Victory! Federal Court Confirms End of Jewish National Fund's Canada’s Charitable Status

This is the first major battle that the JNF has lost in its attempt to reverse the CRA’s landmark decision from this past August.

Since its inception, JNF Canada has been a fundamental pillar of Canadian complicity in Israeli ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and the theft of Palestinian land. The JNF has been a driving force for Zionist settlement and occupation since before the establishment of Israel, through their stated mission of “redeeming the land of Israel for the Jewish people.” This “redemption” in reality meant the mass forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The JNF has long pursued their objective to “make the desert bloom” through land expropriation, clearing the way for expanding Zionist colonization. Unfortunately for the JNF, the Palestinian people have always inhabited the land and to this day resist the erasure of their presence and history by Israel.

JNF Canada participated in several large campaigns of “reforestation” in occupied Palestinian land. This was done in complete contravention of both Canadian and international law, weaponizing environmentalism to displace Palestinians and ensure the consolidation of Israel’s control over Palestinian land.

One of JNF Canada’s most infamous greenwashing projects has been Ayalon Canada Park, situated within the occupied West Bank. Bernard Bloomfield of Montreal, then president of JNF Canada, led a campaign in 1972 to raise over $15 million dollars within the Canadian Jewish community to ensure the park’s establishment. To establish the park, three Palestinian villages–Imwas, Yalu and Deir Aiyub–had their lands confiscated and inhabitants expelled. One of the survivors, Dr. Ismail Zayid, would go on to become a powerful Canadian voice denouncing JNF Canada’s complicity in Israel’s crimes.

For Palestinian human rights advocates, the JNF’s judicial defeat is a significant victory. JNF Canada can no longer issue tax receipts for charitable donations, and will effectively need to shut down operations. The CRA has also recognized that JNF Canada was in violation of Canadian and international legal standards, much of which was summarized in IJV’s 2017 complaint.

Although this is a significant victory and a crowning achievement for IJV and the Palestine solidarity movement more broadly, the fight to ensure the end of the JNF’s complicity is far from over. JNF Canada still has several legal avenues to contest the CRA’s decision–notably by appealing the decision in front of the Federal Court of Appeals. Meanwhile, the JNF in Israel continues to snatch up Palestinian land in the West Bank and finance projects linked with settler violence. While we continue to fight against the exploitation of the charitable sector to fund Israeli apartheid, we also call on Canada to go beyond status revocation and directly sanction the JNF in Israel as well.

In the next few months, the JNF Canada will have the option to cede to the CRA its remaining assets (stated as about $31 million in 2023) or give them to another approved charity. Based upon JNF Canada’s previous conduct, and the manner in which similar charities have divested their assets when their status was revoked, it is possible that it will endeavour to transfer its funds to an organization that is engaged in similarly harmful practices against Palestinians–of which many still remain.

As detailed in our more recent report, co-published by Just Peace Advocates and Dr. Miles Howe, millions of Canadian tax-dollars continue to finance Israeli ethnic cleansing, occupation, apartheid and genocide through ‘charitable’ donations. It is Canada’s clear legal obligation under both international and domestic law to put an end to this complicity.

That’s why we are calling on all Canadians to write now to the Canada Revenue Agency, National Revenue Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau and other MPs urging them to immediately suspend the charitable status of organizations found to be aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity, and to prosecute them to the full effect of the Criminal Code.

We must continue our fight to ensure that, as NDP MP Niki Ashton has stated, not one cent of Canadian tax dollars goes toward funding genocide.