Zochrot - "Swamps" and "sand": Blue Box protest against the Jewish Fund for

"Swamps" and "sand": Blue Box protest against the Jewish Fund for _?

A short video about the JNF exhibition "Blue Box in the Boulevard" (note the sentimental European tone...)

You can also watch a short video of the event (highly recommended, but no English subtitles... )

And here is list of JNF parks and the distroyed villages upon which they were erected.

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) is the largest owner of lands in Israel and acts as the trustee of "the Jewish People." The Israel Land Administration awarded it "state lands," including a large percentage of Palestinians' "absentee" land (i.e., privately-owned land that was confiscated from Palestinians following the Nakba). According to JNF by-laws, these lands are not to be sold or leased for a long term to non-Jews. In short, the JNF is one of the main tools used by the state to restrict non-Jewish ownership and use of land. "The Blue Box," used for over a century to collect money from Jews abroad for the purpose of "redeeming the land of Israel" and "making the desert bloom," has become a Zionist symbol. These days it is being used in an outdoors installation in Tel Aviv, as part of a JNF fundraising campaign for re-forestation efforts in northen Israel.

On Thursday, October 26, 2006 we organized a protest-performance through the JNF installation of giant blue boxes on Rothschild Blvd. under the banner "The Fund - For Whom?" We brought alternative "boxes" bearing the names of Palestinian villages that were erased and "replaced" by Jewish towns on JNF lands, and by forests planted by the JNF. We handed out fliers with names of the destroyed, erased and forgotten Palestinian villages, and erected our own "Blue Box" in the official JNF installation. Our big box shows on one side the official pre-48 story -- swamps, wilderness, desert -- and on the other the actual erased map of Palestinian towns that were "reforested."