Jewish National Fund has lost its charity status in Canada. Why is this a big deal for Palestinians?

Canada’s Revenue Agency (CRA) has notified the Jewish National Fund (JNF) that it will be revoking the group’s charitable status over its support for the Israeli military.

A financial audit cited by the CRA found that the JNF’s projects violated Canada's tax rules as the organisation had used donations to build infrastructure for a foreign army in violation of Canada’s Tax Code.

The JNF, which is also known as Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael and was founded in 1901, is also heavily involved in land grabs in occupied Palestinian territories, often through covert operations to avoid political backlash and donor friction.

These activities have included the use of subsidiaries like Himnuta to obscure the true nature of the transactions, which some activists and rights groups had called an attempt at "greenwashing" dispossessing Palestinians of their land.

According to a Jewish Journal report in 2013, the organisation owns 13 percent of occupied Palestinian territories and explicitly prohibits the sale or lease of land to non-Jews.

These settlements are considered illegal under international law and are seen as major obstacle to peace and the two-state solution.

The acquisitions have a also been linked to increased settler violence and forced displacement of Palestinian families, exacerbating tensions and contributing to systematic efforts to entrench Israel's occupation of Palestinian land.

Canada's Green Party has previously called to revoke the group's charitable status, saying in a petition: "Under the guise of environmentalism the JNF has forested over the ruins of Palestinian villages in an attempt to greenwash non-Jewish dispossession."

The party added: "This includes ‘Canada Park’ which was built over top three destroyed Palestinian villages who more than 9,000 residents were expelled from their homes."

Up to 25 percent of the Jewish National Fund's budget was funded by Canadian taxpayers through tax credits provided for donations.

Without the ability to offer tax credits, the JNF may see a significant drop in donations from Canada, impacting its financial resources​.

The revocation of the JNF’s charity status in Canada deals a significant blow to the organisation, reducing its funding and highlighting the international community's concerns over its activities in the West Bank.

Seizing Palestinian land

The JNF was established as a financial arm of the Zionist Organisation founded four years prior to it, with the aim of colonising more Palestinian land for Jews.

Shortly after the JNF was established, it created its own subsidiary named the Palestine Land Development Company, which drove Palestinian farmers and peasants off their land by acquiring land from Ottoman authorities and absentee landlords based in Beirut, Damascus and Cairo.

According to a report in +972 magazine, Yosef Weitz, the director of the JNF’s Lands Department from 1932 to 1972 was "a prominent advocate of ethnic cleansing" based on entries in his diary which said there was "no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to the neighbouring countries, to transfer all of them…not one village must be left".

A 2013 report by Israel’s Society for the Protection of Nature also criticised the JNF’s afforestation efforts, stating that they ruined local biomes and devastated their unique biodiversity.

The report added that Bedouin communities in the Naqab were repeatedly displaced to make room for the JNF forests.

The decision to revoke the JNF’s charitable status comes months after Ottawa announced plans to ban arms exports to Israel amid mounting pressure and Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza.

Decision hailed by activists

The decision has been hailed by Palestinians and rights groups online, who called the revoking of the group's charitable status a "significant" move.

"This is excellent news and I hope any appeal will be rejected by the courts," one social media user said on X.

"It’s infuriating it took Canada so long to revoke the charitable status of JNF despite our work and the UN finding it to be discriminatory decades ago. It took JNF’s funding of the IDF to finally have the CRA act, but this is a major victory against Israeli green colonialism," another wrote.

JNF Canada’s national president Nathan Disenhouse and CEO Lance Davis announced in a statement on Thursday that they have launched a legal challenge against CRA with the Federal Court of Appeal.