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Keren Kayemet Le-Israel Law, 5714-1953 (1953)

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aliasesKeren Kayemet Le-Israel Law, Jewish National Fund Law 1953, Keren Kayemet Le-Israel Law, 5714-1953

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Summary

Israel’s Keren Kayemet Le-Israel Law, 5714-1953, passed by the Knesset on 23 November 1953: a company-law incorporation measure for the Jewish National Fund, under which the Minister of Justice may approve a memorandum and articles, submitted by the existing company, the Keren Kayemet Le-Israel B.M. founded and incorporated in the Diaspora, for a company limited by guarantee incorporated in Israel to continue its activities; on approval and publication in Reshumot the new company is deemed registered under the Companies Ordinance and licensed under its section 23(1), every right or power vested by law in the existing company vests also in the new company, sections 112 and parts of 121(1) of the Ordinance do not apply to it, for the purposes of section 22 of the Land (Acquisition for Public Purposes) Ordinance, 1943 it has the same status as a local authority, its living legacy business is outside the Insurance Business (Superintendence) Law, 5711-1951, its asset and liability transfers from the existing company proceed under a modified section 119A arrangement or, otherwise, on published notice with joint and several liability and floating charges carried over, and every such transfer and consequential registration is exempt from any tax, fee or charge payable to the State or a local authority (Keren Kayemet Le-Israel Law, 5714-1953 (1953), PDF p.1-3).

What the file is

The English text of the Law in one 3-page file, about 842 words in the text copy: sections 1-7 on PDF p.1, sections 8-10, the signatories and the start of the passage footnote on PDF p.2, and the footnote’s completion, footnotes (1)-(3) and closing source matter on PDF p.3. The closing matter identifies the source as Laws of the State of Israel: Authorized Translation from the Hebrew, Volume 8, Government Printer, Jerusalem, p. 35-37, (C) Israel Law Resource Center, February, 2007. The memorandum and articles the Law provides for are not in the file, and the Law itself states no land-holding or land-use rule. The text copy was checked against the original at PDF p.1-2; the original reads the same, including the printed points recorded in Section by section and Open questions. No Hebrew text, table or figure appears in the file.

Section by section

  • Section 1, Definitions (PDF p.1). “the existing company” means the Keren Kayemet Le-Israel B.M.; “the new company” means the company established under this Law; “assets” and “liabilities” have the same meaning as in section 119A of the Companies Ordinance. The definition is printed with a misplaced quotation mark before the word liabilities, as printed.
  • Section 2, Memorandum and articles for the incorporation of the existing company in Israel (PDF p.1). The Minister of Justice may approve a memorandum of association and articles of a company limited by guarantee, submitted by the existing company, for establishing a body incorporated in Israel to continue the activities of the existing company, which was founded and incorporated in the Diaspora.
  • Section 3, Establishment of the new company (PDF p.1). On approval, notice of the approval and the approved memorandum shall be published in Reshumot, a copy of the memorandum and articles shall be forwarded to the Registrar of Companies, and the company, including its memorandum and articles, shall from publication be deemed a company registered under the Companies Ordinance and licensed under section 23(1) of it.
  • Section 4, Identity as to rights and powers (PDF p.1). “Every right or power vested by law in the existing company shall also be vested in the new company.”
  • Section 5, Inapplicability of certain sections of Companies Ordinance (PDF p.1). Section 112 and the second and third paragraphs of section 121(1) of the Companies Ordinance shall not apply to the new company; the file does not state what those provisions contain.
  • Section 6, Power under Land (Acquisition for Public Purposes) Ordinance, 1943 (PDF p.1). For the purposes of section 22 of that Ordinance, the new company shall have the same status as a local authority.
  • Section 7, Living legacy business (PDF p.1). The Insurance Business (Superintendence) Law, 5711-1951 shall not apply to living legacy business of the existing or new company even if it involves insurance business.
  • Section 8, Transfer of assets under business transfer arrangement (PDF p.2). If the existing company agrees with the new company to hand over the whole or a particular class of its business, assets and liabilities, section 119A of the Companies Ordinance applies with two modifications: subsection (5)(a) and (b) and subsection (8) do not apply, and, for a particular-class arrangement, subsection (7) does not apply to a confirming court order save in respect of that class.
  • Section 9, Transfer of assets in other manner (PDF p.2). Where a transfer of particular assets is agreed otherwise, the new company shall publish notice in Reshumot, in one daily newspaper in Israel and in one circulating in the country of the existing company’s incorporation; from the transfer day, the two companies are jointly and severally responsible for any pre-transfer liability of the existing company, or whose cause existed then, other than a liability with which the transferred assets only are charged, and a pre-transfer floating charge on the existing company’s assets is treated as a floating charge also on the new company’s assets.
  • Section 10, Exemption from transfer dues (PDF p.2). “Any transfer of assets or liabilities, any amendment of a registration and any other act done in consequence of a transfer as referred to in section 8 or in carrying out an agreement as referred to in section 9 are exempt from any tax, fee or other charge payable to the State or a local authority.”
  • Signatories (PDF p.2). Yitzchak Ben-Zvi, President of the State; David Ben-Gurion, Prime Minister; Pinchas Rosen, with the title printed as “Minister of Labor” — as printed, and held in Open questions, since the Law’s only ministerial actor in its sections is the Minister of Justice (section 2) and no Minister of Labor is named in the Law.
  • Passage footnote and footnotes (PDF p.2-3). Passed by the Knesset on 16th Kislev, 5714 (23rd November, 1953) and published in Sefer Ha-Chukkim No. 138 of 26th Kislev, 5714, printed “(3rd December. 1953)” with a full stop after December, p. 34; the Bill and an Explanatory Note were published in Hatza’ot Chok No. 168 of 5713, p. 222. Footnote (1): Laws of Palestine vol. I, cap. 22, p. 161; Sefer Ha-Chukkim No. 58 of 5710, p. 316, LSI vol. IV, p. 185. Footnote (2): P. G. of 1943, Suppl. I, printed “No, 1305”, p. 44. Footnote (3): Sefer Ha-Chukkim No. 79 of 5711, p. 221; Vol. V, p. 142.

