Where does American funding for Israel go?

Where does American Jewish communal funding for Israel go? Do we have a right to know? 

As an American Jew who advocates for a two-state solution and Israeli democracy, I often hear that if I want to advocate for my vision of Israel’s future, I have to move to Israel. If I wanted to sit on my couch, share “Stand With Us” Facebook statuses, and cheerlead for the right-wing Likud party, there would be no pushback. But dare to support an end to the occupation of the West Bank, or to express our belief that it’s vital for Israel for to live up to its founding principles of democracy and civil rights, the response is clear: either hop on an El Al flight tomorrow, or kindly keep your opinions to yourself.

Defenders of this kind of hypocrisy argue that it’s justifiable because the beliefs of groups like J Street are held only by a tiny, anomalous minority. In fact, the opposite is true. Eighty percent of American Jews want a two-state solution. That same 80% supports some level of reduction of Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank. Do four out of every five American Jews need to move to Israel before they are allowed to express these opinions in public?

Why do our communal leaders ignore this majority? J Street U President Benjy Cannon has a theory. Quoted in a recent article, Cannon suggests that if Jewish communal leaders actually engaged with Americans who shared our vision of Israel’s future, they’d be forced to “acknowledge the need to talk about the occupation; to admit that they are not living up the values of their own community. And they’d rather not face that.” 

One way to avoid facing up to the truth is to complicate and obscure it. I’d like to believe our communal support for Israel goes toward causes that reflect Jewish values and a concern for Israel’s long-term security and legitimacy – and not to the occupation. I cannot know for sure, though, as most Jewish communal philanthropy is not transparent. And where there is transparency, it is sometimes very clear that this funding contradicts our values and Israel’s interests.

Growing up, I never gave much thought to stuffing my tzedakah money into the blue Jewish National Fund boxes at my BBYO meetings and synagogue. I thought they were just iconic symbols of righteous charity; I probably should’ve looked at the Green Line-less map of Israel on the side of the box more closely. Last year,  investigative journalist Raviv Drucker uncovered a list of 14 projects the JNF secretly funded in the settlements. Those blue boxes have real consequences for democracy in Israel. Beyond the JNF, Rabbi Jill Jacobs showed how $6 million dollars of American tax write-offs to non-profits funded settlement growth. And week, Eric Goldstein published an article outlining even more tax-deductible charities currently supporting settlement expansion.

That funding is no accident – it is part and parcel of long-term policy and ideology among some key communal institutions. At a recent panel on Jewish Agency-funded study abroad programs, Chairman Natan Sharansky told students at the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly to see the controversial West Bank settlement Ariel “in the same light” as Tel Aviv. Indeed, his organization now funds a MASA program at Ariel University, routinely sending American gap year students into the heart of the occupation. 

With negotiations nowhere in sight and the status quo as entrenched as ever, supporters of Israel who believe the conflict can only be solved with two states have enough to despair about. That’s what makes this abdication of responsibility sting even more.  

We need the leaders of the organized Jewish community to answer these questions on behalf of their organizations. If continued settlement expansion doesn’t align with their values, as 80% of American Jews say it doesn’t, a public statement to that effect would be a great first step in demonstrating the moral courage and responsible leadership that this issue has been desperately lacking. Beyond this, our leaders should be crystal clear about which side of the Green Line they have been sending the money we contribute – and about where they intend to send it going forward.

Until we have transparency, we American Jews cannot understand the full scope of the role we are playing in the situation in Israel today.

As American Jews who proudly support Israel and proudly oppose the occupation, we firmly believe our community must wrestle with, acknowledge, and ultimately act to change its complicity in policies and actions that have made Israel less democratic and less secure. We hope all who agree will join us in asking for transparency, responsibility, and change. Now is the time to act. And you don’t need to hop on a flight in order to do so.