Dec 5, 2013
5 December 2013
Following the National Audit Office report that concluded the Charity Commission is not tackling abuses of charitable status effectively, further evidence is being presented by human rights campaigners that the Charity Commission is not “fit for purpose”.
The Stop the JNF Campaign submitted a document to the Charity Commission in March outlining why Israel charity, the Jewish National Fund (JNF), should be removed from the register of charities after decades of benefiting from charity status.
According to their own guidelines, the Charity Commission, when considering the charitable status of institutions operating abroad, must “first consider whether they would be regarded as charities if their operations are confined to the United Kingdom”. Campaigners report that the JNF, a parastatal institution in Israel, has a key role in the administration of land, discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel in all 93% of public land under their control.
A Stop the JNF spokesperson said “If there were an inch of land in Britain that was not open to Jews, or Christians, to live or work on, there would be a public outcry and rightly so, yet this is the type of systematic discrimination that the JNF charities fund and help to establish in Israeli law. The Charity Commission is allowing this abuse to take place; the abuse of the basic rights of Palestinians in Israel/Palestine and the abuse of charity law in the UK.”
The JNF has a strong ally in the Chair of the Charity Commission, William Shawcross, who succeeded Dame Suzi Leather in 2002. To take on his new appointment Shawcross resigned as director of The Henry Jackson Society, a right wing ‘think-tank’, itself a registered charity and a vocal advocate for war with Iran. Shawcross was also a former trustee of the Anglo-Israel Association and as a founder member of the Friends of Israel Initiative pledged to stand “in a spirit of solidarity with the State of Israel… inside the institutions of the international community”. Campaigners raise concerns about the conflict of interest illustrated by Shawcross’s political affiliations and call for a full investigation into the JNF UK and their charities.
The role of the JNF in Israel’s treatment and policy against the Palestinians has been widely reported. In 2010, the British press covered JNF involvement in Israel’s demolition of Al Araqib village in the Negev. The controversy around the JNF continued with the resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron as patron in 2011. Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband have kept their distance, breaking a long-standing tradition whereby all three main party leaders became JNF Patrons on becoming party leader. Tony Blair remains one of the few remaining JNF patrons while 68 MPs signed a Parliamentary Early Day Motion in 2011 calling for revocation of the JNF’s charitable status.
Last week Palestinians across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories once again staged demonstrations against the government’s so-called ‘Prawer Plan’ that will forcibly remove up to 70,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel from their lands in the south of Israel and replace them with army bases and Jewish settlements, many funded by JNF UK charities. The Israeli government has ignored calls from international bodies such as the UN Committee on the Elimination for Racial Discrimination and the European Parliament to withdraw the Plan.
In May the Charity Commission stated that the JNF charities would remain on the register with the caveat that the objects of the JNF charities are compatible with the requirements of the Equalities Act 2010. Campaigners say that “the Charity Commission response illustrates their inability to deal with evidence that the core purpose of the JNF and its charities goes against the public benefit, particularly when the leadership of the Charity Commission is so committed to ensuring the state of Israel should be supported at all costs”.
END
For further information:
Telephone: 01659 74507
Mobile: 07931 200 361
NOTES
1. The Stop the JNF Campaign is an international campaign aimed at ending the role of the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemet LeIsrael) (JNF-KKL) in:
– the on-going displacement of indigenous Palestinians from their land
– the theft of their property
– the funding of historic and present day colonies, and
– the destruction of the natural environment.
The Jewish National Fund was established in 1901 by the World Zionist Organisation and mandated to obtain land for the sole use of persons of ‘Jewish faith, race or ancestry’. It was first registered in the UK, and has retained a fundraising and propaganda function in Britain since the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948. Through its landholdings and its influence on the Israel Land Authority, the JNF controls 93% of the land in Israel on which it practices its ethnic exclusion policies.
The JNF continues to serve as a global fundraiser for Israeli ethnic cleansing, occupation and apartheid. Despite its role in a State institution of Israel (the Israel Land Authority) and in institutionalized racism and apartheid, the JNF and its affiliate organisations enjoy charitable status in over 50 countries.
