TODAY, On Tax Day, Chicago Activists Tell the IRS: “Our Tax Dollars Should Not Subsidize the Jewish National Fund’s Displacement of Palestinians”

Group to call on IRS to investigate Jewish National Fund’s tax-exempt status as part of national call issued by the Stop the JNF Campaign

In support of a legal complaint filed by the National Lawyers’ Guild as part of the international Stop the JNF Campaign, Chicago-area activists will symbolically deliver thousands of petition signatures to Chicago IRS office calling for an investigation into the Jewish National Fund’s non-profit status.

On Monday, April 18 (Tax Day), the group leaves from 637 S. Dearborn at Noon and arrives at Federal Plaza around 12:15.

This petition delivery is taking place in tandem with actions in the Bay Area, Twin Cities, and Washington, D.C. organized nationally by the Stop the JNF Campaign.

The Stop the JNF Campaign is led nationally by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN), the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), the US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), the National Lawyers’ Guild (NLG) and the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA. International organizers of the campaign include IJAN, the Boycott National Committee (BNC), Stop the Wall, Palestinian Farmers Collective, Scottish PSC & Friends of the Earth Scotland.

Local co-sponsors of the petition delivery include American Muslims for Palestine-Chicago, the Arab-Jewish Partnership, the Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine (CJPIP), Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA), Jewish Voice for Peace – Chicago and the US Palestinian Community Network (USCPN).

On March 30, 2016, the National Lawyers Guild submitted a regulatory challenge to the IRS requesting an investigation into the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund (the JNF) on grounds of discrimination and facilitating human rights violations. Thousands across the country are signing an online petition to support this request and wholeheartedly encourage the IRS to investigate the questionable charitable status of the JNF.

The JNF is an organization that receives tax-exemption as both a charitable and an environmental organization. In reality the JNF is neither and therefore does not qualify for tax-exempt status. The JNF was created in 1901 to acquire Palestinian land for exclusively Jewish settlement and use. This mandate alone warrants the revocation of the JNF’s tax-exempt status because it forms the basis for the JNF’s current-day discriminatory and racially motivated land-use restrictions that undermine the human and civil rights of Palestinians.

Today, through “Blueprint Negev,” the JNF in the United States is investing over $600 million to develop housing tracts and to landscape over Bedouin villages and land. As such they are leading activities that are based on race-based discrimination and include inequitable access to facilities, housing discrimination, and forcible transfer.

Based on its long history of discrimination and participation in forced displacement of Bedouin and Palestinian people, we call on the IRS to investigate and ultimately revoke the charitable status of the JNF on grounds that its activities are discriminatory and illegal.

For more information, contact: Hatem Abudayyeh, US Palestinian Community Network, hatem85@yahoo.com, 773-301-4108

Michael Deheeger, Chicago Organizer, Jewish Voice for Peace, michael@jewishvoiceforpeace.org, (847) 494-0356