‘This is from your country!’: The Canadian money propping up illegal Israeli settlements

We pile into Dror Etkes’ rental car early on Sunday morning in mid-July. 

The executive director and main field researcher of Kerem Navot, an Israeli organization that monitors the country’s land policy in the Palestinian territories, stresses the need to remain discreet as we drive out of Jerusalem, toward the militarily-occupied West Bank.

That or find the money for another car, he quips. It is expensive to book rental cars and buy insurance to travel to Area C, the parts of the West Bank where most illegal Israeli settlements are located and that are highly restricted or off-limits to Palestinians—and where his organization tries to carry out their research, undetected by the Israeli military. 

I sit in the backseat of a nondescript beige SUV that looks like it has taken a few beatings. This morning, Etkes and his colleague have invited us on a day-long excursion, to look into the operations of the Jewish National Fund of Canada, an organization whose stated purpose is developing “environmental and social service infrastructure projects in Israel.” 

For decades, JNF Canada had received charity status from Canada’s Revenue Agency (CRA), but this August, the CRA officially revoked it. 

After an audit, the CRA concluded that the JNF Canada used tax-exempt money to fund Israeli army bases, which is illegal under Canadian law. It also found the organization couldn’t prove how Canadian money was used in Israel, and did not justify why financial records were only kept in Israel, among other disqualifying concerns.

Palestinian solidarity advocates in Canada have long campaigned for this outcome, pointing to the charity’s role in building parks over Palestinian land and its discriminatory leasing of land within Israel.

For years dogged by CRA investigators, JNF Canada had pledged to the tax revenue agency in 2021 that it “will not fund projects in the disputed territories.”

But the paper trail simply became more hidden. 

Lately, Etkes tells us that it has become more difficult to document JNF Canada’s operations. Tracing how it funds parks and trails in the West Bank often requires risky trips like the one we’re on, encountering Israeli soldiers and extremist settlers. And the organization has become more careful in advertising their involvement on the ground.

JNF Canada is now taking the CRA to court over its decision to revoke its charitable status, claiming the decision was “biased” and “unjust.” But on my tour in the occupied West Bank, I found plenty of the organization’s projects that continue to advance the interests of illegal settlement expansion.

A land grab disguised as an ‘accessibility’ project

Just south of Bethlehem, we pull up to the entrance of the Nokdim, an illegal Israeli settlement of three thousand people established in the early 1980s. 

At the gate, an armed settler asks what we are doing. In Hebrew, Etkes tells him we are from the holy city of Jerusalem and are cutting through to go to the Dead Sea. The settler says the road is likely blocked. After some back and forth about whether we can reach the water this way, we are begrudgingly let through. 

Both of them are lying. We weren’t off to a beach day, but we needed a pretense to enter the settlement. The soldier tried to bluff about the road closure, but cracked when he realized we had knowledge of the area. 

It’s a game of chicken Etkes often plays when attempting to enter settlements. 

Inside, we see signs announcing new construction, courtesy of JNF Canada and its Israeli parent organization, the Jewish National Fund (JNF). “This is from your country!” the Israeli researchers tell us, as they explain how this project is a walkway to connect the illegal settlement of Nokdim with another, neighbouring illegal settlement, Kfar Eldad. 

Branded an “accessibility project,” the concrete pathway flanked by manicured lawns bisects Palestinian land and allows settlers to pass between the two settlements, particularly those with mobility issues. 

Connecting the more established settlement with the newer, smaller one, it helps them share infrastructure like parks, pools, and shops, establishing a more permanent and interconnected footprint of Jewish settlement. 

Since militarily occupying the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem in 1967, Israel has facilitated the construction and expansion of illegal settlements, creating what Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has called a “regime of apartheid” that is “perpetuating the supremacy of one group–Jews–over another Palestinians.”

According to the United Nations, 700,000 Israeli settlers are now living illegally in the occupied West Bank.

Under the guise of social services and accessibility, the JNF Canada is aiding this expropriation.

The end of the walkway leads to a large, newly built park with ample green space, situated directly outside the home of Avigdor Lieberman, a far-right former Israeli minister of finance who once suggested that “disloyal” Arab citizens of Israel should be “beheaded.”

Built on “uncultivated” land that the Palestinian owners fear to visit due to the close proximity to settlers, its official aim is to offer public recreation to families in the settlement. But even though we’re visiting on a beautiful summer afternoon, the park is completely empty.

Many families have their own yards and cars to travel to other recreation sites. The point of this park is different: to steal even more land, extending the settlement’s boundaries even further into Palestinian territory.

Investment into dispossession goes back decades

Objections to the JNF’s charitable status in Canada are long-standing. Coalitions such as Stop the JNF, made up of groups like Independent Jewish Voices and Just Peace Advocates, have been advocating for a CRA investigation for a decade and a half. 

Yet with each wave of scrutiny, JNF Canada has responded by modifying their practices to maintain charitable status. 

Formed in 1901, the Jewish National Fund has played a key role in the dispossession of Palestinians.

After Israel’s establishment in 1948, the JNF took control of vast swathes of land confiscated from fleeing Palestinians refugees. In subsequent years, the organization became a quasi-state apparatus. It owns as much as 13 per cent of land in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, and leases land only to Jewish people on a discriminatory basis.

After 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank, Golan Heights, Gaza, and Jerusalem, the JNF began embarking on activities with the West Bank. In the 1960s, the JNF started a charity in Canada—JNF Canada—whose activities over the years have largely focused on the West Bank.

