Akashma Online News

Created in 1901 to purchase land for a Jewish State in Palestine, the JNF is most commonly
known for its century-old campaign to ‘plant a tree in Israel’ in order to ‘make the desert
bloom.’
Contrary to the deception propagated by the JNF, Israel, and Zionist mythology, the trees are not planted in a barren desert empty of inhabitants that Jewish people have come to populate, and make flourish. Lands were, and still are, obtained from their Palestinian
inhabitants through exploitative land sales, forced removal, or the state imposition of other
apartheid policies. In its Memorandum of Association, two of the JNF’s stated objectives are
to:
“…purchase, acquire on lease, or in exchange, or receive on lease or otherwise, lands, forests, rights of possession, easements, and any similar rights, as well as immovable properties of any class…for the purpose of settling Jews on such
lands and properties” [Article 3(a)] and be of “benefit, whether directly or
indirectly, to those of Jewish race or descendency” [Article 3(c)].
As the Palestinian refusal to succumb to colonial rule and expulsion perseveres, decade after
decade, intifada after intifada, it sheds unavoidable light on the dark underbelly of ‘making a
desert bloom’ in a place that is fully inhabited.

In the Jewish communities where Zionism and Jewish identity became conflated, donating money to the JNF became an integral part of Jewish life.

The mass-produced blue JNF
collection boxes were distributed as early as 1904. The JNF Blue Box became one of the most
familiar symbols of Zionism and is taken to be the symbol of world Jewry’s support for Israel.

Trees were planted in Palestine, and then in Israel, in honor of births, bar and bat mitzvahs, marriages, and deaths. For many Jewish households and establishments, money collected was not seen as a donation, but as an investment; the JNF was understood to be contributing to the well-being of Jews, and therefore, it was only natural and right that Jews invested in it.
Pride was taken in these acts, reflected in the seemingly endless JNF plaques imprinted with the
names of those who donate money and those in whose honor or memory the money is
donated.