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| Palestine Chronicle | | The Palestine Chronicle is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization whose mission is to educate the general public by providing a forum that strives to highlight issues of relevance to human rights, national struggles, freedom and democracy in the form of daily news, commentary, features, book reviews, photos, art, and more.
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| | | FEATURED ARTICLE | The Jewish National Fund of Canada: Subsidizing Colonialism Jul 5 2016 / 10:52 am The Jewish National Fund was granted tax-exempt status in Canada. (Photo: Oren Ziv, ActiveStills) The campaign to revoke the Jewish National Fund of Canada's charitable status is growing. In recent weeks it has gained an important political endorsement, a high profile intellectual backing and has raised funds for a legal challenge. Recently, Green Party leader, Elizabeth May, joined 28 other party members in sponsoring a resolution to the Party's August convention calling on the Canada Revenue Agency to revoke the JNF's charitable status. The motion describes the JNF's " discrimination against non-Jews in Israel through its bylaws which prohibit the lease or sale of its lands to non-Jews." It also criticizes the JNF Canada financed Ayalon Canada Park, which covers three Palestinian villages conquered and depopulated during the 1967 war. The resolution calls on the Green Party to press " the Canada Revenue Agency to revoke the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund for contravening public policy against discrimination and for its failure to comply with international human rights law." Fearing the precedent-setting impact of this resolution, the JNF, B'nai B'rith and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs have rallied their supporters to email the Green Party. Pro-Israel commentators have also condemned the resolution. One labeled it " bizarre", saying the Greens would target "one of the world's leading environmental charities" while another noted, " the JNF focuses primarily on environmental stewardship and cultivating forests, which seems an odd thing for the grassroots of the Green party, of all people, to oppose." To push back against the media backlash, resolution supporters would do well to cite Naomi Klein's recent criticism of the JNF, which raised $29 million in Canada in 2014. During a talk linking Edward Said's thinking to environmentalism the high profile author discussed her own connection with this pillar of "green colonialism". Klein noted: " The Israeli state has long coated its nation-building project in a green veneer - it was a key part of the Zionist 'back to the land' pioneer ethos. And in this context trees, specifically, have been among the most potent weapons of land grabbing and occupation. It's not only the countless olive and pistachio trees that have been uprooted to make way for settlements and Israeli-only roads. It's also the sprawling pine and eucalyptus forests that have been planted over those orchards, as well as over Palestinian villages, most notoriously by the Jewish National Fund, which, under its slogan 'Turning the Desert Green', boasts of having planted 250 million trees in Israel since 1901, many of them non-native to the region. In publicity materials, the JNF bills itself as just another green NGO, concerned with forest and water management, parks and recreation. It also happens to be the largest private landowner in the state of Israel, and despite a number of complicated legal challenges, it still refuses to lease or sell land to non-Jews. "I grew up in a Jewish community where every occasion - births and deaths, Mother's Day, bar mitzvahs - was marked with the proud purchase of a JNF tree in the person's honour. It wasn't until adulthood that I began to understand that those feel-good faraway conifers, certificates for which papered the walls of my Montreal elementary school, were not benign - not just something to plant and later hug. In fact these trees are among the most glaring symbols of Israel's system of official discrimination - the one that must be dismantled if peaceful co-existence is to become possible. The JNF is an extreme and recent example of what some call 'green colonialism'." Klein and the Green Party's interventions on the subject take place in the context of Independent Jewish Voices' growing campaign to revoke the JNF's charitable status. In April, IJV organized a tour titled Uncovering "Canada Park"Dispossessed Palestinians Speak Out. Heidar Abu Ghosh spoke in eight cities across the country about JNF Canada's role in turning his town of Imwas into an Israeli-only park. The tour raised funds to launch a legal challenge of the JNF's charitable status. Beyond winning the specific demand, the campaign to revoke the JNF's charitable status serves an important educational purpose. Drawing attention to the organization is a way of discussing the racism intrinsic to Zionism and it also exposes the progressive language that has masked Israeli colonialism. Additionally, the JNF campaign highlights Canada's contribution to Palestinian dispossession. The campaign to revoke the JNF's charitable status is simply a call for the Canadian state to stop subsidizing an explicitly racist, colonial, institution. How many Canadians could oppose that? To let Green Party Leader Elizabeth May know your opinion on the matter. - Yves Engler's latest book is Canada in Africa: 300 years of Aid and Exploitation. He's also the author of Canada and Israel: building apartheid. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
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| LATEST NEWS | PPSC: 13 Palestinian Mothers Held in Israeli Jails this Eid Jul 5 2016 / 10:47 am This Eid, many Palestinian children will be without their mothers. (Photo: via Daysofpalestine.com) By Palestine Chronicle Staff The Palestine Prisoners Studies Centre revealed yesterday that 13 Palestinian mothers are being held in Israeli jails this Eid. Israel has detained 65 female Palestinians, of which 13 are mothers who have children as young as five-years-old, and which doubles their suffering and that of their families during Eid. Ryiad Alashqar, the media spokesperson for PPSC said, "Eid touches the wounds of Palestinian mothers in Israeli jails who dream of hugging their children on this special occasion. Mothers think about how their children spend their Eid away from them. They keep themselves busy by cleaning their prison cells and making Eid cakes." Alashqar said Palestinian mothers held in Israeli jails are as follows: Abla Aladam, 45, from Hebron, was critically injured when arrested in September 2015. Israel arrests 1,000 Palestinian women, girls, wives and mothers, four of them gave birth inside prison under very harsh circumstances.
