Before there was a state of Israel, there was the Jewish National Fund. The JNF, or Keren Kayamet L’Yisrael in Hebrew, was founded in 1901 to buy land in Palestine for Jewish settlement. Today, most American Jews know the JNF for its tin tzedakah boxes and tree planting campaigns. But KKL-JNF owns 13% of the land in Israel — which it allocates exclusively to Jews — and has been involved in evicting Palestinians in the Negev, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank.
This episode was produced by Ilana Levinson. Music by Nat Rosenzweig and Blue Dot Sessions.