Jewish National Fund Canada Loses Charitable Status After Federal Court Tax Appeal Defeat

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) Canada has lost its status as a registered charity for tax purposes after losing an appeal in the Federal Court of Canada over a decision by the Canada Revenue Agency to revoke the status. In her ruling, Justice Allyson Whyte Nowak said that JNF Canada sought relief with the wrong court and should have taken its case to Canada’s Federal Court of Appeal. JNF Canada has a limited time now to disperse the $31 Million Canadian (US$ 22.21 million) in funding it currently holds.

The Ne’eman Foundation, a non-profit that supports projects in Israel, also lost its tax exempt status in Canada.

The Canada Revenue Agency’s decision to revoke JNF Canada’s tax exempt status came because JNF spends some of its money to fund new facilities for soldiers on Israel Defense Forces bases in Israel. However, these facilities are not related to any military activities and the majority of JNF’s funding goes to education projects, environmental projects and all manner of social projects.

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JNF Canada criticized the move as being motivated by antisemitism saying in a statement, “as a Zionist-inspired organization, JNF Canada has many vociferous antisemitic detractors who we believe have influenced the decision-making process in this matter.”

“We maintain that it is unjust for the CRA to revoke a charity without any efforts to negotiate a charitable object that it accepted almost 60 years ago, nor to consider ten new objects that JNF proposed in order to move forward in a collaborative manner,” said JNF Canada. “We maintain that the revocation decision is based on a misapprehension of the facts and law; flawed and unfair process; and bias.”

JNF Canada pledged that it will continue to “challenge it in the Federal Court of Appeal. But this is not our preferred scenario.”

“As we have stated, it is in everyone’s best interest that we reach a negotiated settlement. We continue to be bewildered as to why the CRA prefers to litigate this in the Federal Court of Appeal, rather than enter into a settlement which we have requested several times. It is a waste of the taxpayers’ money for the Department of Justice to litigate on behalf of the CRA, instead of the CRA simply meeting with the JNF to resolve this dispute.”