The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has informed the century-old Jewish National Fund that it intends to revoke the organization’s charitable status due to its involvement in supporting the Zionist entity’s military and security infrastructure in occupied Palestine, as reported in Canadian media on July 25. The decision was met with relief by supporters of justice in Palestine, while Zionist organizations have called a “dangerous precedent,” and the JNF said it would challenge the decision in Canadian courts.
The Canada Revenue Agency prohibits all organizations with charitable status from supporting and funding foreign military institutions or bodies with a political or security character inside or outside the country.
Palestinian writer Khaled Barakat, a member of the Executive Committee of the Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement in Canada, described the announcement by the Canada Revenue Agency (the government agency responsible for income taxes and charitable organizations in the country) as “a victory for the Palestinian people, their resistance and the sacrifices of our people in the Gaza Strip,” emphasizing that the decision “came as a result of a popular campaign in which many Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and Jewish anti-Zionist organizations and associations in North America participated.”
Barakat sharply criticized the Canadian government, for “continuing to provide military, economic and political support to the Zionist enemy and covering for its crimes in international forums.” He noted that “the Canadian Revenue Agency knows the history of the Jewish National Fund and its crimes, but was forced to take this step due to popular pressure and not at the initiative of financial and governmental institutions in Ottawa, which do not require multiple Zionist charities supporting the occupation military to abide by the law and themselves violate international law.”
Barakat pointed out that “the Zionist movement and its organizations are a racist, criminal movement that have participated directly in the displacement and expulsion of our people for 100 years. These organizations continue to steal Palestinian and Arab land, finance the genocide in Gaza, support settler colonies in the Naqab, Galilee, the West Bank and Jerusalem, and are involved in all the crimes that our people are exposed to in occupied Palestine, as well as in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.”
Barakat further warned against “the malicious intentions of Zionist organizations that seek to target the Palestinian liberation struggle, particularly the campaign against Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network and a number of Palestinian and solidarity organizations.” He warned that these forces may attempt to seek decisions targeting these organizations, “so that the Canadian government appears to be balanced in its decisions,” urging a full campaign to expose Zionist charities and institutions and to defend Palestinians and supporters of Palestine.