[ Crowdfunding site IsraelGives allows US residents to donate
millions to paramilitary groups, IDF units and settlers]
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US PEOPLE ARE FUNDING ILLEGAL SETTLEMENTS IN WEST BANK  
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Jason Wilson
December 23, 2023
The Guardian
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_ Crowdfunding site IsraelGives allows US residents to donate
millions to paramilitary groups, IDF units and settlers _

View of Israeli settlement of Har Homa in the Israel-annexed East
Jerusalem on 7 December, with the West Bank city of Bethlehem in the
background on right. , Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images

 

An Israeli crowdfunding platform, IsraelGives, has allowed US
residents to donate millions of dollars since 7 October to causes
including illegal West Bank settlements, paramilitary groups, and
Israel [[link removed]] Defense Forces (IDF)
units currently operating in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Legal experts say that some of these campaigns may be illegal under US
tax law, but that this is rarely enforced on donors to Israeli causes.

While contributions from wealthy US nonprofits or individuals to
illegal settlements have been previously reported, IsraelGives’s
established crowdfunding platform, attached to an international
network of linked non-profits, may allow smaller donors in the US and
beyond to claim tax deductions on funds sustaining war and settlement
in the occupied territories.

The revelations come amid an escalating humanitarian crisis caused by
IDF attacks killing civilians in Gaza, and mounting campaigns in the
US to enforce laws that should prevent US non-profits from funding
illegal settlements.

IsraelGives is an Israeli tech company founded in 2009 by Israeli
entrepreneurs Jonathan Ben-Dor and Joseph Gitler, according to company
filings and tech sector monitor Crunchbase.

It allows nonprofits in Israel to solicit funds on a platform that is
similar to GoFundMe and other crowdfunding operations, where users can
initiate fundraising efforts and set a fundraising goal, and donors
can record their name, the amount of their individual donation, or
their location on the fundraising page.

A network of associated nonprofits – most of which count co-founder
Jonathan Ben-Dor as an officer – allow tax deductions on donations
to Israeli nonprofits for residents of the US, Canada, the EU, the UK
and Australia. It also runs a donor-advised fund, a kind of nonprofit
entity which have been widely criticized for, among other things,
concealing flows of “dark money” to rightwing causes.

The company hosts crowdfunding campaigns on several separate websites
including israelgives.org, fundme.org.il, and israeltoremet.org. In
2020, Ben-Dor was sole founder of Giving Technology Inc, which
provides a customer management system for nonprofits.

The Guardian identified at least 450 fundraising campaigns that are
currently live on the site. Some 204 of these, initiated after 7
October, sought donations for tactical equipment or logistical
support. Named beneficiaries included the IDF, individual IDF units,
or paramilitary squads attached to specific Israeli communities,
including many attached to West Bank settlements.

The international community considers West Bank settlements illegal,
but the hardline Benjamin Netanyahu government in June announced plans
to expand
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their construction.

After conversion to US dollar amounts at market rates at the time of
reporting, the Guardian determined that donors had pledged $5.3m to
military, paramilitary or settlers since 7 October. A high proportion
of these donors indicated that they are US residents.

Campaigns raising funds specifically for illegal settlements included
campaigns in support of Efrat, Tene (called Tene Omarum by settlers),
Shavei Shomron, and Ma’on (also called Havat Ma’on). All of these
fundraisers appear to ask for funding for paramilitary units attached
to the settlements.

The “Emergency Campaign for Havat Ma’on’s Security Team”, for
example, is headed by a video which includes footage of armed settlers
undergoing combat training. In the copy for the campaign, the settlers
promise to “stand firm against the cruel enemy that threatens our
existence as Jews in the Land of Israel”, and promises “We will do
everything to ensure our safe existence here and make it clear to our
enemies that we are not to be messed with!”

The campaign had raised over $7,700 at the time of reporting, and
donors included individuals identifying themselves as residents of US
states including Florida, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania.

Ma’on, founded in 1980, is a 600-person outpost settlement in the
extreme south of the occupied West Bank.

According to the Foundation for Middle East Peace
[[link removed]]: “The Havat Ma’on
outpost has a history of violent harassment of Palestinians working
land near the outpost and the settlers’ illegally-built access
road.”

This has continued in the wake of 7 October.

