Government advancing legislation to force organization to fund state-run national infrastructure projects
JTA — American Jews dropped nickels and dimes into the Jewish National Fund’s blue charity boxes to help Zionists build the Jewish state.
More than a century later, the JNF, known in Hebrew as Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael, is rich. It owns 13 percent of all the land in the country and brings in some $3 billion a year, most of it from land sales.
Israel now wants a big cut of that revenue to help fund state-run national infrastructure projects, and the government is pushing legislation that would force the JNF to pay up. But the JNF is holding out, saying it is doing a fine job developing the country on its own.
The government feels entitled to the JNF’s money, which according to its mission is held in trust for the Jewish people. While the JNF is not state run, the government appoints many of its officials and a public agency, the Israel Land Authority, manages and sells its land. In the past, the government has often drawn on JNF funds to meet its needs, and is currently seeking to fund its two-year budget.
“The JNF sells lands every year and receives billions of shekels in return,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday at an emergency government meeting on the issue. “It is very important that this money be channeled to the needs of the State of Israel.”
In response, the JNF argues that it has earned the right to independence. Founded in 1901, it bought land and founded settlements on which Israel was established in 1948. Famed for planting hundreds of millions of trees in Israel, the not-for-profit group also focuses on land reclamation and development of communities outside central Israel.
“Mr. Prime Minister, KKL-JNF invests billions every year in strengthening the periphery, education and the environment,” JNF head Daniel (Danny) Atar tweeted Tuesday, using an acronym that includes its Hebrew name. “It’s a shame that you, Bibi, are fulfilling Zahalka’s dream of dismantling the JNF.”
Jamal Zahalka, a Knesset member from the Arab Joint List party, is among those who criticize the JNF for selling land exclusively to Jews.
Some would like to see the JNF reformed for other reasons.
In January, a scathing State Comptroller report characterized the JNF as wasteful, opaque and possibly compromised by conflicts of interest. According to the report, over the 15 months leading up to November 2015, the JNF spent just a third of its revenue on public projects to develop land compared to 43 percent to “expand its own financial assets.” The comptroller recommended expanded government oversight of the organization.
In response, the JNF issued a list of planned reforms in May that Atar said would “deal courageously with the failures and the criticism and use this low point to create a significant turnaround in the life of the organization.”
Under pressure from the government, Atar agreed last month to hand over 2 billion shekels, or $570 million, in two installments — one this year and one the next. But the JNF board of directors rejected the deal and instead offered to make just the first payment.
That led government ministers to advance legislation Tuesday that would require the JNF to transfer 80 percent of its revenue to the Finance Ministry every year or lose its tax-exempt status. Coalition chairman David Bitan reportedly told ministers that the government must collect the money or it could collapse, forcing new elections.
Nonetheless, several coalition members opposed taking a hard line against the venerable Zionist institution, and later Tuesday, the Knesset Finance Committee lowered the legislation’s demand to 65 percent of the JNF’s annual revenue.
For the time being, the JNF has declared a freeze on the marketing and development of housing projects on the land it owns. On Thursday, the leaders of the World Zionist Organization, which is affiliated with the JNF, will hold an emergency meeting to discuss the situation.
As it happens, the American branch of the JNF will also host its annual conference this weekend in South Florida. However, the event will probably do little to address the situation in Israel. JNF-USA has stopped sending money from blue boxes, or pretty much anywhere else, to its Israeli counterpart, and largely funds its own distinct projects.
@ Edgar G.:
Hello, Edgar, Bondman and Hugo
The legal mess in Israel dounds typical of countries around the world. In the US, we have federal lands, state lands, Indian lands, railroad grants, you name it, plus issues concerning “eminent domain”. The Big issue concerning Israel, however, does not seem to be about Ottoman and Mandate law, etc. It is about national sovereignty over the land. As long as the nations of the world (i.e. the UN) believe, in fact, that they own all Israel and can and ought to micromanage what goes on in it, anything goes! If Israeli sovereignty over all Israel is ever recognized by the world powers, starting with the US, that will change.
@ Hugo Schmidt-Fischer:
Hugo, I’ve read about much but certainly not all of those facts you bring forward, before. But the amount of detail you supply overwhelms me. Yes, to me, there are certain inconsistencies. I know that ALL the land was personally owned by the Turkish Ottoman Sultan, and that he’d granted or sold about 4-5 small parcels to influential families, none living in Israel. So up to 1917. The Ottomans owned the land and of course had made laws concerning it, many of which, you quote.