2. Stop the JNF application to the Charity Commission to remove JNF UK charities from the register available download here: https://www.stopthejnf.org/?wpdmdl=19
3. In its annual report of 1993, the Charity Commission set out its understanding of the relevant law as
regards the charitable status of institutions operating abroad:
“One should first consider whether they would be regarded as charities if their operations are
confined to the United Kingdom. If they would, then they should be presumed also to be
charitable even though operating abroad unless it would be contrary to public policy to
recognise them.”
In 2002, the High Court held that “the Commission is clearly right about this”. (Jacob J in Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem v Sonsino [2002] EWHC 1304)
4. William Shawcross
5. David Cameron resigns as Patron of JNF UK
6. Early Day Motion: 68 MPs signed a motion stating “there is just cause to consider revocation of the JNF’s charitable status in the UK”
7. Demolition and Eviction of Bedouin Citizens of Israel in the Naqab (Negev) – The Prawer Plan
UN CERD Calls on Israel to Withdraw the Prawer Plan Law, 15 March 2012
8. Charity Commission letter to Stop the JNF: https://www.stopthejnf.org/?wpdmdl=4
Dec 4, 2013
“William Shawcross, resigned as director of The Henry Jackson Society, a right wing ‘think-tank’ which advocates war with Iran, to take up his current position as Chair of the Charity Commission. Shawcross is a former trustee of the Anglo-Israel Association, and was a founder member of the Friends of Israel Initiative which pledges to stand “in a spirit of solidarity with the State of Israel… inside the institutions of the international community”.
The Charity Commission “is not fit for purpose”, according to Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, Margaret Hodge MP, who has raised the option of scrapping it. Hodge was responding to a National Audit Office (NAO) report that concluded the Charity Commission is not tackling abuses of charitable status effectively.
The NAO published an accompanying report on the case of The Cup Trust, a sham charity tax scam for the wealthy; the “charity” bought and sold bonds among its members to the tune of £46 million purely for purposes of tax avoidance. Since the scam started in 2010 with the sham charity’s registration, The Cup Trust had a total income of £176m out of which £152,292 was released in grants to charitable causes. According to the NAO, the Charity Commission should never have allowed The Cup Trust to register as a charity in the first place or allow it to keep its charitable status even after its unsuitability was flagged up.
Under pressure, the Charity Commission had no option but to open an inquiry, and launched enquiries in both 2010 and again in 2011 but then concluded that The Cup Trust’s charitable status could not be revoked because it claimed to have been set up for exclusively charitable purposes and it had made some miniscule grants, i.e. 3p went to charity from every £100 raised. The Commission claimed it was unable on these grounds alone to revoke The Cup Trust’s charitable status. The NAO slamed the Charities Commission for its “reliance on the view that tax avoidance schemes were a legitimate activity for charities and that it was for HMRC to pursue tax issues”.
The Jewish National Fund is another body whose charities the Charity Commission has long maintained on the register in the face of incontrovertible evidence that the JNF aims are contrary to the requirements of public benefit and that it is raising funds for largely non-charitable purposes. As with The Cup Trust, the Charity Commission has rebuffed all challenges to the charitable status of the JNF UK, the most recent by the Stop the JNF Campaign, on the grounds that the JNF claims to have been set up for purely charitable purposes and that it donates money to causes. In fact, the JNF UK is a branch of the international JNF-KKL, which is a para-statal organisation in Israel and an open participant in, and often the director of, the Israeli Government’s past and present ethnic cleansing operations in Israel/Palestine.
The JNF-KKL is involved in Israel’s Prawer Plan to forcibly drive up to 70,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel from their lands in the Naqab, in the South of Israel, and replace them with exclusively Jewish settlements. Calls for Israel to withdraw the Plan have come from many bodies, including the UN Committee on the Elimination for Racial Discrimination, the European Parliament,the UN Office for Human Rights, and Human Rights Watch. Israel has ignored the calls.
The JNF is a part of the Israeli Government, and is a key player in the Zionist programme to acquire land that cannot then be sold or leased to Palestinian citizens of Israel. This egregious case of ethnic discrimination would be criminal if practiced in the UK. As the Stop the JNF Campaign has shown, the Charity Commission has ignored its own guidance when considering the charitable status of institutions operating abroad to “first consider whether they would be regarded as charities if their operations are confined to the United Kingdom”. Not only would the JNF charities not be charities; they would be liable to prosecution for criminal activities.