On 13 October, Israeli human rights organization B’Teselem
circulated a video
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from the community shooting a Palestinian man at point-blank range
with an AR-style rile in the neighboring village of Tawani as an IDF
soldier looked on. Israeli press outlets corroborated
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the video.

The Guardian contacted IsraelGives to ask if it was concerned about
exposing international donors to legal liability, citing the Ma’on
fundraiser as a specific example of, and founder and CEO Jonathan
Ben-Dor responded in an email.

He wrote that IsraelGives, “the main website for giving in Israel”
is a “neutral broker, facilitating giving to any of Israel’s
50,000 registered non-profit organizations”.

Ben-dor said that the site supported “human and civil rights
organizations, humanitarian aid projects, and movements for the
promotion of democracy, alongside religious and educational activities
– some leftwing, some rightwing (some Jewish, some Arab)”.

He added: “We also facilitate international giving to those
non-profits, when the organization and its cause and mission are in
compliance with US law (charitable equivalence)”, a reference to IRS
guidelines
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requiring US givers to demonstrate a “good faith determination that
a foreign organization is a qualifying public charity”.

Ben-dor wrote that the Ma’on campaign was “created automatically
on our platform through a war-time program designed to provide
emergency assistance to communities and families directly affected by
the October 7th attacks”.

He added that “before funds are released to any campaign, the
campaign and its backers go through an extensive [know your customer]
and compliance process.”

Ben-dor concluded that the Ma’on fundraiser “has yet to be vetted,
approved, or funded, and on the face of it is not a cause that we will
support, for the aforementioned reasons”.

The Guardian sent additional questions to Ben-Dor about whether he
thought donations to West Bank settlements would not comply with US
law, but he did not respond. The Guardian also contacted the IRS with
general questions about compliance in such cases, but did not receive
a response before deadline.

Ben-dor’s apparent caution runs counter to a longer history in which
some say that US donations to Israeli organizations engaged in illegal
activities have met few sanctions.

Diala Shamas is senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional
Rights (CCR), a hunan rights nonprofit headquartered in New York City.
She said that while donations to communities like Ma’on, “are
illegal under international law and could be illegal under US law, the
problem has always been one of enforcement”.

She believes that attorneys-general could prosecute over donations
funding illegal acts, and the IRS could enforce its own rules on
equivalence, but “Israeli causes have enjoyed complete impunity”.

However, she pointed to initiatives including the so-called “Not on
Our Dime [[link removed]]” bill, supported by CCR and
other organizations, currently before New York’s state house, which
“clarifies that funding Israeli settlement activity… is
illegal”, according to a campaign website.

Other IsraelGives campaigns sought funds for tactical equipment for
regular and reserve units of the IDF, and all have enjoyed
contributions from US residents.

One had raised $25,443 for the “Maglan Friends Foundation”, which
said that donors would “contribute directly to Maglan, a special
forces elite commando unit of the IDF established to operate behind
enemy lines”. Another had raised $2,994 for snipers attached to the
906th infantry batallion – one of six regular infantry divisions
fighting in Gaza – with asks including three DJI Mavic 3 drones.
Another began, “The soldiers of the IDF Multidimensional Unit …
kindly urge you to donate so they can purchase additional specialist
tactical gear” to include “22 commando vests”.

Many of the IDF fundraisers, however, sought money for standard
equipment.

For example, a fundraiser for reservists in the army’s 636th field
intelligence unit pleaded, “we need access to essential tactical
equipment, such as helmets flashlights, and boots”. That unit has
reportedly
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been directly involved in combat in Gaza in recent days.

Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace and a
former diplomat, said that such fundraisers were telling of the strain
on Israel’s military. “It’s December 2023, and it sounds like
parts of the IDF are basically begging for basic equipment, which is
fascinating,” she said.

Shamas, the civil rights lawyer, said Israel’s “record of complete
impunity” with respect to the enforcement of international law might
lull donors into a false sense of security.

“This is actually an incredibly risky space to be giving in,” she
said, but those giving to Israel did not appear subject to “the
level of risk assessment that people have to make when they’re
giving in other high-risk places, whether it’s Somalia, Afghanistan,
or Palestinians in Gaza”.

The Guardian

Covering American and international news for an online, global
audience.

Guardian US is renowned for the Paradise Papers
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investigation and other award-winning work including, the NSA
revelations [[link removed]],
Panama Papers [[link removed]]
and The Counted
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investigations.

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