The illustration on the JNF packaging for the candles features a man holding an axe with a single tree in the background, representing the forest the organization plants. If the organization plants forest in the dessert, which some environmentalists view as harmful, then it seems counterintuitive to feature a man with an axe to cut that tree down. The axe can therefore be interpreted to symbolize the illegal annexation of Palestinian land by the Israeli government.

by Arvind Dilawar
Arvind Dilawar is an independent journalist. His articles, essays and interviews have appeared in The New York Times, Time Magazine, The Daily Beast and elsewhere.
Find him online at: adilawar.com

Proceeds of Rite Lite Hanukkah candles donated to Jewish National Fund (JNF), which supports illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

This year, Hanukkah will commence at sundown on December 14, the holiday traditionally observed by lighting candles atop a menorah. For Jews in the Hudson Valley, the selection of Hanukkah candles to choose from includes Rite Lite, which Walmart stocks at its locations in Fishkill, Newburgh, Middletown and elsewhere. The candles are advertised as benefiting the Jewish National Fund (JNF), whose work the packaging describes as including “water resource management, tree planting and the preservation of Israel’s green spaces.”

But JNF is not an environmental steward. It is a supporter of illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, both internationally recognized as Palestinian territory, and has been systematically discriminating against Palestinians in Israel also.

JNF was founded in 1901 as an openly Zionist — or Jewish ethno-nationalist — organization, collecting donations from around the world to purchase land for a Jewish state in what was then part of the Ottoman Empire. Following the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948, JNF became a quasi-governmental organization, with formerly Palestinian lands annexed by the Israeli government transferred to JNF to manage. In 2019, the Yale School of the Environment estimated that JNF held 13% of all Israeli territory, making it the largest private landowner in the country.

JNF’s activities are not confined to Israel’s internationally recognized borders either, as Haaretz reports. While JNF has for years used subsidiaries to operate unofficially in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, which along with Gaza constitute the occupied Palestinian territories, the organization decided to openly start supporting the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank in 2021. Since then, JNF has allocated millions of dollars to purchase land “intended for Jewish settlement.”

JNF also openly discriminates against Palestinians in Israel as well. From 1960 to 2005, bidding on leases for the organization’s lands were restricted to “Jewish nationals,” as detailed in a report to the United Nations (February, 2006) by the Habitat International Coalition and the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. Palestinians, who make up 20 percent of Israel’s population, were thus systematically excluded — but rather than regretting, or even denying, such discrimination, JNF explicitly embraces it. According to a transcript from Adalah’s suit challenging JNF in Israel’s Supreme Court in 2004, JNF itself argued:

As a landowner, the JNF is not a public body which acts on behalf of all the citizens of the state. Its loyalty is to the Jewish people and its responsibility is to it alone. As the owner of JNF land, the JNF does not have to act with equality towards all citizens of the state.

As the report to the UN explains, the Israeli attorney general found that JNF’s leasing practices were indeed discriminatory and bidding had to be opened to non-Jewish Israeli citizens. However, the attorney general also ruled that any time a non-Jewish bidder wins a lease, the state will “compensate” JNF with an equal amount of public land. In other words, state transfers of land to JNF continue — even as JNF defends its “right” to discriminate.

Rite Lite, the Brooklyn-based manufacturer of the candles benefiting JNF, advertises itself as providing products to “thousands of retail locations throughout the U.S. and around the world” on its website. Besides Walmart, online retailers of Rite Lite products include Target, Amazon and JNF itself.

(Walmart, Rite Lite and JNF all failed to respond to requests for comment from A Little Beacon Blog.)