Court orders JNF to rehire fired Palestinian employees, cites discrimination

The Tel Aviv Labor Court has ruled that 10 Palestinians who were employed by the Jewish National Fund for decades without proper employee rights and who were fired were discriminated against due to their origin and against worker rights laws, The Times of Israel’s sister site Zman Yisrael reports.

The court ordered that the 10 be rehired and compensated. Eight of them will become permanent employees. (The Jewish National Fund-KKL is unrelated to Jewish National Fund-USA.)

The lawyer for the fired employees had charged that the layoffs were carried out for “nationalist and racist” motives, in order to replace Arab workers with Jewish ones. They told The Times of Israel that the management was attempting to abide by the conditions of a new labor agreement that was signed with the workers’ committee by laying off Palestinian workers who are not protected by the agreement.

The Palestinian workers were employed with no pension or other benefits.