Ayalon Canada Park in the Ayalon Valley is one of the projects JNF supports. (photo by Guy Asiag, KKL-JNF photo archive)
A member of Parliament has agreed to sponsor an e-petition that calls on the government to revoke the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund of Canada (JNF).
This is the first time an MP has lent support to an effort to rescind JNF’s tax-exempt charitable status in Canada and marks the latest development in a long-running battle by those opposed to the JNF’s charitable status.
Quebec NDP MP and national revenue critic Pierre-Luc Dusseault has agreed to sponsor petition E-1999, which, as of this writing [Jan. 21], had garnered more than 1,400 signatures. It went online on Jan. 9 and will close for signatures on May 9.
E-petitions are an official system whereby petitions that are sponsored by an MP and receive 500 signatures will be tabled in the House of Commons. The government must then respond within 45 days.
It was submitted by Independent Jewish Voices of Canada (IJV), which is considered an outlier within the Jewish community, due to its support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel.
On its website, IJV calls itself “a grassroots organization grounded in Jewish tradition that opposes all forms of racism and advocates for justice and peace for all in Israel-Palestine.”
The JNF was recently the subject of a scathing story by the CBC, which reported that the charity was under a Canada Revenue Agency audit for using charitable donations to build infrastructure for the Israel Defence Forces, “in violation of Canada’s tax rules.”
The JNF responded by saying that it stopped funding projects on Israeli military bases in 2016 and that the projects only “indirectly” involved the IDF, because they were for children and youth on land owned by the IDF.
In a subsequent interview with the CJN, JNF Canada’s chief executive officer, Lance Davis, said the charity is working with the CRA on its review and issued staunch defences of JNF’s financial transparency and donor accountability.
The e-petition, which is addressed to the minister of national revenue, says JNF Canada “engages in discriminatory practices, as its landholdings are chartered for exclusively Jewish ownership, lease and benefit, as noted by the United Nations, the U.S. State Department, a former attorney general of Israel and the JNF itself.”
It says evidence “strongly indicates” that JNF Canada violates the Income Tax Act, common law and Canada Revenue Agency policy over its IDF-related projects.
As well, it claims the charity violates Canadian and international law “by enabling physical changes within occupied territory, thereby helping Israel effectively annex land within occupied territory, and, in the case of east Jerusalem, deepen control over land already annexed illegally.”
“Notably,” it adds, “the JNF Canada-funded Canada Park was built on the lands of three Palestinian villages destroyed following the 1967 war in direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”
It also accuses JNF Canada materials of depicting “occupied territory as part of Israel, a representation that runs contrary to Canadian foreign policy and international law.”
It calls on the minister of national revenue to revoke JNF’s charitable status, if the charity is found to violate the Income Tax Act, or CRA guidelines and policies.
It was initiated by Rabbi David Mivasair, a longtime IJV activist now based in Hamilton, Ont. He called the e-petition “part of an ongoing process” to hold public officials accountable.
“It’s incontrovertibly factual that JNF Canada is in violation of Canada’s tax laws,” Mivasair claimed. “It has been for decades. It’s been reported for decades.”
This latest campaign “is not something that I take any pleasure in doing, but feel is morally necessary to be done,” he added.
According to guidelines for MPs, no debate is permitted when a member presents a petition. An MP “may make a brief factual statement (referring to the petition being duly certified, to its source, to the subject matter of the petition and its request, and to the number of signatures it carries), but members are not allowed to read petitions nor are they to indicate their agreement or disagreement with them.”
In 2017, IJV submitted an 85-page complaint about JNF Canada to the CRA and the national revenue minister. That followed many other campaigns designed to pressure federal officials.
This is the first time IJV has submitted a parliamentary petition and it’s “just one way of drawing public attention to this,” said the group’s national coordinator, Corey Balsam. “We’re assuming [officials] will look into it and not much more than that. [But] it’s definitely a big step for our campaign.”
He said Dusseault is “not someone who’s very engaged [in the issue], but he heard the concerns and saw the evidence.”
Dusseault did not reply to the CJN’s requests for comment.
In a statement posted to its website, JNF called the e-petition “as empty and scurrilous as earlier efforts to delegitimize the outstanding work of the JNF and, by extension, the existence of the state of Israel.”
JNF said its outreach suggests “that those who are applying any degree of critical thinking see the petition for what it is and are dismissing it as not worthy of engagement.”
