Jewish National Fund UK – Complicit in Ethnic Cleansing. Manchester Public Meeting
Part of PSC national speaking tour in support of those challenging the JNF’s charitable status.
Speaker: Kholud al Ajarma
In 2018, she appealed to the Charity Commission that the JNF UK should not be recognised as a charitable organisation. Kholoud’s family still have the title deeds to their land in Ajjur, now “owned” by the JNF UK, but the Commission rejected her claim.
At a tribunal in Manchester on Tuesday 2nd April 2019, the campaign will be contesting the Charity Commission’s decision.
Come and hear the case for de-registration of the JNF UK .
Biography Kholoud al Ajarma belongs to one of the families ethnically cleansed from Ajjur in 1948. Today, they live in Aida Refugee Camp, Bethlehem, only about 25 miles from their village. The family still have the title deeds to their land in Ajjur. Kholoud has studied in England, Holland, Norway and Morocco, but says the Right of Return is the real work of her life.
Background The Jewish National Fund (JNF), set up in 1901, has played a key role in systematically taking over the land of the Palestinian people. Before the Nakba of 1948, Palestine’s Arab population owned 93% of the land on which the state of Israel was set up. During the Nakba, two-thirds of the Palestinian population were driven from their homes and their land seized, much of which was transferred to the Jewish National Fund. Once land is in the ownership of the JNF it cannot be sold to Palestinians. Today, Palestinians owns just 3%.
As registered British charity, the JNF UK receives all the associated financial and reputational benefits of this status. Funds from JNF UK have been used to furhter the dispossession the indigenous people of Palestine. The campaign to persuade the Charity Commission to withdraw the charitable status of the JNF UK began in 2013 and a new appeal was lodged in 2018.
The appeal highlights the case of a Kholoud al Ajarma’s family, whose land in Ajjur was taken from them by force in 1948. No longer accessible to its rightful owners, it is now used a leisure facility for Israelis called the British Park, an example of JNF UK green wash of Israel’s ethnic cleansing.