Alia Abbasi, 50, from Silwan, is sentenced to 28 months in prison, and her son, Issa Abbasi, is serving a 10-year sentence. Israa Jubas, 32, from Jerusalem, whose son is eight years old and whom she is not allowed to see. She also suffers from serious burns. Sana Alhafi, 43, from Gaza, has seven children and is sentenced to a year in prison. Iman Kinjo, 44, from 1948 territories, has five children and has been detained since August 2015. Nisreen Hassan, from Gaza, was arrested last October at the Eretz Crossing. Amina Salah, from Bethlehem, who is the wife of prisoner Osman Salah, was arrested while on a family visit to her husband in Israeli jails and is serving a 15-month sentence. Haifa Abusbeeh from Hebron. Amira Ali Hamidat, suffers from a breathing difficulty and is being held since last November. Yassmin Shaban, 32, from Jenin, suffers from a breathing difficulty and other health problems. Samia Mshahra, a mother of three, is serving an 11-month sentence. Hulwa Hamamra is the mother of a two-year old child whom she is not allowed to see. Sabah Firoun from Jerusalem is a mother of four.
The Center called on international organizations to intervene to release these prisoners, especially as there is no legal basis for detaining them in most cases and the charges against them are falsifications. (PC, PPSC)
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| A POEM | Palestine, An Unfinished History - A Poem Jul 5 2016 / 10:58 am They came from Europe,
these people, single and in
families, eager to settle. They said they were returning
home, though we had never
seen them, were here for generations stretching back
for a thousand years
or more. Then, along about 1917 - a British Lord
named Balfour said our land
was theirs without asking if we minded. And so they came,
saying our land was empty,
was full of sand and little else. Failing to see our ancient
olive groves, our cities, our
libraries and our learning, they took everything
they wanted, killed our people
and destroyed our villages, setting a million people
fleeing for their lives, then
denied us the right to remember the event. They call their
attackers the most moral army
in the world. But we remember the grandmother sitting on her
veranda embroidering a gift for
her granddaughter, when a sniper sent a bullet through
her head. We remember the
schoolchildren obliterated by a bomb dropped by this
very moral airforce, and all
the other bombs too numerous to count.
When will it end? Have we to
weep a tide of bitterness until all our memories
of joy are erased and replaced
with sadness? What is wrong with
people that they mistreat
others with demonic fury and contempt, yet continue
to proclaim their innocence
and see themselves as the victims? - George Polley is a novelist and a poet. He is the author of The Old Man and The Monkey, Grandfather and The Raven, Bear, and, most recently "The City Has Many Faces". He contributed this poem to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit his blog.
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The Palestine Chronicle is an independent online newspaper that provides daily news, commentary, features, book reviews, photos, art, etc, on a variety of subjects. However, it's largely focused on Palestine, Israel, and the Middle East region. The Palestine Chronicle is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization. To contact the editor, submit an article or any other material, please write to: editor@palestinechronicle.com. For other inquiries write to: info@palestinechronicle.com. |
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