27 February 2012
The annual conference of the Green Party of England and Wales this weekend passed a motion endorsing the Stop the JNF campaign and calling for the Jewish National Fund to have its charitable status revoked in the UK.
Motion passed at the Green Party of England and Wales Spring conference on 26th February 2012
- The Green Party of England and Wales condemns the Jewish National Fund for its activities in excluding non-Jews from Israeli land and denounces the organisation for claiming to be an ecological agency.
- The GPEW endorses the international call for action against the JNF and supports efforts to revoke its charitable status in the UK.
- The GPEW will add its name to the list of signatories of the ‘Stop the JNF Campaign’.(http://www.stopthejnf.org/).
As I reported last week, the campaign against the JNF (led by the Palestinian BDS National Committee, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign) has been making impressive gains recently.
The Green Party has now followed the lead of the Scottish Green Party who made a similar move in October last year. The move is the latest blow to the JNF, which is accused by Palestinian citizens of Israel of ethnic cleansing and maintaining a system of land-apartheid that discriminates against non-Jews. The JNF describes itself as “the caretaker of the land of Israel, on behalf of its owners — Jewish people everywhere”.
The Green Party has one MP in the British parliament, after Caroline Lucas’s historic election win in 2010. It also has two seats in the European parliamanet and two in the London Assembley, as well as numerious local council seats.
Read the full Stop the JNF press release for more details of the campaign to pass the motion at conference.
