By Yves Engler
The Canada Revenue Agency must revoke the Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada’s (JHFC) charitable status. The group has highly suspect finances and assists Israeli war crimes.
According to filings with the Canada Revenue Agency, the little-known JHFC raised $87 million last year. But, JHFC doesn’t have a website and didn’t declare any revenue or expenses as recently as 2018.
Watchdog group Charity Intelligence Canada gives JHFC a “zero” in its five-star ranking system due to the group’s complete lack of financial reporting. It also received an F (the worst of twelve categories) for its absence of any published results.
In the Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crime professors Miles Howe and Paul Sylvestre label JHFC a “burner charity”, which is activated “once an active burner charity has its charitable status revoked.”
They link JHFC to two Israel-focused charities that had their charitable status revoked in 2019. Howe and Sylvestre demonstrate “how Gates of Mercy, Beth Oloth, and the Jewish Heritage Foundation in fact operated in conjunction with each other.”
In 2019, Beth Oloth lost its charitable status. With no website, an address listed as a residence, and only two active board members, Beth Oloth’s annual fundraising grew from thousands of dollars to $61 million between 2011 and 2017.
In addition to acting as a conduit for donations, the CRA also revoked Beth Oloth’s charitable status for “increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the Israeli armed forces” and funding projects in the occupied West Bank.
The Charities Directorate’s audit highlights an association between Beth Oloth and Gates of Mercy. As part of its support for apartheid, Gates of Mercy financed Regavim, which assists Israeli colonists in launching legal cases to seize “state lands” used by Palestinians.
According to Defund Racism, Regavim “works to expand Jewish control of land across Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories by pushing Israeli administrative, judicial, legislative, and military bodies to dispossess Palestinian and other non-Jewish communities of their land.”
According to CRA data, 90% of JHFC revenues go to organizations in Israel and the US. In contravention of CRA rules, JHFC funds projects benefitting illegal settlements.
In the past two years, JHFC has transferred more than $ 700,000 to Karen Hashviis. That group says it supports Jewish farmers in Area C of the occupied West Bank.
JHFC gave another half million dollars to Mate Lechem Bney Yedhuda Libo Chafet. That organization is located in Modi’in Illit, which was built on land taken from a handful of Palestinian villages.
Over two years JHFC has given the Hebron Fund nearly a quarter million dollars. Defund Racism points out that the New York-based Hebron Fund “by its own admission, plays a crucial role in the settler movement of Hebron.”
Over three years JHFC has funneled almost $25 million to Canadians Sachar Tzidkecha. A shady organization, the group’s website says it assists Israelis in Judea and Samaria (occupied West Bank).
Charities are not supposed to assist the Israeli settlement project in the occupied West Bank since Ottawa officially considers them a violation of international law. Nor should they assist explicitly racist organizations or foreign militaries. A thorough investigation of JHFC’s operations would likely find that it does all three.
As part of a broader effort to press the CRA to uphold its own rules around Israeli colonialism, Rabbi David Mivasair and Khaled Mouammar recently submitted a detailed report to the revenue agency about JHFC’s violations of its rules. They called on the CRA to investigate whether JHFC’s donations comply with its policy and Income Tax Law.
Pro-Israel groups can’t be allowed to abuse their charitable status in enabling the oppression of Palestinians.
(Editor’s note: A previous version of this article has shown the wrong logo referencing the Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada. Since then, the error has been corrected.)
– Yves Engler is the author of Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid and a number of other books. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle. Visit his website: yvesengler.com.
