T'nuat Or

There is a great vacuum in the Negev...           —Roni Flamer, T'nuat Or's executive director

If you watch T'nuat Or's inspirational video about pioneering the Negev, there's one thing you won't see any trace of: Bedouin. What you will see are lots of beautiful Jewish children, teenagers and young families sitting, playing and drinking coffee on green lawns. In this still shot, you can see one man reaching down to turn on the sprinkler.

Ron Lauder, the past president of JNF-US, is featured, though his affiliation, "President, JNF", will mean to most English-speaking viewers Israel's Keren Kayemet LeYisrael, the JNF in Israel. Likewise Zevi Kahanov, another spokesperson in Tnuat Or's movie, is JNF-US's representative in Israel. Ron Lauder's agenda has been described by others as right-wing; this is also reflected in his position on the so-called "JNF law" which would give the JNF special dispensation to discriminate against Arabs. We hope and believe that JNF-US will review and reclaim its agenda post-Ron Lauder, and embrace a more universal vision of what the Negev is and what it can become.

While Blueprint Negev in JNF-US's publicity sounds as though it's part of KKL-JNF-Israel, JNF's partner T'nuat Or does not list KKL. They do list three other partners in their Negev projects: JNF-UK, JNF-US and Nefesh b'Nefesh. KKL has already severed relations with JNF-UK, largely because JNF-UK was giving most of its monies to other recipients besides KKL. We hope a similar fate is not in store for JNF-US.

T'nuat Or is also ready with language that sounds like a fairly right-wing vision of the Negev: it talks about cities like Rahat that "concentrate" the Bedouin. T'nuat Or also talks in that same section about improving the lives of the Bedouin in Rahat, but it's hard to tell what the real message is vs. what is window dressing. (You can help SavetheNegev—and T'nuat Or in the broadest sense—by monitoring the T'nuat Or's English and Hebrew websites, as well as the JNF sites, to help us flag problematic language like this. We are bringing these instances to the attention of the JNF.)

A significant effort involving Jewish Israelis that would develop Rahat could be a great thing, and it appears to have become a major goal of Blueprint Negev under CEO Russell Robinson. It's not clear however from T'nuat Or's site whether they are also putting resources into this development or just commending it. SavetheNegev.org strongly supports developing Rahat and creating jobs and education for the Bedouin, as long as the Bedouin people are free to choose where they live and are not forced to move out of the villages. We include in the category of force not just home demolitions, crop destruction, and herd confiscation, but also the continued denial of basic human services, electricity, water and medical clinics, to the unrecognized villages.


* The T'nuat Or page where this quote appeared now reads: "In the 7th century CE, the Negev settlements fell into ruin. Bedouins entered the area, turning the farmland into pastures. Thus the Negev remained uninhabited for many generations - until the Jews began to return in the early 19th century." This change was made in response to complaints from SavetheNegev. But even in the new version, the Bedouin apparently still do not count as "inhabitants".

Also, T'nuat Or seems to deny the fact that the Bedouin farm, when in fact they have always farmed. For example, you can see terraced gardens in the satellite image of the (now demolished) Bedouin village of A-tir. For T'nuat Or, grazing and herding seem to imply a lesser form of habitation (or humanity?) However, even if the Bedouin were only herdsmen, I seem to remember a few well-regarded herdsmen among our ancestors, e.g. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and sons.


Links:       T'nuat Or's movie, funded by Ron Lauder       T'nuat Or's website

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