In this episode of the Bridging the Gap podcast, host Rachel Nelson talks with Matthew Petti, an assistant editor at Reason whose work has appeared in outlets including the BBC, The Intercept, and New Lines Magazine. They discuss the covert funding of Israeli settlements by U.S.-registered charities, specifically what projects and purchases they are financing, how their work exacerbates violent conditions in the West Bank, and how U.S. policymakers approach the topic.
Rachel Nelson: Hello everyone. Welcome to “Bridging the Gap,” conversations on Israel and Palestine, hosted by the Middle East Center at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy. I’m your host, Rachel Nelson. The Israeli government has continued to establish new settlements and expand existing ones in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in violation of international law.
The government recently approved the E1 settlement plan, which it has revered as a project which would forever prevent any viable or territorially unified Palestinian state in the West Bank. The settler population in the occupied Palestinian territories has grown exponentially over the last decade, with recent numbers reflecting almost a million settlers, and the Israeli government is still trying to grow this number to compete against the Palestinian population, which holds significant majority.
The Israeli government has utilized a variety of tactics to get Israeli and diaspora Jewish families to move to settlements, using the Israeli housing crisis to drive people to the Palestinian territory where housing has been made more affordable. There are financial incentives, offering families monthly stipends and rent assistance to relocate.
Additionally, the settlements have been decked out with amenities, swimming pools, community centers, large homes with yards, things that are rare to find in homes inside of Israel, and certainly rare to find inside of Palestinian cities, towns, and villages. While Israel provides much of the funding and assistance that settlements need, including water and electricity hookup, private settler-only roads, and other services, much of the financing for luxury amenities, including community center renovations, new yeshivas, fancy programs, and paramilitary equipment for settlement security guards, those are financed covertly by American charities.
On today’s episode, I’m sitting down with Matthew Petti to discuss the ways in which these charities operate, what kinds of projects they are funding, and how their financial activity impacts violence and instability in the occupied Palestinian territory. Matthew Petti is an assistant editor at Reason and a proud New Jersey native. His reporting has appeared in outlets including the BBC in both Persian and English, The Intercept, The Daily Beast, New Line Magazine, Responsible Statecraft, Middle East Eye, and The National Interest, among others.
He writes on US national security policy with a particular focus on how it intersects with American society and domestic politics. In 2022, Matthew received a Fulbright Fellowship to study how Arab journalists engage with foreign media. During his year in Amman, he worked across several newsrooms, among them Jordan News and Radio Al-Balad, where he also hosted a program on Latin music.
He had previously returned to Jordan as both a Center for Arabic Study Abroad fellow, and a recipient of the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship. A graduate of Columbia University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies. Matthew began his journalism career as a features writer for the Columbia Daily Spectator. Matt, it’s great to have you join us for this episode of Bridging the Gap. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast.
On the podcast, I’ve tackled the issue, and really the horrifying reality of Israeli settlements and Israeli settler violence on occupied Palestinian territory. That’s really just referring to the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This year, settler violence is on track to be at record highs, according to the UN OCHA. As the war in Gaza continues, and this (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netany)ahu government seems to be only emboldening settlers by (National Security Minister Itamar) Ben-Gvir giving them weapons, continuing to express intent to annex the West Bank, and allowing settlers to commit really heinous acts, arson, attacks with no impunity, there seems to be no end in sight for the violence we’re seeing target Palestinians.
The Israeli government provides much of the support for settlements, like hooking them up to electricity and water, but there are other financial flows making their way to settlements. You and I were introduced, because we have a common interest in this covert funding of settlements on occupied Palestinian territory, coming specifically from the US, particularly from organizations registered as charities.
These charities exist for charitable purposes, and they get incentives to do this from the government because the government likes them to do this good work, but there are strict rules for being eligible for these financial incentives. Could you explain to us how charities in the US work, and how becoming a registered charity works, and what are the criteria that these organizations have to meet. Then additionally, what do these charities get in return for their charitable contributions?
Matthew Petti: A lot of Americans will be familiar with the term 501(c)(3). That’s the section of the tax code that governs the nonprofit corporations, what in other countries we might call the NGO sector or civil society. That includes charities, that includes religious congregations, educational institutions, research institutions, rights groups, advocacy groups, as long as they’re not politically partisan, they’re not doing electoral campaigning. These organizations are tax exempt in two ways.
First of all, when you donate to them, the donation itself is not taxed. This organization is nonprofit. It’s not taxed on its revenue, but also you get a tax deduction. Every donation you make to charity in the U.S. counts against your tax bill. In other words, there’s a government subsidy. They want to encourage people to give money to charity, or kids with cancer, or your local church, or synagogue, or something like that. Of course, there’s also a very broad category that, as I mentioned, it can include think tanks.
As we’re going to cover, it also includes advocacy organizations that directly support Israeli settlements on the ground. In order to become a registered nonprofit, you do have to file pretty extensive paperwork that becomes a matter of public record in the US, which actually can be very helpful for journalists to report on the money trail of some of these things. You have to basically say what the purpose of your organization is, who are the high compensated officials in the organization, et cetera, et cetera.
Rachel: I think that there is a really strict policy for these organizations. I think their scope of activity has to fall within a really narrow scope, like for the prevention of cruelty to children and animals, being a religious institution. Sometimes we’re seeing, and like we’re going to discuss, charities that are financing activity seemingly far outside of the scope of legitimate 501(c)(3) activity.
You wrote a piece for New Line Magazine, our New Line Institute sister organization, titled, “A Fanatical Israeli Settlement is Funded by New York Suburbanites.” It’s about, in particular, this settlement of Beit El, which, for our listeners, is an extremist Israeli settlement outside of the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the West Bank. It has an extensive history of settler violence. You’ve reported that it’s funded by American charities.
I don’t want to spoil this story for our listeners. If you’re listening, please go read the story at New Line Magazine. Can you tell us about what led you to start investigating these “charitable organizations,” and what exactly did you uncover? For example, how much money are we talking about being sent to this settlement, and how are they doing it?
Matthew: I actually got onto this story because of a guy named Zohran Mamdani, who is very famous now for other reasons. At the time, he was a state legislator in New York, and just a rising star, to mix the metaphors, a dark horse in politics, someone who’s coming up very quickly, seemingly out of nowhere. One of his signature initiatives was the Not On Our Dime Act, which was a bill, it hasn’t passed, I think it’s unlikely to pass, although that will change in the near future.
It’s a bill that would basically strip tax incentives away from charities that support Israeli settlements or other violations of international law. I did a double take when I heard about this. Registered charities, Israeli settlements, international law. It was almost the perfect story because it combined a big, flashy international issue with a very, very local politics story in the area that I grew up in.
As I reported on this, I found that I’d grown up around a lot of stuff that presents itself as generic, pro-Israel diaspora organizing or activity. The settlement stuff, which is a lot more politically contentious than just the existence of Israeli society, that presents itself in the same light and is there in plain sight. I found it to be a very, very interesting story the deeper I got in the rabbit hole.
I started working on this in early 2023, long before October 7th, although if you paid close attention, I think, to the region, you sensed that something bad was coming. I think it was a surprise that the bad thing came out of Gaza and not the West Bank. It took several months to report this out, overlapped with the October 7th attacks and the war in Gaza.
It just so happened, actually, that as this piece was coming out, the Biden administration imposed sanctions on several people that they considered extremists in the settler movement, some of whom had a direct personal connection to the charities that I was reporting on, which I think gave the story a lot more newsiness and a lot more punch. That’s how I came across it. I don’t want to say the stars aligned because this is all terrible events, but the timing worked that I stumbled upon this story just as it was becoming a matter of very serious public interest.
Rachel: What did you find the most surprising during your research? Was it maybe how these charities are getting away with this funding? Is it actually legal, or are they really just operating in this legal gray area? Maybe how much money is coming from these charities to support this extremist settlement. It’s not even a settlement in one of the more palatable, even though none of them are palatable, but more palatable like Gush Etzion Bloc that has been floated by some pro-Israel organizations as potentially part of a land swap if there really was going to be a two-state solution.
This is an extremist settlement. Was it the amount of money that’s coming to this extremist settlement? Or was it maybe how many well-known names there are, as you mentioned, involved in this financing in the region? Then additionally and maybe relatedly, did you face any pushback or challenges during or after you published this story? Did any of the organizations ever reach out to you and try to explain or justify their financial activity? Maybe what have you uncovered since publishing this story?
Matthew: I just realized as you were asking that I forgot to answer your question about the amounts. Haaretz estimated several years ago that, I think it was something like $220 million in total went from American charities to Israeli settlements over the space of four years. My reporting focused on, as you mentioned, this one specific settlement called Beit El. It focused on the settlement because it was so direct and it’s so easy to trace.
A lot of the settlement charities, they’re clearing houses, so they’ll take in money for a lot of different projects in Israel, both non-settlement and settlement-related, or they’ll give to a lot of different settlements, even if they are settlement-focused. Beit El has a dedicated charity. They had before COVID, an annual gala, where they had big names in American politics who are pro-settlement would come. They very proudly advertised the specific projects.
You got the specific names of people on physical buildings in the settlement, names of American donors. Out of the large amount of money flowing in, the American Friends of Beit El charity, it’s a small slice relatively. I think the last year they counted, they made $3 million in revenue and spent about the same amount in expenses, so dispersing the same amount.
The One Israel Fund, which is a more generally pro-settlement charity, they received about $7 million in 2023, which is a big jump the years before they had been making between $2.5 (million) and $4 million. I think what struck me the most is how open and brazen the political project attached to all this was. The American Friends of Beit El, the guy who runs it, Baruch Gordon, I both subscribed to his newsletter. I don’t think he realized that I’m subscribed because I still get them actually. Maybe if he’s listening to this podcast, he’ll kick me off the mailing list.
I also actually managed to talk to him on WhatsApp. He’s very open about his beliefs that– I think he made a video that said something like, “Our right to the land of Israel is beyond all human rationality and the natives must submit or be–” Not natives, he says something like inhabitants. I don’t remember exactly the wording, but you can find it in the article. That video had a map that very clearly showed the greater Israel. There’s no Palestine. There’s a cartoon boot kicking people off the land.
He’s put out things in his mailing list, like there are no innocents in Gaza. When I asked him about things on WhatsApp, he would tell me that Arabs lie, their religion encourages lying. It was this weird dissonance, because you have these fancy galas and these suburban activist types who present the settlement project as almost like a hippie, dippy thing.
One of the people who went to the Beit El Gala and wrote a blurb for their pamphlet talked about their spiritual connection to the land, et cetera, et cetera. You don’t have to dig that deep to see that there’s a very militant, violent undertone to all of that. The people who are funding it say, “We’re helping underprivileged Israeli communities,” or, “We’re doing this back to the land,” hippie thing, but then the people they’re giving money to, or the people who are collecting the money very openly, see this in terms of a holy war.
Rachel: You’ve touched on maybe one of the biggest issues with this 501(c)(3) financing of settlements. Of course, other than the fact that these organizations, by promoting and financing settlement expansion, outpost establishment, etc., is the fact that we can’t actually always trace exactly how much money is going to these settlements. Via my own investigation, I’ve identified 35 charitable organizations based in the U.S. that give money to settlements in some shape, form, or fashion.
A bunch of them are settlement-specific. They only give to settlements. Much like the American Friends of Beit El organization, they’re linked to one or several settlements, like, again, One Israel Fund who only works in the West Bank. There are massive other organizations like Central Fund of Israel, which is the largest charitable organization that gives to Israel in the United States. They support projects across the Green Line into the West Bank, but the majority of their projects are in Israel.
On their 990 form, the form that they give the government to show the scope of their activity, they don’t actually have to tell us how much money they gave to settlements versus how much money they gave within Israel. This is a major issue that we can’t actually pinpoint how much money is going from the US to support settlements. While there are many more organizations, I am sure, than these 35, these organizations are obviously operating in a very legal gray area.
They’re exploiting the lack of IRS enforcement. I don’t know if that’s due to overburdening of the IRS, understaffing. In doing so, they’re fueling violence and instability. They’re actually furthering Israeli government goals in the region, which is to annex parts of the West Bank with as few Palestinians as possible. Settler violence aims to displace them.
They don’t want to absorb them into the state of Israel because it threatens Israel’s ethnic Jewish majority, which is central to the state’s ideology. A lot of their activity clearly doesn’t fall within legitimate 501(c)(3) activity, because I would think and I would hope that legitimate 501(c)(3) activity doesn’t allow organizations to finance an outpost, which isn’t even legal under Israeli law.
I wonder if you can enlighten us on how then these organizations are actually getting away with sending hundreds of millions of dollars to support the settlement enterprise. Could you explain how these organizations conduct their financial activity, how they’re maybe describing their work in these 990 forms? Maybe not all of them are as transparent as American Friends of Beit El or One Israel Fund. Some might have more covert tactics, no online presence. Do you think that it’s just because these charities aren’t being monitored? More importantly, what is the legality of all of this?
Matthew: I’d like to preface this by saying that I’m not a lawyer. I don’t want to get in trouble for anything I’m going to say. While you were asking, I pulled up what Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code actually says, which is that the tax exemption applies to any corporations or community trust fund or foundation organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, or to foster national, international, amateur sports competition, or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals, and then some specific financial stipulations.
That’s basically how these charities will describe themselves. The American Friends of Beit El, the actual full name of it is American Friends of Beit El Yeshiva Center. Yeshiva, for your non-Jewish listeners, being a Jewish seminary, a religious seminary. That’s the pretense under which they send money to Beit El, that they are building a religious educational facility. Who can object to that?
They like to play at this angle of like, “We’re teaching underprivileged kids t read the Torah.” This is attached to a specific political project. They’re very explicit. The point is to bring people into the West Bank and settle them down there. They also support a military preparatory academy, which I think is still technically an educational institution, but blurs the line a little bit more because you’re training people for combat.
Baruch Gordon, the fundraiser who runs the American Friends of Beit El, also runs a separate charity called Israel Empowered. The 990 forum says that its purpose says, to create an environment through which individuals can attain an understanding and appreciation of their Jewish Zionist heritage and identity. That sounds like it’s some cultural club or something. He was using this charity to raise money to buy drones for settlers, thermal drones to watch people presumably for security purposes. It was open and it was not open.
On one hand, he’s very open about it on his mailing lists and stuff that, we’re buying drones. The drones campaign ended up, especially through the One Israel Fund, when it combined with them, became a big public fundraiser. On the other hand, he’s not declaring that on his 990 that this institution which is designed to help people appreciate their Jewish heritage is actually buying nonlethal military equipment. All in all, I think there’s an impunity. The current U.S. administration agrees with the goals of the settlement movement.
Mike Huckabee, I believe that he’s actually showed up to the Beit El dinner. He’s direct supporter of this charity and he’s the U.S. ambassador to Israel. I think even under the Biden administration and Democratic administrations, there was a real reluctance to push back on Israeli activities even when they directly contradicted stated U.S. policy. These charities, even if they know that they can’t be so brazen about writing on their 990s, I am arming people with drones, they’re confident that it’s not going to come back to bite them.
Rachel: I’ve run into the same issue on these 990 forms. For example, the One Israel Fund, and I love using them as an example because they’re extremely transparent about their activity. You can go on their website and click through every single Israeli West Bank regional council and see exactly what they financed. A lot of what One Israel Fund is financing, one, they’re financing the establishment of outposts, these what they call farms, which are usually extremist settlers that have just taken over a random Palestinian person’s land, an olive grove, etc., in an attempt to expand maybe an existing settlement.
They’re financing paramilitary equipment, these, like you said, drones, these ATV security vehicles, which a lot of recently Israeli human rights organizations have criticized because a lot of these paramilitary equipment have been documented being used to target Palestinians in settler attacks, for example. I’ve seen a lot of organizations finance some of this paramilitary equipment, but on the other hand, there are other organizations, they don’t even have a website. You have to assume maybe sometimes what they’re supporting.
If American Friends of Ariel University, we can assume they’re supporting initiatives at Ariel University. Sometimes you have to be a little bit more investigative. You have to maybe find the Israeli subsidiary of this US charitable organization to even find out a little bit of what this organization is financing. A really good example is an organization called the Friends of Ir David based in the U.S.
They’re really working in East Jerusalem to evict Palestinians out of homes so they can further build this archeological park in the city of David, and also move Jewish people in so they can create an increased Jewish presence in this region. You wouldn’t know that just from their website in the US, but their Israeli subsidiary lists all of this activity very proudly.
There’s really a variety of ways that these organizations talk about their work. Sometimes they don’t. Of course, in the 990 form, there’s no mention of drones, except in one organization called the Christian Friends of Israeli Communities. They list exactly how much money they spent on what they claim is security equipment, but it lists drones. It’s interesting. Of course, they still haven’t been flagged by the IRS, I guess.
Matthew: When I spoke to Baruch Gordon, he claimed that the drones were a purely defensive measure because they would catch Palestinian attackers trying to storm the settlement and kill people. That was the implication of what he said.
I found, while I was reporting it, all sorts of social media videos and such, of the drones being used to harass people, of being used to drop heavy objects with vulgar messages on them, or buzz people’s livestock, or go outside someone’s house and threaten to kill them with a speaker coming out of the drone. I will also like to add that it’s not unusual for diaspora groups in America to fundraise for foreign paramilitary military causes. It happens all the time.
There was very famously the Irish-American involvement in the Northern Ireland conflict. There are Armenian-Americans who go and fight in Karabakh. I think what’s very unique about this is, again, how brazen it is. There’s a lot of cases of Americans supporting paramilitaries. There’s very few cases of Americans opening a registered charity, using that to funnel money to militias, and then going on social media and saying, this is what we’re doing.
Rachel: I agree. It’s incredibly dystopian. The impact on Palestinians is tragic. Like I said, and like you mentioned, a lot of this paramilitary equipment that is being used, I’ve seen it target mostly young Palestinian teen boys, these security surveillance, where they are picked up on some camera, of course, because the settlement is directly next to a Palestinian village, particularly in usually Area C or Area B of the West Bank.
Then some security guard, like perhaps Yinon Levi of the Yitzhar settlement, who just murdered a beloved Palestinian activist in Misafir Yata, and of course, has no punishment from the Israeli government, rolls up on his ATV and begins harassing, pushing, assaulting Palestinians who have not been charged with any kind of crime or wrongdoing. It’s completely tragic. They act with impunity.
We’ve covered a lot of what these organizations are doing. We haven’t really touched on what the response of the U.S. government or other actors trying to combat this extremely harmful financial activity is. You touched a little bit on the Not On Our Dime movement. Maybe you can go a little bit more into detail about it.
It’s interesting that these organizations are allowed to operate when, maybe not under this administration, but under previous ones, they’re operating in conflict and contradicting U.S. state and foreign policy goals, which is to hopefully have a negotiated two-state solution, and has always held that settlements are inconsistent with international law.
I will point out that the Trump administration has not reversed the Biden administration’s stance that settlements are inconsistent with international law. Of course, knowing that Mike Huckabee loves the settlements and what they deem Judea and Samaria. He also was the keynote speaker of the One Israel Fund Gala right before he took his position as ambassador to Israel. What, if anything, has been done to try to halt US financial flows to settlements? What are your thoughts about them? Do you have any idea so far why they’ve been ineffective?
Matthew: I think they were ineffective by design. The Biden administration did impose financial sanctions, as I mentioned, against specific extremist settlers. “Extremist,” because the settlement enterprise is filled with extremism. These are just people that the Biden administration considered the worst of the lot.
Funny enough, actually, as I mentioned, one of them had a personal connection to the American Friends of Beit El, which I discovered by coincidence, because when I asked Baruch Gordon about the sanctions, he brought up the fact– Let me pull up the article and find exactly. He knew both Yinon Levi and David Chai Chasdai, who said they were farmers and innocent.
Chasdai, according to the US government, incited a riot, and he was found also outside a Palestinian village with gasoline in a club. I think you mentioned Yinon Levi. These sanctions were targeted at these four specific individuals who were worst of the worst. Even under Israeli law, the Israeli authorities considered them a nuisance.
They were, again, targeted at individuals, and they were softened. When these people’s bank accounts got frozen– Perhaps I should explain what U.S. sanctions do. When these people’s bank accounts got frozen, the U.S. Treasury basically said, “We’re not trying to stop you from buying necessities,” which they don’t usually do for sanctions. U.S. economic sanctions usually refer to freezing someone out of the financial system. It can be applied to an entire country, it can be applied to a specific sector of an economy, or it can be applied to specific individuals. Very, very commonly, these are used against human rights abusers, or terrorists, or criminals or people that the U.S. wants to cut off from the financial system. This power has always been there. It was never used against Israeli settlers until the Biden administration.
Then the Biden administration used it in a very limited way. In theory, you could declare US sanctions against the entire settlement enterprise, or you could put US sanctions against at least the organizations. You can’t do this to U.S. persons. It would be a separate process to shut down the American Friends of Beit El Yeshiva, but if you were to put sanctions on Beit El itself, or Yeshiva and Beit El, the military academy there, then it would become legally basically impossible for an American charity to send money to it.
Again, when the Biden administration applied these sanctions, they chose to only target four individuals, not just for being settlers, but for specific acts of violence. Even though, as you mentioned, the settlement project is against U.S. policy, which considers the West Bank not to be Israeli land. That’s also the policy, I think, of every other country in the world.
In the future, if they decided to, and I think this is probably increasingly likely given the direction of U.S. politics, they could really impose very sweeping sanctions that makes it very legally risky to fund settlements. Especially because with sanctions, you often have overcompliance, where even if something is strictly legal, companies are just afraid to deal with it because it’s adjacent to something sanctioned, and they don’t want to suddenly get a letter from the U.S. Treasury that says, “You’re violating the law. You owe this gigantic fine.”
I think you also have to be careful not to just drop a nuclear bomb on all Israeli diaspora activity whatsoever. I’ve been pretty critical of the sweeping effects that these types of sanctions have had on Iranian diaspora life or Cuban diaspora life, but we’re not even near that kind of isolation against Israel. We are just at the level of these sanctions, also that were lifted by Trump against specific individuals.
I think there’s a lot more room, if a future U.S. administration is very serious about deterring not only settler violence but also forcing a political solution and preventing Americans from materially going against international law, there’s a lot more room to escalate, which the Biden administration very pointedly chose not to do.
Rachel: The Biden executive order didn’t actually really pose a threat to a lot of these charitable organizations because it completely excluded Americans. It was disheartening to learn that. I will say there is a bill making its way, granted I don’t know how likely it will pass because it’s put forward by Democratic policymakers. Even then, I actually don’t know if all Democrats will get on board with it just because, of course, it has to deal with Israel, which usually splits the Democratic Party.
It is trying to actually enshrine in law Biden’s executive order, so make it a bill passed by Congress. Hopefully, if that happens and sanctions are placed on violent settlers and it’s enshrined in law, making it so the Trump administration can’t just revoke it day one like they did the Biden executive order, hopefully that discourages some of these organizations from making that risk that it could violate U.S. sanctions and be perceived as actually exacerbating violence and instability in the West Bank.
I did want to end our episode on a slightly more hopeful note. This issue is heavy. You have to be a little bit financially savvy, and hopefully, we broke it down for our listeners a little bit. Your work on this issue calls attention to this really massive financial scheme to support settlements, but a lot of people don’t know this.
Being Jewish myself, I like to think that a lot of American Jews are anti-settlement. They’re not big fans of the extremist settlers. They know that the settlement movement casts a really bad light on Israel itself, and therefore people that are pro-Israel here in America. A lot of these organizations, again, aren’t transparent about the fact that they’re giving to settlements.
Sure, the settlement-specific ones, you have to know what you’re giving to, but giving to the Jewish National Fund or giving to Central Fund of Israel, giving to the Jewish Federation of North America, I wouldn’t automatically think I was giving money to settlements if I were giving money there. You’re shedding light on this issue. Do you think that shedding light on these practices, whether through reporting or public attention, can actually help curb or challenge them? What kinds of impacts have you seen or hope to see from this kind of exposure?
Matthew: As I mentioned, a lot of the settlement charities, even though they don’t hide what they’re doing precisely, they don’t present it as settlements. I think this is part of the settlement project, is to normalize it and make it no different from being in Israel, because they believe that the West Bank rightfully belongs to Israel, they don’t present any difference between Beit El and Tel Aviv or something.
I could see somebody actually not really understanding what they’re donating to. There’s a slightly separate issue that I reported on that we didn’t get much chance to talk about. It caused a wave of protests last year because there were real estate fairs in America that were advertised as Israeli real estate, but they were also selling land, or they were also — I don’t think they were actually doing transactions, they were just advertising. They were also advertising land in the West Bank.
When I would go to these, I would talk to the pro-Palestine protesters and the pro-Israel counter-protesters. A lot of people protesting in favor of the real estate fair didn’t really understand what the controversy was in the first place. I talked to someone who insisted, “I support a two-state solution,” but then I asked her about, “If you support a two-state solution, then you should be against selling real estate in Palestine, shouldn’t you?” She was stumped.
She just had no idea that the West Bank and Judea and Samaria were the same thing. The West Bank is an international term for that part of Palestine, and Judea and Samaria is what Israeli nationalists, but also the Israeli government calls the West Bank. Nobody has come to me and said, “Oh, I was going to donate and I didn’t because of this.”
I do think in general, it does benefit to inform people that this is not just generic Israeli cause, this is a specific, contentious political project outside the internationally recognized borders of Israel. That’s what this money is going to. To circle back to the beginning, when Mamdani proposes bill to cut off nonprofit status from charities that fund settlements, because, again, you have the federal U.S. sanctions against the settlement entities, but you can also have state-level laws that take away nonprofit status.
When Mamdani proposed this bill, a lot of the opposition to it was on the grounds that, as you mentioned, things like the Jewish National Fund or the Central Fund of Israel would be affected. This was almost a giant broadside at all kinds of Jewish community organizing. That’s why it’s so important to make the distinction clear.
If this is a contentious political project that’s going to come under more scrutiny from the U.S. government, then we should be very clear which charities are donating to Israel in general, which are donating to the settlements in the West Bank. You should probably give people who just want to be involved in Jewish community life an option to do that without their money going to the West Bank. I think the more reporting and the more transparency comes on this issue, the easier it is to make that separation.
Rachel: I completely agree with you. Speaking of those Israeli real estate fairs, a lot of the protesting was framed as anti-Semitic because it was outside of a synagogue, when from my perspective, again, being Jewish, I’m like, “Why would that synagogue be hosting a political event to sell real estate in a contested area of land?” It was incredibly frustrating. Reporting like yours, which is incredibly brave, speaking about anything related to Palestine nowadays, criticizing Israel is, of course, risky. These organizations operate here in the US. I think it’s incredibly brave. Your work has, I think, done a lot to bring attention to this issue. Maybe some of our listeners, it’ll be worth it to them, to investigate to see if there are any charities operating in their state, their town, their county that are financing. I want to address this, these are not all Jewish organizations.
If anything, a lot of these organizations are Christian organizations. Maybe some of our listeners will find some charities registered in their state that they might want to bring attention to, to their representatives and their senators or congressmen or women. Maybe we’ll start a movement here. Hopefully, Mamdani brings us up again if he wins his election. Matt, it’s been such a pleasure to have you on the podcast, to explain this incredibly complex and purposefully so, complicated issue. Your insights into this financial activity has really been invaluable.
Matthew: Thank you. I’m really glad that someone’s reading my stuff. I think that’s also an important point to underscore that it’s not just Jewish diaspora organizations that are doing this. It’s also ideological Christian Zionist ones. We mentioned how Mike Huckabee, for example, is a big supporter. There are also specifically sectarian Christian-themed organizations that go out of their way to support settlement activity.
I forgot who told me this, I think it was Lisa, the editor at New Lines, who said that actually the Christian Zionist pro-settlement organizations are harder to report on and often cagier. When you try to talk to them and figure out what’s going on, I think they’re a little bit more savvy to the fact that this is a controversial issue. That’s a big part of it. I think it’s not just money.
There are also Christian organizations that bring volunteers to the West Bank to physically help build up the settlements and, to borrow terminology, act as human shields for the settlement movement. We could do a whole episode separately on Christian Zionism and the inflammatory role that a lot of non-Jewish ideological organizations play in this.
I’m glad that my reporting has had an impact and that people are reading it. I don’t think I did anything that brave. I did a lot of this reporting remotely. I think you’ve actually been there. Thank you. I’m very glad I got a chance for us to share these experiences together.
Rachel: Thanks so much for coming on, Matt.
Matthew: Thank you for having me.
Rachel: Thank you all for listening today. If you liked this episode, remember to subscribe to New Lines on SoundCloud, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Visit www.newlinesinstitute.org if you’d like to hear more from our experts on all sorts of topics in global affairs. We’ll see you in the next episode.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not an official policy or position of New Lines Institute.