JNF Canada’s largest project was Canada Park. Built in 1975 on top of the remains of three Palestinian villages, this park offers a green space to settlers living in nearby illegal settlements in the West Bank. Palestinians who lived in the area or live in the West Bank are not able to access it.

While this remains its largest and most public project, it is far from the only one. 

Especially since the early 90s, JNF Canada has pursued smaller and less public initiatives. In 2021, almost $2 million was spent by JNF Canada on projects that have the “core proposition of building the foundations for Israel’s future.”

A few years ago, the CBC reported that JNF Canada was using funds to support the construction of foreign army and settlement infrastructure, which would violate Canadian charity law. JNF Canada claims to have stopped funding these projects in 2016, but the CRA concluded that they have not provided proof that these investments have come to a close. 

Instead, JNF Canada seems to simply no longer publicly announce military-related projects, further obscuring their role on the ground. 

Murky ties to illegal settlements

At a major archeological site outside Bethlehem, Etkes explains we’re on top of land stolen in the name of historical discovery: the ancient palace of Herod the Great. 

I walk along a fence in tall grass and weeds looking for some indication this is a public Jewish site. Under a Hebrew language warning sign, I come across a packet of papers written in Hebrew and containing a map. Etkes grabs them from me. “This is what we came for!” he says. 

He explains the papers are an order for a “closed military zone,” which bars anyone from being on this land, where Palestinian used to graze their animals. Such orders are frequently used to limit Palestinian presence and protests on their own lands. 

This area, now marked as a key historical site for Jewish people, offers the type of land that is ideal for JNF Canada’s development plans. Already seized by the state, but lacking any structures, it provides an opportunity to build parks, picnic areas, splash pools, and other “social infrastructure.”

As their activities have attracted more scrutiny, ties between JNF Canada and its Israeli parent organization have become murkier. 

In order to keep its charitable status with the CRA, JNF Canada claimed that it ceased funding large projects in the West Bank in 2021.

But in 2021, when the Israeli organization publicly announced it would buy land in the West Bank, JNF Canada was again forced to rebrand and distance itself from its parent organization. 

Anti-occupation groups like Peace Now track the ever-evolving landscape of illegal settlement construction. They have found about 16,000 acres of West Bank land have been purchased by JNF since 1967, which directly contravenes international law and Canadian charity guidelines. Their goal is “allowing the settlers to use JNF to promote their agenda to take over Palestinian properties and to expand the settlements.”

Kerem Navot is a smaller and much newer organization that looks at the more “benign” modes of land theft, including nature reserves, archeological sites, military infrastructure, and social service infrastructure. 

Working with a shoestring budget from international grants and donations, Kerem Navot hopes to bring international attention to illegal activities in the West Bank and provide data for countries like Canada and the US to investigate these illegal dealings.

In addition to the JNF and army, and civil administration, they have also investigated West Bank AirBNBs, boutique vineyards, organic farms, and Israeli soccer clubs.  Tracking these purchases is extremely difficult, as they are often done through opaque third party organizations that have almost no online trail. 

And so Kerem Navot does much of their work on the ground, regularly travelling to closed military zones, national parks, and settlements themselves, to keep tabs on growing Jewish-only construction projects.

Greenwashing Israeli colonization

Our next stop is the nearby Oz veGaon Nature Preserve, another “innocuous” form of dispossession whereby Israel uses greenwashing to cover for their land theft.

Though over a decade old, the park has been slowly expanding in part due to funding from JNF Canada. In the last year or so, a hiking trail and splash pool has been built deeper in the park. 

We drive through the trail and pass a group of young boys out on a leisurely horse ride, before running into a large group of Orthodox men who are hiking. 

We pull up to the newly constructed spring. Hebrew language trailhead signs dot our surroundings. Children’s toys are strewn around the area. Shortly after we arrive, a group of Orthodox girls come to clean and beautify the stream. 

This nature reserve was established in 2014 by JNF Canada and other JNF branches, in collaboration with the extremist settler group Women in Green, known for gathering donations to pay for Israeli flags to be planted in the Gaza Strip by IDF soldiers.

We leave before we raise too much suspicion. 

Driving back out of the trail, Etkes laments that JNF signage around the park appears to have been taken down. Some of us think we saw a logo at the entrance sign. We head back to check. 

When we see that signage indicating JNF funding is still in fact there, the researchers are excited.  

It’s a rare oversight by the JNF to erase any trace of their presence on illegal projects. Having removed signs elsewhere, they’ve forgotten to remove the original sign dedicating the park to its founding organizations.   

When the Israelis pull out their camera to document, we instantly raise the suspicion of the nearby soldiers. They ask why we’re here, then tell us to leave. 

Despite CRA ruling, settlement expansion continues apace

As evening falls, we head back to Jerusalem.

We stop at several places along the highway to document new roadblocks and other infrastructure erected by Israeli settlers. These small marks, sometimes nothing more than a large dirt pile in the middle of a road, hint at the expansion of illegal settlements along the West Bank. 

Many begin as small outposts started by right-wing settlers. But as more people join and more infrastructure is added, these illegal settlements transform into facts on the ground—becoming “legitimate” recipients of JNF funding, as well the key obstacle to ever allowing peace and justice with the Palestinians.

There are over 200 Canadian charities that send almost a quarter of a billion dollars per year to Israel—almost ten percent of Canadian charitable donations each year—and some of them fund illegal settlements and military projects. 

JNF Canada did not respond to The Breach’s efforts to seek comment by phone and email.

With plans to appeal the CRA’s ruling, it shows no signs of stopping its investments either. 

Even if it does ultimately lose its charitable status, the network of land theft it supports continues on.