign doesn’t get much attention they focus on the Bedouin to try get some more airtime. This tends to centre on claims that the JNF forests Bedouin land and evicts them. On closer inspection this also is clearly non-sense. The JNF works throughout the Negev and Galilee with Bedouin and Israeli Arab work that includes sustainable grazing initiatives in JNF forests, the creation of parks in the South, tourism projects owned by Bedouin businesses people and literally millions of dollars into Bedouin livelihood projects like Adir Watir. In some places Bedouin employees also form the majority of JNF employees.

The Myshetl investigation shows that STF focuses it attention on a few Bedouin families and who have a dispute with the Israeli government over the ownership of certain state properties. The most famous of these are the Al Arakib. The JNF sometimes plants trees on state properties and this where the involvement of the organization came from.

The JNF said “When planting trees the JNF always follows the law according to owns the land.”
In a 2012 case an Israeli court in a landmark case found that this land did not belong to these families and that “the plaintiffs had failed to prove their claims.” The court based these findings on three key pieces of evidence, the first are registries from the Ottoman period which show no registration of land ownership, the second is a survey of the British Palestine Exploration Fund from as far as back as 1871 which shows no settlement within more than a mile. The last are aerial photos from the mandate period again showing no permanent settlement of any Bedouin tribes in the area. We included the pictures below for Myshetl readers which show the very obvious truth.

However Bedouin squatters have repeatedly moved back onto the land in order to create “facts on the ground” and in the process attacked JNF foresters trying to plant trees in the immediate area. This has been reported as the JNF “evicting” the Bedouin. However the JNF clarified the situation saying “If there is an eviction it is always from Israel police. The JNF only plant trees”.

Of course all this is very sad since the work that the environmental work that the JNF does both in South Africa and around the world has been covered extensively on this website. The JNF has won many awards for its work and helped 1000’s of non-Jews in this country. Israel will always survive these kinds of attacks, but environment and the poor of South Africa will be the ones that suffer.