Update:
Vancouver activists held a spirited picket on April 10 to expose the JNF’s racist policies.
Canada Palestine Association and BDS Vancouver-Coast Salish initiated a successful picket outside the “Gala Dinner” of the Jewish National Fund in Vancouver and loudly demanded that the JNF’s tax-deductible status in Canada be removed. There were great solidarity messages from indigenous sister Carol who also sang the women’s warrior song, Daniel from the Ayotzinapa Mexican committee, indigenous activist Ray from Red Sparks Union, and comments from Khalil on behalf of BDS Vancouver. Amid chants of “Stop the JNF” and “Free Palestine”, activists also handed out hundreds of leaflets to passers-by, many of whom were supportive and stopped to chat and ask for more info.
More photos and videos at FB event page.
Picket the Jewish National Fund JNF Dinner
Sunday, April 10, 2016, 4:45 pm
Four Seasons Hotel (W. Georgia and Howe St.), Vancouver, B.C.
Join our Facebook Event
JNF Canada has used its tax-deductible status for building and maintaining the infamous “Canada Park” on the ruins of 3 Palestinian villages, Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba, which were located in the occupied West Bank and destroyed after the 1967 war. On April 10, 2016, the Jewish National Fund JNF Pacific Region is holding its annual “Negev Gala Dinner” and this year, it is “working with ‘No to Violence Against Women’(in Israel) to build a shelter for women and children”. They claim that “this shelter is for everyone, regardless of background.” The JNF, with its racist policies of neither leasing nor selling land to non-Jews (i.e. Palestinians), cannot use a project like this to hide its true agenda of land confiscation and ethnic cleansing. Combating violence against women is a worthy goal, but what about the Palestinian Bedouin women (also Israeli citizens) from Al Araqib in the Naqab/Negev, who have suffered the ultimate violence of homelessness 95 times and counting at the hands of the JNF and Israeli forces? And what about the hundreds of Palestinian girls and women that have been the victims of Israeli occupation violence on a daily basis? What about the 57 Palestinian women, including 13 minors, incarcerated in Israeli prisons? What about the women and children in Gaza, living just south of this new shelter, who are not allowed by Israeli authorities to leave for proper medical treatment for various cancers?
“In January, dozens of female patients (in Gaza) staged a protest to voice their anger over the draconian restrictions, which Israel threatens to tighten, on patient movement . One of the protesters, Rawan Lubad, has lived with breast cancer for 10 years. The 61-year-old is in constant pain. She has twice applied to get a permit for referral. She was twice denied. ‘I am dying here. I feel that I have been sentenced to death,’ she said.”
Join us on April 10 to say: Hey JNF you can’t hide, Stop supporting apartheid!
Sponsored by: BDS Vancouver-Coast Salish and Canada Palestine Association-Vancouver
Contact email: [email protected]
Background info on JNF Policies