Happy Tu B’Shvat, Birthday of Trees!
Happy Tu B’Shvat, Birthday of Trees!
This sacred holiday needs to be reclaimed from Zionist narratives, by reckoning with the role of the Jewish National Fund in the colonization of Palestine, and its abuse of trees to do so.
In honor of building right relationship with trees, land, and Indigenous communities, we want to take this opportunity to talk about the JNF.
You may wonder “Aren’t those the people who plant trees in Israel? Didn’t I collect money for them in those little tzedakah boxes when I was a kid?”
Yes. That is who they are. And here are some things you should know about them.
Who is the JNF?
The JNF was founded in 1901, as a “parastatal” organization, meaning it is not technically a government agency, but was founded in service of nation-building.
From their founding, long before the formation of the State of Israel, the JNF was on the ground in Palestine, doing reconnaissance, gathering information about the layout of the land, villages, water sources, crops, etc., so they knew how the land and people were organized. The JNF helped prepare the way for the Nakba in 1948, when Zionist military forces pushed out 750,000 Palestinians and demolished over 500 villages.
Who Frames the Narrative?
One of the central narratives of Zionism is that Israel “made the desert bloom.”
Deserts have their own bloom, and Palestine has its own beautiful, ancient, and sacred ecosystem.
The JNF tree-planting project is a colonial strategy. Palestinian villages are razed, and trees and parks are built right on top of them, concealing their crimes, and enforcing the message that “There is no Palestine.”
Greenwashing
The JNF say they are “making a green tomorrow” and fighting global climate change. Historically, the JNF has focused mainly on planting one species of pine that is non-native, fast-growing, and which damages the soil by making it acidic and inhospitable to indigenous plants. While the JNF has taken steps to address some of the environmental harm, the central colonizing purpose of the project remains consistent over time.
Meanwhile, over 820,000 indigenous olive trees have been uprooted in this war over land and resources. Thousand year-old olive trees have been ripped out of Palestinian ground, and planted in Israeli settlements as symbols of domination.
Jews in Diaspora
The JNF has played a key role in interwining Jewish identity with the Zionist state-building project. Those little metal tzedakah boxes make kids feel like they are contributing to the world and their communities. Tree-planting certificates are common gifts for many of the most sacred and meaningful events in Jewish life (birth, death, weddings, B’nei Mitzvot).
The JNF is able to use these emotional and spiritual ties to conscript Jews around the world into their colonial project, without our knowing. This deception is difficult to untangle. The Fallen Donors are a group of people who are outraged about the ways they’ve been deceived, and have mobilized as part of an international movement to expose the true activities of the JNF.
It’s still Happening
Tree planting is a key strategy of staking territorial claim to Palestinian land, in an effort to define and defend a permanent, unified State of Israel for Jewish people only.
This strategy is ongoing and visible:
The JNF Canada Park, built in the occupied West Bank on the site of three Palestinian cities.
The park and observation point in Mitzpe Yericho, aka Jericho, which has always been known as a Palestinian city.
A “historical site” called Rosh Tzurim near Bethlehem which claimed a nearby olive grove and advertised it as a Biblical location, paving roads for settlers and fencing out the Palestinians whose ancestors planted and tended those trees.
Just this week, Indigenous Bedouin people in the Negev / Naqab have been met with violence as they protest Israeli forestry projects that actively threaten their way of life.
Sacred Kinship
Trees connect earth and sky, rooting us in interconnectedness, tying us to deeper slower timekeeping, and creating networks of interdependence.
The JNF does not honor the divinity of our sacred ancestors and friends.
Want to support the kinship and remediation of land, trees, people, and culture? Root resistance by planting olive trees in Palestine, go to tinyurl.com/plantanolivetree.
Take a screenshot of your donation and send it to ElementalActivation@gmail.com, and you’ll be entered into a raffle to win prizes from Dreaming the World to Come, Narrow Bridge Candles, and FromSoil2Soul.
Learn more:
Visit linktr.ee/olamhabaplanner for more links and info
Plant a tree:
tinyurl.com/plantanolivetree and send a screenshot of your donation to ElementalActivation@gmail.com to be added to our raffle!
Share something you’ve learned or been impacted by with a friend beneath a beloved tree.
Created by:
Dreaming the World to Come @olamhabaplanner
Jonah Aline Daniel @narrowbridgecandles
Dev Brous @dev.brous
Additional links:
Enduring Roots: Over a Century of Resistance to the Jewish National Fund