The Registrar of Nonprofit Organizations has decided to withdraw the certificate of proper administration from the organization that provides funding for Peace Now, a Justice Ministry official said Monday.
According to the official, the registrar, Yaron Keidar, recently conducted an in-depth examination of the nonprofit organization, known as Sha'al Educational Enterprises.
So reports this morning's Jerusalem Post. What the heck is this all about? Let's rewind...
It started back in November, when Moledet MK Aryeh King filed a lawsuit against Peace Now (Shalom Achshav), alleging that the organization didn't really exist as a legal entity and therefore had no standing to pursue its myriad legal harassments against the Jewish settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria. King also established his own (Hebrew language) web site devoted to exposing the illegal and subversive nature of some of Peace Now's activities.
As Israel National News reported then,
Website founder King recently filed a suit against Peace Now based on Tzali Reshef's admission that the organization does not legally exist. In response to an earlier suit by King against Peace Now demanding an award for damages, Reshef said that Peace Now cannot be sued because it is not technically a legally-recognized association. King then countered with a suit demanding that Peace Now be erased from all the cases it itself brought against Jewish interests in Judea and Samaria.
"If it can't be sued, then it can't sue," King says. He expresses astonishment that the State Prosecution - headed until last week by Peace Now co-founder Eran Shendar - never "realized" that the many court suits filed over the years by Peace Now were illegal.
But what really caught some people's attention in this story was this:
An often-forgotten tidbit that appears on the site is the fact that Peace Now was funded to the tune of nearly two million shekels by European Union countries in 2003 - including from the Foreign Ministries of Great Britain and Norway - as well as another 1.75 million in 2005. In later years, reports independent researcher David Bedein, other EU countries joined in the funding, which was reached a total of five million shekels ($1.25 million) in 2006.
Britain and Norway are fundamentally opposed to the existence of Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria, thus the money they give Peace Now invariably serves those governments' foreign policy interests. Bedein reports that Peace Now is thus "in effect spying on Israel for foreign governments," as its surveillance activities cover not only Israeli communities, but also military installations belonging to the IDF.
The questions raised by these revelations, when you think about it, are pretty mind-boggling. It's disturbing enough that a blatantly political organization such as Peace Now receives so much of its support via donations from foreign governments. But now it emerges that Peace Now isn't even a real organization, political or otherwise. So how was all this money getting funneled to Peace Now? The answer: Sha'al Educational Enterprises.
Sha'al is a registered Israeli nonprofit (amuta). As an "educational organization," it receives both donations from foreign governments and grants from U.S. tax-exempt charities (more on that in a minute). It now appears, however, that Sha'al may be little more than a money scrubber for Peace Now.
Back to today's story...
The Registrar of Nonprofit Organizations has decided to withdraw the certificate of proper administration from the organization that provides funding for Peace Now, a Justice Ministry official said Monday.
According to the official, the registrar, Yaron Keidar, recently conducted an in-depth examination of the nonprofit organization, known as Sha'al Educational Enterprises.
The official added that Keidar found several problems involving the organization. The most serious was the fact that the aims of the organization, as it defined them, did not tally with the activities of Peace Now, which is a political-ideological activist movement calling for a two-state solution along the 1967 Green Line boundaries. This is problematic, as it may lead to misrepresentation regarding what the money of Sha'al's donors would be used for.
The official added that unless Sha'al Educational Enterprises corrects the faults that Keidar discovered in his investigation, the organization would be dismantled.
This description of Peace Now as "a political-ideological activist movement calling for a two-state solution along the 1967 Green Line boundaries" is more than a little bland. Peace Now has other agendas, one of which appears to be the removal of every last Jew from all areas beyond the Green Line. The organization sees a Judenrein Judea and Samaria as a minimal and absolute pre-condition for "peace." Moreover, I'm fairly certain that the vast majority of Sha'al's donors knew exactly what their money was being used for. I hope that's not all the Justice Ministry is concerned about.
But leaving all that aside for now, let's wrap this up with a quick look at a subject that was raised tangentially in yesterday's version of the JP report (but no longer included in the updated version).
In the meantime, the implication of the findings were that Peace Now does not have the proper administration certificates. As a result, the organization will immediately begin to have problems with fund raising in the United States due to the fact that donations will no longer be considered tax-deductible, the Channel 2 report concluded.
Maybe. If Sha'al doesn't "correct the faults" and regain its nonprofit status, chances are that Peace Now's American fundraising efforts will indeed hit a snag. And even if Sha'al does clean up its act, that may very well mean that it may no longer funnel funds to Peace Now but will be restricted to much more limited activities. But that's not the whole story.
In 2005, Sha'al received a grant of $735,002 from Americans for Peace Now, a U.S. based § 501(c)(3) organization, or so APN reported to the IRS. In 2004, APN reported a grant of $818,830 to Sha'al. But, appearances to the contrary, APN is not an "American Friends" organization. APN's charitable status isn't based on its support for Israel's Peace Now and its grants to Sha'al (which it describes as "The Peace Now Education Fund") represent only a little more than a third of its program budget for those two years. APN isn't in jeopardy here and it does plenty of damage on its own. Still, it looks like Peace Now may be deprived of the use of APN funds in the future, as § 501(c)(3) orgs may not make grants to foreign organizations that aren't recognized as charities by their own governments. In addition to all their other troubles, that's gotta smart just a little.
(Additional sources for this post include: Seraphic Secret; Joe Settler; Guidestar.org; and conversations with Soccer Dad. See also, The Muqata.)