But their ownership was ended by the San Remo conference, and devolved onto the Jewish People. I cannot see how the British Mandate became the Mandatory OWNERS. They, had the explicit, and detailed League of Nations British Mandate For Palestine set of documents, with RULES and stipulations, that they were TRUSTEES (not as you say Owners) ruling the land until the Jewish People could become proficient enough to run their State. There are 5-6 important, irrevocable legal agreements in each of which this ownership of the Jewish People is firmly established.
I know that Israel was still using much of the defunct Ottoman law and some Mandate law, to manage the land apportionments, and usage, but that was the result of their laziness and also that there were no other laws .
As for the Jew-antagonistic High Court decisions, I hope that now , since Shaked has made a more equal balance in adding Conservative Justices, that many of those past travesties will be re-visited and justice, with appropriate penalties, apportioned.. I Hope…..??
Anything past that…puts me in a fog. and whilst your assertions bear the mark of authenticity, they are directly against the terms of the Mandate. And the British had no authority to sell any of the Land which did not belong to them. They could only manage, maintain, and encourage improvement.
Or at least that’s what they were supposed to do. As we know they blatantly supported the Arabs and made life and increase almost impossible for the Jews.
So where are we with all this. Are we still in Ottoman legal morass, or getting into modern Israeli judiciary decisions. Where does that leave the illegal and thoroughly corrupt Mandate sales and grants. Will they be rectified…Or it the Huge Mess too much for any country to unravel and straighten out….? Does Israel have the suitable, expert personnel….? Would setting up a new commission for this with the straw that breaks the camel’s back….?Are they going to close their eyes and walk away…../ Who can answer this.
@ bondmanp:
The JNF doesn’t claim that the Land of Israel belongs to it, only the part which theybgought with JNF money and have extant legal Title Deeds for/
The Land of Israel doesn’t belong to JNF. It’s ownership of land should have ended when the State was founded. Why is it that many Israelis cannot find or afford a home? Because of the Israel Land Authority. They sell only a tiny bit of land each year, to make sure the value of the lands they hold stays sky-high. It borders on the criminal, and is absolutely against the Torah, which offers the only equitable way to distribute the land to the people of Israel. For some out-of-the-JNF-box thinking, look at the Zehut Party’s platform, which includes a detailed plan for ending the unelected rule of the Israel Land Authority over Israel, and distributing the land to the Jewish people, which will finally solve the Israeli housing crisis.
@ Edgar G.:
Ottoman law recognized the privately owned land that was owned and agriculturally utilized, as recorded as of 1858.
Importantly, at that time, only about 5% of the land was privately held.
Beyond that, there were agricultural fields owned by the Ottoman state and subcontracted on lease to peasants. The farmers were only tenants, and if a field was not cultivated for 3 years, the lease expired automatically. Any land in a distance of 2,5 outside of a commune as recorded in 1858 was categorically state owned. This made up the vast majority of the land. This state ownership also included water wells or cisterns outside the perimeter of a settlement, even it was in use by the commune.
Moreover, there were public spaces such as roads, rivers, bridges and public grazing areas, all state owned.
The British by and large took over the legal Ottoman infrastructure. Thus the mandatory government owned the vast majority of the land. Though at least the Mandate laid the basis to record land ownership within an objective cadastral registry. The prior Ottoman monitoring had been corrupt and unreliable. But the British did not complete the mapping out of the entire space during their tenure.
The basic principle however, remained, most of the land ownership was owned by the Mandatory government. The State of Israel subsequently took over this ownership.
In Judea and Samaria as an example, about 70% of the land were public at the time of the Six Day War. This was caused by the Jordanian government transferring, selling or awarding a large amount of the former public land reserves to private ownership, an act which Jordan as an aggressor, occupier was actually not allowed to do. It was a transgression against the San Remo agreements and the League of Nations Charter.
The Government of Israel as well as its courts, have been extremely lax on Arabs squatting on public state owned land. It is ignored, tolerated and subsequently after a few years of Arab habitation, the courts have sanctioned the new Arab ownership time and again.
In contrast, Jewish inhabitants are treated roughly, and forcibly removed in repeated instances. There is definitely a double standard at hand.
I do not have the figures for all of Israel, but private Jewish ownership is limited to small areas. Public or state ownership is vast. Moreover, even today, public ownership is applied with clear double standards against Jews. An Arab selling to Jews may be killed, and Jewish construction is restricted, while illegal Arab construction is tolerated, sponsored and funded by foreign governments, and legalized retro-actively by Israeli courts.
The JNF ownership was designed to counterbalance the discrimination against Jews. JNF ownership was purchased at great cost, inflated prices and thanks to large financial sacrifice of many of its donors. The Jewish Nation State law, so much hated by Israel’s detractors provides the general framework to justify the work of the JNF.