For Jewish National Fund of Canada’s response to the Jan. 11 Jewish Independent editorial, click here.
Half truths are always dangerous especially when one uses it for political
propaganda. Prior to the Independence war the Jewish civilians were attacked everywhere. Including those driving along the roads by the 3 Arab villages in Canada
Park. an estimated 2500 Jewish civilians, including children were victims .
The JNF has carried out many great projects over the years, swamp drainage, planting tree, land reclamation, bringing water to many arid regions, including those Arab villages.
I don’t have to stress that war is an ugly affair and persons die. But I am glad that
the Zionists won the Battle after being attacked on all fronts. It was the Arabs who did not accept the UN Partition…not the Jews.
I was born in Winnipeg, grew up in Vancouver, and now live in Modiin, very close to Canada Park. Remember that the Jewish Independent Voices represent only a very few disgruntled Jews in Canada, and so does a “street Rabbi” like Rabbi Mivassair.
Before dawn on June 6, one day after Israel launched the 1967 war,“Three villages in the fertile Latrun Valley [under Jordanian administration in accordance with the 1949 armistice agreement with Israel] that had defied capture in 1948…were totally razed by Israeli bulldozers, their residents scattered without concern for their future. Beit Nuba, Imwas [the latter believed by Christians to be where Jesus first appeared after his resurrection] and Yalu lay just across the frontier on the West Bank, about fifteen miles northwest of Jerusalem, and obstructed a direct route from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. The [10,000 or more] residents had been ordered out…without explanation, given no chance to rescue their possessions except for what they could carry, left to wander without shelter or food or water.” They were never permitted to return. (Donald Neff, Warriors for Jerusalem: The Six Days That Changed the Middle East in 1967, Amana Books Brattleboro, Vermont, 1988, p. 290)
Even though the inhabitants put up no resistance, the three villages were demolished on the direct orders of Yitzhak Rabin, Chief of Staff of the Israeli army. Several of the villages’ elders who were unable to walk without assistance were killed by falling rubble as Israel’s bulldozers demolished their homes.
Indigenous Palestinian Arabs, who then made up 69% of the population, rejected the Partition Plan (UNGA Res. 181, Nov. 29/47) for entirely justified reasons based on international law. While Jews made up just 31% of the population (90% were of foreign origin, thousands were illegal immigrants) and privately owned only between 6% and 7% of the land, the Partition Plan (recommendatory only, no legal foundation, contrary to the British Class A Mandate and the 1941 Atlantic Charter, never adopted by the UNSC) outrageously recommended they receive 56% of Palestine, including its most fertile areas. (*10% of Palestine’s Jewish population consisted of native Palestinian/Arab Jews who were vehemently anti-Zionist.)
In 1947, 48% of the total land area of Palestine was privately owned (‘mulk khaas’) by Palestinian Arabs. (As noted above, total Jewish privately owned land was only between 6% and 7%.) About 45% of the total land area was state owned, i.e. by citizens of Palestine and it was comprised of Communal Property (‘mashaa’), Endowment Property, (‘waqf’), and Government Property, (‘miri’.) Importantly, only 30% of the Jewish immigrants had taken out citizenship. (The British Mandate kept an extensive land registry and the UN used the registry during its early deliberations. It has in its archives 453,000 records of individual Palestinian owners defined by name, location & area.)
To David.
To base your comment on Donald Neff is to base your comment on a Politically biased person; unfortunately his politics get in the way of his brilliant skill as a writer-Warriors for Jerusalem and Epiphany at Bit Jala. Now to the cold hard facts:
The Battle for Latrun during the Independence War; The Jordanian Army was stationed at the Fortress at Latrun. They controlled the road going to Jerusalem. In the many failed attempts to removed the Jordanian Army , The Israelis lost many lives and many more were wounded, also among the losses were the young untrained holocaust survivors. They Purpose of controlling this road was to lay siege to Jerusalem, and so they turned a blind eye to the marauders from the Arab villages (you mention that were in Canada Park) who attacked the convoys carrying food and medical supplies.
It was at this time an alternate narrow road was found, really a wide path, it became known as the BURMA ROAD. The key persons on the project were Shlomo Shamir and The USA General MIckey Marcus. The trucks carrying food, medicine, and persons managed to break the siege.
Last in sociology on prejudice and discrimination you learn that to cannot change these type of people by presenting the truth or the facts.
And when it comes to the victims such as Israelis and Jews, they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. In my humble opinion this applies to the likes of you.