Yosef Weitz

Yosef Weitz (Hebrew: יוסף ויץ; 1890–1972) was the director of the Land and Afforestation Department of the Jewish National Fund (JNF).

From the 1930s, Weitz played a major role in acquiring land for the Yishuv, the pre-state Jewish community in the British Mandate of Palestine.

However it soon became clear that the purchase of small lots of land would not even get close to fulfilling the Zionists' dream of creating a Jewish-majority state in Palestine.

Due to Weitz's role in the expulsion of the Palestinians, he became known as the “Architect of Transfer” - with 'transfer' being a euphemism for the ethnic cleansing that would reach its peak in the Nakba of 1948.

His son Yehiam (Hebrew for "long live the nation"), born in Yavne'el in October 1918, was killed in a Palmach operation known as the Night of the Bridges on June 16, 1946.

He wanted to plant millions of trees not just to decorate the Israeli landscape, but also to cover up the emptied Palestinian villages that had been destroyed so they could never be rebuilt.

The JNF would improve indigenous forests, work in afforestation of hilly regions, stop the encroachment of sand dunes and plant windbreakers.

Weitz saw plant nurseries and afforestation as a vital source of employment for the masses of new immigrants arriving in the early days of the state.

[10] Weitz's forestry strategy emphasized the economic utility of forests and the importance of the Aleppo pine as the hardiest of local species.