Brookline Selectmen and the Jewish National Fund
Since I stopped writing my column for the weekly Brookline TAB last spring I haven’t gone to too many local meetings. This evening’s Selectmen agenda, though, included this item:
Murray Gorelick and Human Relations/Youth Resources Director Stephen Bressler will appear to outline the program to establish a New England Forest Project in Israel.
A quick Google search led me to the Jewish National Fund’s latest fundraising effort, a plan to reforest northern areas burned by Hezbollah’s bombs during last summer’s Lebanon war - “Operation Northern Renewal.” The JNF was coming to Brookline, apparently, to help raise money to plant more trees.
So I headed over to Town Hall determined to depart from the expected pro forma niceties. First Gorelick and Bressler spoke, and also Sara Hefez from the local JFN office. Selectman Betsy DeWitt said some approving things about how the local green community might want to get on board.
That’s when I raised my hand, stood up in the sparse audience, and said I’d like to comment. Chairman Bobby Allen invited me up, and I made a short statement in favor of trees but against the Town of Brookline supporting or endorsing the Jewish National Fund. According to its charter, I said, the JNF is a discriminatory organization mandated to favor Jewish Israelis. I pointed the long history of JNF projects based less on environmental consciousness than on strategic and symbolic goals. Before Brookline endorsed such activity, it should do some research.
When I got back to my seat, the man behind me leaned forward and said I could also have mentioned Israel’s cutting down Palestinian olive trees. Good point.
That’s when Selectman Nancy Daly said that she had some concerns similar to mine. Why not advocate planting trees throughout the Middle East instead of just in Israel, she said, to show evenhanded concern?
The JNF people got a chance to repeat themselves, and Gorelick denied that JNF or Israel discriminates about anything. Bobby Allen then clarified that the Selectmen weren’t actually being asked to vote on anything, though Daly said she too hadn’t been sure about that. In any event, Allen thanked the JNFers and said that Brookline has a long tradition of allowing groups to make a report at Selectmen meetings about various projects, without endorsing them officially. He did wish them luck. So did Daly, because, to paraphrase, “everyone loves trees.”
When the Selectmen moved on to the next item, the three JNF supporters gathered in the lobby for a few minutes, and then Sara Hefez came back to hand me her card and tell me she’d like to talk at some point about my concerns. I gave her my card, too, so maybe she’ll read this.
Before we talk, maybe she’ll do some more reading. For example, here’s a recent report from Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, that touches on the JNF history and policies.
Update: Today’s Brookline TAB had a short piece on this. I’ll leave out the part where they give the details about how to make a donation:
A seemingly innocuous local effort to replant trees in Northern Israel was questioned as biased by a resident who had lived in the country. As one town official and a Boston-area, Israel-focused nonprofit stumped for residents to donate money to replant trees lost in the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict last year, a Stanton Road resident objected.
“I like trees and I’m in favor of reforestation,” said Dennis Fox. “But I object to the town of Brookline [endorsing an organization] that is discriminatory in the way it uses its funds.”
Although Fox argued the Jewish National Fund — the group backing project leader Murray Gorelick to build the New England Forest — would only benefit Jews, representatives dismissed the notion. “The land is the land, regardless of who lives there,” said Steve Bressler, director of Human Relations-Youth Resources. “The goal of the Jewish National Fund is not political, it’s not military. It’s just trees.”
According to the JNF’s Web site, the organization defines its mission as being “the caretaker of the land of Israel, on behalf of its owners — Jewish people everywhere.”
Sara Hefez, campaign executive, emphasized the organization simply wanted to restore the environment. “JNF isn’t religious or political in any way,” she said. “We are environmentalists.”
The story is okay enough given the low-key interchange. I’m glad the write quotes the JNF website, which seems to me easy to see as in conflict with the pretense that JNF has no religious or political aims…..
May 24th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
I’m very sorry that you have to back your stand by using lies against Israel. As I explained you in your next post Israel planting trees on no man land but is renewing the forests that the Muslim Hizbullah burnt in summer 2006. Those lands are not Jewish nor Arabs but give service for all.
Israel doesn’t cut any Arab olive tree. Stop with your ProPalganda. Did you ever asked your self why all “olive incidents” occur in each Sep-Oct seasons? Well, that because the Arabs pick up the olives and after finish collecting them they cut some portion of the trees, each tree every 6-7 years, to renew its growth. It is agricultural standard and no Jews attacked their trees, but themselves. The “reports” of Jewish settlers cutting down Palestinian olive trees appear to be lies motivated by a political agenda on the part of people seeking to libel the settlers. And all those that spread these lies with out checking them are as the liars themselves. I’m very outrageous about how easy it takes to blame Jews for cutting those trees. No Jew have found to be the one to do so, and at the same time there were at least two cases that Palestinian Arabs did it for their own wish. It is very sad to hear Jewish interested political agenda trying to blame the settlers for that with out any clear fact evidence to back their statements.
http://justifythis.blogspot.com/2005_11_01_archive.html
How To Invent The News (And Blame The Jews)
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2007/01/guess-whos-stealing-land.html
Guess who’s stealing land?