Key passages

  • “which was founded and incorporated in the Diaspora” (section 2, on the existing company, PDF p.1)
  • “Every right or power vested by law in the existing company shall also be vested in the new company” (section 4, PDF p.1)
  • “the new company shall have the same status as a local authority” (section 6, for the purposes of section 22 of the Land (Acquisition for Public Purposes) Ordinance, 1943, PDF p.1)
  • “are exempt from any tax, fee or other charge payable to the State or a local authority” (section 10, PDF p.2)

Evidence the work relies on

A statute, not an evidentiary work. Its internal authorities are the ordinances and laws it modifies or disapplies: the Companies Ordinance (sections 23(1), 112, 119A and 121(1)), the Land (Acquisition for Public Purposes) Ordinance, 1943 (section 22), and the Insurance Business (Superintendence) Law, 5711-1951, each cited in a footnote giving its Laws of Palestine or Sefer Ha-Chukkim reference. None of those provisions’ texts, and neither company’s memorandum or articles, is reproduced in the file.

Analysis

Read on its own terms, this Law does one thing: it re-incorporates a diaspora company in Israel with continuity of rights, powers, assets and liabilities, on facilitated terms — deemed registration, two Companies Ordinance provisions disapplied, local-authority status for one land-acquisition purpose, an insurance-law carve-out, and a complete exemption from State and local transfer dues. It states no purpose for the Fund, no rule that its land is held for the Jewish people, no bar on leasing or selling to non-Jews, and no land function beyond the section 6 status; every such rule attributed to the Fund in other sources rests, on the evidence of this file, in the memorandum and articles the Law authorises but does not reproduce, or in other enactments. That gap is itself the file’s main analytical point for the wiki: the 1953 Law is the Fund’s Israeli incorporation, not its charter of land rules. Two of its facilitations are nonetheless substantive in the text: section 6 gives a private company a local authority’s status under a compulsory-acquisition ordinance, and section 10 removes all State and local charges from the transfer that moved the diaspora company’s assets into the Israeli company.

People, organizations, places and events

Keren Kayemet Le-Israel Law, 5714-1953, Jewish National Fund, Knesset, Israel, David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi

Concepts

Diaspora

How it relates to other sources

This is the primary text of the Fund’s 1953 law. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine states that the JNF Law of 1953 granted the agency independent status as land-owner on behalf of the Jewish state (PDF p.257-258); this file grants no land-owner status in those terms — it incorporates the new company, vests the existing company’s rights and powers in it and gives it local-authority status only for section 22 of the 1943 Ordinance — and the two accounts are held side by side on Keren Kayemet Le-Israel Law, 5714-1953, not reconciled. For Palestine — Essays from the Tom Hurndall Memorial Lecture Group likewise names a Jewish National Fund Law 1953 among the laws giving the Fund special status (PDF p.228-229). The land-holding role other sources describe is supplied in this batch not by this Law but by the 1960 laws that follow it: the Basic Law: Israel Lands names the Keren Kayemet Le-Israel as one of the three holders of “Israel lands” whose ownership may not be transferred (PDF p.1), and the inalienability and Jewish-labour rules recorded on Jewish National Fund from the Fund’s own constitution and leases, as quoted by Simpson, Passfield and others, are not in this file.

Open questions

  • The memorandum and articles approved under section 2, which would state the new company’s objects and land rules, are not in the file, so the company’s purposes cannot be stated from this source.
  • The contents of Companies Ordinance sections 112, 119A and 121(1) and of section 22 of the Land (Acquisition for Public Purposes) Ordinance, 1943 are not in the file, so what the disapplications and the local-authority status change in practice is outside this file.
  • Pinchas Rosen signs with the title printed as “Minister of Labor” (PDF p.2); the Law names only the Minister of Justice as an actor, and whether the title as printed is a slip in this translation or stands in the original publication is outside this file. It is recorded as printed, not corrected.
  • The passage footnote prints “(3rd December. 1953)” with a full stop after December, footnote (2) prints “No, 1305” with a comma, and section 1 prints a misplaced quotation mark in the “assets” and “liabilities” definition; all recorded as printed and checked against the original.

Coverage

PDF p.1-3 of 3, read in full.

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