Evidence that U.S. pro-Israel groups may have violated U.S. laws

Questions are being brought to light about American groups that receive Israeli government funds.

By Alison Weir |  Israel-Palestine News  |  Sept 1, 2020

Israel has been manipulating US policies – and some US organizations and politicians have been helping them, in what appears to be violation of US laws… Will the government investigate them and censure Israel, the way it did the claims of ‘Russian interference’? Or will Israel and its collaborators once again escape consequences?
— Aiden Pink, reposted from The Forward, “U.S. pro-Israel groups failed to disclose grants from Israeli government’

More than half of all American states have passed laws designed to combat the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. No advocacy group was more important to this push than the Israel Allies Foundation, an American non-profit that supports a network of pro-Israel legislators across the globe.

From Israel Allies Foundation (Israel Allies Foundation)

[Editor’s note: BDS is an international movement to oppose Israel’s systematic human rights violations. BDS upholds “the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity.”]

It was the IAF that in 2014 connected a South Carolina politician with an Israeli legal scholar who drafted the first bill to ban state agencies from contracting with entities that boycott Israel. [For details, see this.]

After that law passed in South Carolina in 2015, the IAF successfully lobbied for nearly-identical anti-BDS bills in 25 other states, including Florida, Pennsylvania and Arizona.

Now the group is backing another bill, which has already passed in South Carolina and Florida and been introduced in six more states, which would change civil-rights codes to define antisemitism to include anti-Zionism. [Editor’s note: This is part of an international campaign.]

Public records obtained by The Forward show that the Israeli government approved a grant of more than $100,000 to the Israel Allies Foundation in 2019. The IAF has not disclosed this or any previous Israeli grants to the United States government, in possible violation of laws requiring American political advocacy groups to disclose foreign-government contributions.

Read the full article here →