JNF eBook Vol 4 - JNF eBook Series

JNF eBook Vol 4
In Scandratt’s article, he outlines specific actions environmentalists and environmental
organizations can take to expose the JNF and isolate and exclude it from the environmental
justice movement. As Deutsch points to in the conclusion of her piece, the United States,
Canada and Europe share more than current economic and political interests with the State of
Israel; they share histories and justifications of settler colonialism. She describes the JNF’s
Toronto Twinning Program in which the JNF planted a tree in local Downsview Park for
every tree it planted in the Yatir Forest in the southern portion of the Hebron Hills. “The Yatir
Forest protrudes into the West Bank, causes serious and irreparable damage to the ecosystem
and keeps Bedouin people out, reinforcing mythologies of the empty land without people.”
Similarly, Toronto’s Downsview Park sits on unacknowledged traditional First Nations
territory.
As the text of a solidarity speech given by Coya White Hat-Artichoker, member of the
Rosebud Sioux Tribe, demonstrates, efforts to confront the JNF have much to learn from the
struggles of indigenous people to survive, claim sovereignty and reclaim land in the face of
long histories of colonialism and the brutal acceleration of the destruction of peoples, cultures
and the natural environment by capitalism. Likewise, as we challenge the JNF and organize in
solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle, we are obligated to confront the histories of
colonialism and the role of our own societies in this irrevocable destruction.
War and occupation destroy both the lives and cultures of those who live there and the history
in which those lives are lived. In Iraq, one of the oldest civilizations on the planet, much of
the gift of our collective history has been destroyed by war. In Palestine, scores of 2000-yearold
cities and historical sites lie buried under JNF-planted forests and parks. iii
The depth and extent of the destruction caused raises the question of what it means to
decolonize a place and reconstitute its land. What has been lost is gone. Uprooted thousandyear-old
olive trees cannot be replaced. Water sources have been emptied, depleted or
contaminated. Entire ecosystems have been destroyed. And the societies and daily lives that
depended on these resources have, to varying degrees, been dismantled. But, as is known by
so many peoples the world over, it is upon the remnants of history, memory, and other
inheritances that we rely in order to become who we are – as individuals, communities and
societies. And it is in the repair and maintenance of what remains that together we determine
what will be planted in its wake.
The power of an international effort to stop an organization like the JNF lies in the
relationships it can build between our various and distinct struggles to survive, live in dignity,
preserve our histories and cultures, and sustain life on this planet. The continued existence
and toleration of organizations like the JNF are counterproductive to these ends. Therefore,
the collective aim of defeating the JNF is a victory for our shared humanity and the
sustainability of what matters most to our collective well-being. This volume of the JNF
eBook series embraces the goals shared by millions in movements for liberation as well as for
environmental and ecological justice.
The collection opens with three different lenses through which the role of the JNF is critiqued
yet that share a common conclusion: the JNF should have no place in environmental
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