Those who run the Charity Commission were long aware of the cases made against both sham charities, The Cup Trust and the JNF UK. In both cases the Charity Commission’s arguments are shocking and unacceptable to virtually anyone appraised of what these bodies actually do. Sixty-eight MPs signed EDM1677 in 2011 calling for revocation of the JNF’s charitable status. No doubt alarmed at the potential damage from continuing an association with the JNF, given the rising awareness of the JNF’s activities, David Cameron resigned a JNF Patron in 2011. Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband have kept their distance, breaking a long-standing tradition whereby all three main party leaders became JNF Patrons on becoming party leader. Tony Blair remains a JNF Patron.
In its fund-raising for ethnic cleansing, the JNF has a strong ally in the Chair of the Charity Commission, Shawcross, who succeeded Dame Suzi Leather in 2002. To take on his new appointment Shawcross resigned as director of The Henry Jackson Society, a right wing ‘think-tank’, itself a very dubious registered charity and a vocal advocate for war with Iran. Shawcross is a militant Zionist, former trustee of the Anglo-Israeli Association, and as founder member of the Friends of Israel Initiative pledges to stand “in a spirit of solidarity with the State of Israel… inside the institutions of the international community”. The Charity Commission is one such “institution” where Shawcross operates as Chair “in a spirit of solidarity with the State of Israel” in its violations of Palestinian human rights.
The Charities Commission CEO, SAM younger, admitted on BBC Radio 4 this morning that the Charity Commission is defective “in identifying where serious wrongdoing is happening in charities”, but he pleaded that pressure of work meant they “rely on being able to identify…wrongdoing then dealing with it”. This will not wash in the case of the JNF’s sham charities, for the Stop the JNF Campaign – not to mention 70 MPs – identified the JNF’s wrongdoing very clearly. Younger also added bizarrely that “the test of being registered as a charity is your charitable purposes not your activities”. Read that again: as long as the paperwork is persuasive, then what they do is not important!
The scandal engulfing the Charity Commission is the latest failure of an oversight body charged with preventing crime and abuse in major UK institutions; the BBC promoted and protected Jimmy Savile throughout his lifelong career while he was widely known in the BBC canteen as a sexual predator; the majority of the MPs elected in 2005 to the Westminster Parliament were forced to repay expenses they had improperly (fraudulently?) claimed; the Press Complaints Commission issued a 2009 report dismissing claims of widespread phone hacking, the Independent Police Complaints Commission since its founding in 2004 has investigated over 800 deaths following police contact or in police custody without a single conviction. Bodies charged with safeguarding the elderly in care homes, or children in care, or standards in the NHS have all been embroiled in scandals. The Charities Commission is now the latest such exposure.
The Charity Commission maintained the charitable status of The Cup Trust scam over several years, but it has defended for decades a sham charity involved in Israeli apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Indeed, such was the obviously non-charitable aims and activities of the JNF that when it was founded in 1901, the JNF’s own experts advised against seeking charitable status on the grounds that:
“if the purpose of the Fund, as stated in the resolution of the Zionist Congress, is to promote the return of the Jews to Palestine through purchasing land there and leasing it to Jewish settlers, we cannot state that the purpose is charitable within the framework of British Law… We therefore conclude that the purpose of the Fund will be a political rather than a charitable one…”.
The JNF UK charity the JNF Charitable Trust 2012 report confirms that the JNF’s main purpose, to realise the “Zionist dream”/nightmare, has not changed since 1901.
We can’t rely on government bureaucrats to clean up the Augean stable that the Charity Commission is revealed to be; we need a stronger campaign to build up public pressure against the criminal activity of the JNF-KKL and the JNF UK’s role.
Please join Stop the JNF UK and/or invite a speaker to your TU/church/student/campaign meeting.
Contact: uk@stopthejnf.org 07931 200 361
Website: www.stopthejnf.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stopthejnf
Stop the JNF Campaign submission to the Charity Commission:
May 20, 2013
Stop the JNF Media Release
20 May 2013
On March 21st the Stop the JNF campaign made an application to the Charity Commission for the removal of Jewish National Fund charities from the UK register of charities. The application gave evidence that the JNF is racist, complicit in ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and, according to one of its own former directors, an obstacle to peace. The Stop the JNF application demonstrated that the purpose of the JNF is contrary to the requirement of public benefit and does not qualify the organisation for charity status. Over 500 people have also written individual complaints to the Charity Commission.
