Stop the JNF Statement on the pogroms against Palestinians

A wave of attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank has been unleashed under Israel’s new far-right government. The attack on the Jenin refugee camp has been the largest military assault in the last 20 years, destroying essential infrastructure, killing 12 people and injuring over 100.  Since the beginning of this year, the Israeli military and settlers have killed over 190 Palestinians, including 30 children. The army also colluded in the pogroms carried out by the settlers against the Palestinian villages of Huwara, Ein Samiya, Urif, Masafer Yatta, Sinjil, Umm Safa and Tumus Ayya, aimed at accelerating Israeli colonisation and ethnic cleansing. 

In Tumus, the settlers killed Omar, a 27-year-old father of two children; burned 30 homes; 60 cars and 10 acres of agricultural fields.  Even as the burnt-out homes and fields of Turmus were still smouldering, the Israeli government announced the construction of a further 5,700 illegal Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank.  The Israeli state’s objective is clear: to seize more Palestinian land and remove the inhabitants into tiny enclaves, on the model of South African Bantustans, ultimately seeking their total removal from historic Palestine. The idea of a future Palestinian state, declared Netanyahu at the most recent meeting of his ministers, must be killed and removed from the international agenda. 

In the face of escalating Israeli violence and ethnic cleansing, the British government, far from imposing sanctions on Israel, is pressing ahead with legislation that would ban British public bodies from cutting their ties to the Israeli state.

Palestinians continue to resist Israel’s colonial violence, standing strong to defend their homes and land. They call on people around the world to show solidarity with their struggle for freedom and self-determination, including by taking action against companies, financial institutions and other organisations that facilitate their oppression.  

Stop the JNF campaign is an international campaign committed to ending the role of the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemet LeIsrael) in the colonisation of Palestinian land. The Jewish National Fund is a key instrument for the Zionist movement’s efforts to transfer Palestinian land into exclusively Jewish ownership and eradicate the Palestinian presence on the land.  The attacks on Palestinians that the settler movement has now unleashed are vigilante extensions of Israel’s land confiscations, conducted through the JNF, under the pretext of afforestation and developing nature reserves for environmental improvement: they both have the common goal of entrenching a Jewish supremacist state.

Stop the JNF calls on all those committed to justice for the Palestinian people to:

  • endorse and promote our Call for Action, https://www.stopthejnf.org/call-for-action/
  • donate and help us fundraise for the Plant a Tree in Palestine project – the project supports the on-going struggle of Palestinians at grassroots to resist by sustaining and rebuilding their land;
  • join actions and mobilisations in your area. Around the world, our governments continue to provide Israel cover – in the UK the British government’s proposed Economic Activities of Public Bodies bill singles out Israel for special protection from efforts by the public and civil society groups to support the Palestinian Call for BDS