In a free market, the state would have sold large parcels to the public, and allowed settlement and construction, including especially in Judea and Samaria. This would have provided relief to the hopelessly congested center of Israel and created ample affordable housing. The government would only need to focus on efficient transport, road infrastructure, combatting rampant crime much of which is Arab, and security issues. But the Israeli government is wed to centralistic control and still socialist inspired with a commando control economy that does not work as well as it could have in a country filled with well-educated and smart people.
A corrupt political class has been eyeing the JNF treasury for years. They seek to take over this fund and carve up the spoils. If they succeed, they will not hesitate to apply the same double standards as elsewhere against Jews on these JNF land holdings as well. Israeli intellectuals, artists, politicians and academics would be able to further their appeasement efforts with hostile audiences at international forums. But their interlocutors wouldn’t be satisfied anyhow.
@ Hugo Schmidt-Fischer:
Of course, if the organisation has become flaccid and careless, it needs to be smartened up. But the assets and etc. belong to the JNF Trust, and are not at the beck and call of any transient government.
Hugo I didn’t understand your reference about during Mandate times “the vast majority of the Land was owned by the governing authority itself”. The “governing authority” was the British entity, but they didn’t own the Land (although they acted as if they did) and only held it in trust for the day when The Jewish People (in this case The Jewish Agency) would be sufficiently developed to form a viable government. So it was the Jewish People who owned the Land. I’m obviously misreading your meaning.
@ Hugo Schmidt-Fischer:
I agree.
Oversight must be tightened on this decrepitly run organization. As a foundation it is tax exempt, which is not unreasonable. Arguably, the government itself is to blame for the inefficiencies at the JNF, placing many of its political cronies into this bountiful honeypot. But transferring this treasure into the state is definitely not the solution.
It will be a disgrace to make JNF land holdings accessible to Arabs. The JNF was called into life to purchase land for Jewish farmers, tenants or prospective buyers.
The Ottoman rulers laid every possible obstacle in the way of the Zionist immigrants wishing to settle on the land. Later their British successors were also unhelpful even though the vast majority of the land was owned by the governing authority itself. Meanwhile, the local Arab establishment raised fierce incitement against anyone daring to sell land to Jews.
New immigrants arriving in the pre-State days were forced to purchase inferior desert lands, rocky terrains, malaria infested swamps or non-arable arid parcels for their early agricultural estates. A century ago, Israel was still barren, this land was sold at exorbitant prices to the JNF, five or ten times the price the finest land would fetch in the US in those days.
In order to counterbalance the blatant injustice the Zionists were facing and to award destitute Jewish immigrants the slimmest of a chance to gain a foothold against all these obstacles, the JNF was founded originally.
The Attorney General’s irresponsible decision in 2005 to open up the JNF to Arabs is one more reason why the new law recognizing Israel as a Jewish nation state is so urgently needed.
For generations, from Sabbath to Sabbath, the most impoverished families in the Jewish diaspora eked out Groschen by Groschen depositing penny to penny into small and battered tin collection boxes of the JNF. Their hard earned cash was gifted towards building a better future for the Jewish people, embattled in the Holy Land, turning the desert into a Paradise. The land was purchased, legally, dunam by dunam, the donors, most of them, were murdered in the Shoah. Expropriating this land privately held by a legal entity set up for the Jewish nation is pure theft.
And until today, Arabs selling land to Jews are killed again and again so often.
Yet a corrupt post-modernist and Nomenklatura who were typically born into political key positions they did not really earn, seek to squander an inheritance that was built on the blood sweat and tears of their founding fathers.
These post-Zionist Israelis hand out JNF lands to adversaries who would never govern anything fair and equitably themselves, allocating land to Arabs wishing to destroy the Jewish state and with it its Jewish people while they laugh about the gullibility of these Israelis.
Not only American were dropping their change into those boxes. They were all over the Jewish World. I put my weekly pocket money into them regularly for about 10 years or more, and that was in Dublin Ireland. Every Dublin Jewish home had one as had everyone in England.
The State had no right to insist on State institutions built with their private money on their own land, They can if they want to, because it’s for the Jewish People, but it should be the choice of the JNF not a forced decision y Government.
I don’t even think that Eminent Domain would come into it.. If it did, the JNF would be entitled to satisfactory compensation, either in money or other properties. As for having to maintain the newly built institutions that’s too knotty for me. But to be forced to do it is obviously against the mandate of any government, except in dictatorships.
Politicians handling of money has NOT been proven to even come close to the
efficiency of JNF for the past 117 years of successful building of Israel infrastructure
We can’t afford the waste that seems to be ever present in Government projects.
Don’t let them steal the coins that our people and children today put in those famous
Blue Boxes to fill their own coffers.