Scroll down to watch our 2015-16 videos.
Founded in pre-state Israel in 1901, the Jewish National Fund is one of the world’s oldest and largest continuously operating Jewish institutions, and is best known for planting trees in Israel.
For decades JNF-USA was an auxiliary organization whose primary purpose was to raise money for the Israeli organization, known by its Hebrew name Keren Kayemeth L’Israel (KKL), but the two organizations are now separate institutions with distinct governance and funding priorities. While they partner on some projects in Israel, only a fraction of the money JNF-USA raises go to KKL, as the Forward reported in 2017.
JNF-USA once had a policy of not funding any projects outside Israel’s pre-1967 borders. In fact, in 1989, right-wing Jewish activists, who believed JNF-USA should fund over the Green Line, challenged this policy in a lawsuit. (Most of the case was dismissed, but the JNF-USA was, for a time, required to post a disclaimer on their materials that noted they did not over the Green Line.) T’ruah is asking JNF-USA to reinstate this policy and immediately stop funding all projects over the Green Line, Israel’s internationally recognized borders, as well as ceasing funding any Jewish organizations that operate over the Green Line (regardless of whether those are the projects for which JNF-USA is providing funds).
In 2015 and 2016, as part of our successful “Transparency in Funding” (also known as “Eifo George,” after the campaign video) campaign, T’ruah produced two videos calling on the JNF-USA to be transparent about the fact that a portion of the money it raised went over the Green Line to Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
As a result of our campaign, which was covered in the Forward, Haaretz and elsewhere, JNF-USA began listing its funding in Israel and the West Bank in greater (although not complete) detail on its 990 tax forms.
Watch “Eifo George” and “Conjunction Junction Has Malfunctioned” below:
