A look at five pro-Israel organizations that lost charitable status in Canada, and the mega-donors who funded them

 

The Jewish National Fund and Ne’eman Foundation aren't the only pro-Israel organizations that have lost their charitable status in Canada. Here are the stories of five others and the mega-donors who funded them.

The recent status revocations of the Jewish National Fund of Canada Inc (JNFC) and Ne’eman Foundation Canada suggest that the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has blinked first in the face of the International Court of Justice’s July 19, 2024, advisory opinion on the Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. The two former charities had been involved for years – the JNFC, notably, since 1967 – in transferring Canadian taxpayer-subsidized charitable donations into the hands of Israeli intermediaries involved in undermining the territorial sovereignty of Palestine, specifically in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Extricating the Canadian charitable sector from its ongoing complicity with Israeli war crimes is, however, not a ‘one and done’ affair. Worth on average close to $280 million CDN per year in charitable donations (2018-2022), Israel is consistently the top, yearly, international recipient of Canadian benevolence. Canadian charity guru, Mark Blumberg, suggests that Canadian Jewish community-related charities are sitting on about $9.2 billion CDN in assets (2022), with upper echelon Jewish public and private foundations holding another $5 billion CDN. In perspective, stymying the internationally illegal operations of the JNFC and Ne’eman Canada, while meaningful, is but a drop in the proverbial bucket.

With an eye towards understanding both the recent, historical, movement of Canadian donations into Israel, along with identifying the origin sources of Canadian capital moving into the apartheid state, the following piece utilizes the Canadian Access to Information Act (ATI) to gather tax data surrounding trends in money movement from Canada to Israel. To be sure, there are gaps in the data, but what emerges is a picture of gangster capitalism, where charities run out of private residences, with no public profile, no website, and no outreach to speak of, handle tens of millions of dollars CDN per year tied to the Canadian Zionist billionaire class. While the billionaire class will undoubtedly prove resilient and sheltered in the face of exposure to their potential financial complicity in aiding and abetting war crimes, understanding the sources of their wealth yet still provides human beings with conscience with the possibility of retributive action.  (more...)

A look at five pro-Israel organizations that lost charitable status in Canada, and the mega-donors who funded them