The Stop the JNF Campaign argues that the primary purpose of the JNF has always been to remove Palestinians from their land and replace them with Jewish only settlements. As such, the JNF does not act for public benefit, which is a requirement of all charities in the UK.
Furthermore, the JNF promotes racism through Zionist education, and is a ‘para-statal’ organisation, recognised in statute as part of the State of Israel.
The JNF is involved in the administration of 93% of land in Israel, directly controlling 13%. The remains of Palestinian villages are still visible under JNF ‘Parks’, examples are the village of Ajjur in the JNF British Park and Imwas village in JNF Canada Park, while Israel denies the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and land. Today, Palestinian Bedouins, who are citizens of the state of Israel, are being ethnically cleansed from the Negev (Naqab) to make way for a JNF forest.
The JNF is openly racist. This is what it said to an Israeli Court “the JNF is not the trustee of the general public in Israel. Its loyalty is given to the Jewish people in the Diaspora and in the state of Israel… The JNF, in relation to being an owner of land, 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.”
In a reply dated May 15, the Charity Commission refused to remove JNF charities from the register of charities. It has however decided to investigate whether the discrimination practised by the JNF is lawful under the Equalities Act 2010.
Sofiah Macleod, from Stop the JNF said that “we are glad that the Charity Commission is at last looking at the JNF’s systematic racist discrimination. There is enough evidence to show that JNF UK and JNF Israel are so tied together that they cannot be described as separate organisations. Yet the Charity Commission shows a wilful blindness on this issue. We very much look forward to hearing how the JNF will attempt to explain that its discrimination is for the public benefit. The Stop the JNF Campaign will be seeking to make the necessary legal challenges to force the Charity Commission to do its job, to remove the JNF charities from the register”.
END
Download copy of Charity Commission letter to Stop the JNF UK
Mar 30, 2013
30 March 2013
Stop the JNF UK
On 30 March 1976, thousands of Palestinians living as a minority in Israel mounted a general strike and organised protests against Israeli government plans to expropriate almost 15,000 acres of Palestinian land in the Galilee. The Israeli government, led by prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and defence minister Shimon Peres, sent in the army to break up the general strike. The Israeli army killed six unarmed Palestinians, wounded hundreds and arrested hundreds more, including political activists. All were citizens of Israel.
Palestinians who were internally displaced or managed to remain in their homes during the Zionist ethnic cleansing of 1948 were given citizenship of Israel but kept under military rule until 1966. During those years expropriation of Palestinian land accelerated and Jewish settlement building increased while the Israeli government crushed political organisation and resistance by Palestinians, now a minority on their own land.
On what became known as Land Day, 30th March 1976 was the first time since 1948 Palestinians inside Israel demonstrated mass resistance against Zionist colonisation and systematic dispossession of Palestinians.
Today, Palestinians are 20% of the population of Israel and they, together with Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, continue to struggle against land expropriation, dispossession and systematic segregation, or apartheid. Until today the Israeli government with the help of Zionist organisations such as the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund (JNF) are working to drive Palestinians from their homes and their land to replace them with Jewish settlers and colonies. The JNF is a racist organisation that is complicit in ethnic cleansing and whose activities are an obstacle to a just peace.
The JNF branch in the UK has registered charity status despite JNF UK aims and activities violating charity law and the public benefit requirement. While we send our greetings of solidarity on Land Day to Palestinians protesting and in struggle against the colonisation and occupation of their lands, it is important we work here to end JNF UK charity status.
Mar 22, 2013
On Thursday 21st March, International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Palestine solidarity activists handed over a copy of the Stop the JNF application to the Charity Commission to remove JNF UK charities from the register.
Liverpool
On Thursday 21st March a delegation of twelve people mostly from Liverpool Friends of Palestine gathered together on Princes’ Parade. Their aim was to hand in a document to the Charity Commission.
Similar delegations were at Charity Commission offices at Taunton, London and Newport.
Newport
Palestine supporters from South Wales presented several petitions to Harry Iles at the Charity Commission offices in Newport on Thursday, as part of a nationwide campaign to call for the racist JNF to have its UK charity status revoked. We were welcomed into the offices by Mr Iles who had been expecting us and invited to state our position. We did so briefly and were told that our submission would be considered by the CC lawyers and that we were welcome to add any further material like JNF fundraising leaflets to our petition if we wanted.
