ZOA Criticizes J.N.F. For Donating 3,000 Trees To Palestinian Authority

November 30, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Morton A. Klein
Phone: 212-481-1500
www.zoa.org/sitedocuments/pressrelease_view.asp?pressreleaseID=1752

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has criticized the Jewish National
Fund (JNF) following reports that the organization, established by Jews and
for Jews to rebuild Jewish national life in the biblical home of the Jewish
people, has donated 3,000 trees to the Fatah-controlled Palestinian
Authority (PA) of Mahmoud Abbas for a new city near Ramallah.

Benny Kashriel, the mayor of Maaleh Adumim who also is a member of the JNF
board, said today that he will raise the JNF decision with the JNF board.
The JNF, a time-honored symbol of Zionism, has for decades received
literally billions of dollars from Jews in the Diaspora for planting trees
and building the modern Jewish State. Kashriel said the contribution to the
PA is a grave step that was taken without any request for approval and
without advance notice and reflects a "system that has gone haywire . The
country has gone crazy when it plants trees for the PA in Judea and Samaria
at the same time that it forbids Jews to build. The system does not know who
it is representing - us, the Palestinian Authority or the Americans?" (Tzvi
Ben Gedalyahu, 'JNF Donates 3,000 Trees to Palestinian Authority,' Israel
National News, November 30, 2009).

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, "We are deeply critical and
indeed shocked by the decision of the JNF to donate thousands of trees,
grown with money donated by Jews from around the world, to the PA. The PA is
a terror-promoting entity controlled by Abbas' Fatah, which demonstrated
only in August at its Bethlehem conference that it does not accept Israel as
a Jewish state, does not support a peace agreement that closes the conflict
and engages in, indoctrinates for and glorifies terrorism against Jews. At
this conference, Fatah honored terrorists, including Khaled Abu-Isbah and
Dalal Mughrabi, responsible for the 1978 coastal road bus hijacking, in
which 37 Israelis, including 12 children, were slaughtered.

"Has it really come to this, that a venerable Zionist organization with only
one purpose - the up-building of a sovereign Jewish national existence,
takes money from Jews and then uses these funds to make a gift of trees to
Israel's unreconstructed enemies?

"If JNF is to retain the confidence of American and world Jewry as to its
dedicated purpose of building up the Jewish state of Israel, it is vital
that the JNF publicly acknowledge its error and apologize for this clear
misuse of funds it has raised. For the JNF to do otherwise would be to raise
money from world Jewry under false pretences. It is vital that JNF never
repeat this decision."