London
Campaigners from various groups, including Jews for Justice for Palestinians and International Anti-Zionist Network stood with the Stop the JNF banner at the London office of the Charity Commission.
Photo (right): Kenneth Dibble, Charity Commission Head of Legal Services, and Nick Allaby, Executive Director came out to receive the Stop the JNF application.
Taunton
They were expecting us! A very helpful security chap let us in and asked us if we were anything to do with the “petition” across the country. Neil Robertson came down from the Charity Commission office to receive our submission.
Photo (above): Neil Robertson of the Charity Commission, Taunton, receives the submission from Sharen Green from Stop the JNF watched by John Burbage
Photo (right): Jean Franklin from Wimborne and John Burbage from Sherborne at the Charity Commission, Taunton.
Mar 22, 2013
MEDIA RELEASE
Israel charity registration shows Charity Commission ‘failed to protect public interest’
22 March 2013
Human rights campaigners have accused the Charity Commission of failing to protect the public interest by allowing the charity status of JNF UK to continue. John Nicholson from the Stop the JNF campaign said that “in a period when we hear almost every day of regulatory bodies being condemned for failing to carry out their core duties, we expect the Charity Commission to take the concerns of British tax payers seriously”.
Nicholson explained that “JNF UK and its charities are involved in the violation of Palestinian rights. Their primary aim is to settle Jews in Israel-Palestine which is not a charitable purpose under British law. Our tax payers money should not be helping the destruction of Palestinian villages and removal of Palestinians from their land so that leisure parks can be built for the state of Israel”.
This is not the first time the JNF has come under fire. Over the years human rights campaigners have made complaints to the Charity Commission about the role of the British branch of the JNF organisation in Israel’s policy of administration of large areas of land and related services for exclusively Jewish use. In 2010, David Cameron resigned as patron of the charity making it the first time for one hundred years that a British Prime Minister has not agreed to lend their support. Last year sixty eight MPs signed an Early Day Motion in Parliament saying that “there is just cause to consider revocation of the JNF’s charitable status in the UK”.
The Charity Commission response has so far been to accept JNF UK’s assertion that they are not part of the JNF organisation based in over fifty countries including Israel. The Stop the JNF application to the Charity Commission for the removal of JNF UK charities from the register of charities, however, exposes the close ideological and partnership links between these organisations. The application also makes the case that it is JNF UK that is guilty of complicity in human rights abuses and of running ‘sham charities’.
To mark International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on Thursday, campaigners handed in the Stop the JNF application to Charity Commission offices in London, Taunton, Newport and Liverpool.
Nicholson said that “the Charity Commission has so far failed to act and failed to protect British tax payers from this abuse of charity law to assist a foreign government, Israel, in the setting up and maintenance of a land management system based on inequality and segregation”.
END
NOTE TO EDITORS
1. The Stop the JNF Campaign is an international campaign aimed at ending the role of the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemet LeIsrael) (JNF-KKL) in:
– the on-going displacement of indigenous Palestinians from their land
– the theft of their property
– the funding of historic and present day colonies, and
– the destruction of the natural environment.
The Jewish National Fund was established in 1901 by the World Zionist Organisation and mandated to obtain land for the sole use of persons of ‘Jewish faith, race or ancestry’. It was first registered in the UK, and has retained a fundraising and propaganda function in Britain since the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948. Through its landholdings and its influence on the Israel Land Authority, the JNF controls 93% of the land in Israel on which it practices its ethnic exclusion policies.
The JNF continues to serve as a global fundraiser for Israeli ethnic cleansing, occupation and apartheid. Despite its role in a State institution of Israel (the Israel Land Authority) and in institutionalized racism and apartheid, the JNF and its affiliate organisations enjoy charitable status in over 50 countries.
For further information:
uk@stopthejnf.org
07931200361
www.stopthejnf.org.uk
2. Stop the JNF application to the Charity Commission to remove JNF UK charities from the register available to download here.
3. EDM 1677: 68 MPs signed a motion stating “there is just cause to consider revocation of the JNF’s charitable status in the UK”.
