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July 27th, 2021 
Awake Goy 
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) is leading a charge to end the tax-exempt status of organizations in the United States that help fund Israel’s illegal settlements.
On July 15 Tlaib sent a letter Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen asking the Biden administration to take action. It was signed by Representatives Cori Bush (D-MO), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Andre Carson (D-IN), Mark Pocan (D-WI), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Betty McCollum (D-MN).
“We write to express our extreme concern that U.S. charities are funding and providing direct support to Israeli organizations that are working to expand and perpetuate Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise in violation of international law, including supporting the dispossession and forced displacement of Palestinians from occupied East Jerusalem neighborhoods,” begins the letter. “We are concerned that these policies violate U.S. obligations under international law, as well as federal tax law.”
“Since Israeli forces occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip in 1967, Israeli authorities have pursued an unlawful settlement enterprise in occupied territory—an aggressive policy of seizing lands either privately owned by, or collectively used by Palestinians, and allocating them for the use and enjoyment of Jewish Israelis,” it continues. “Israeli authorities utilize discriminatory housing, land, and property legal regimes and impermissible military justifications to dispossess Palestinians of their lands, or destroy Palestinian homes, property, and essential civilian infrastructure. Israeli authorities and private Israeli settler organizations in collaboration with Israeli authorities have established some 200 Jewish -only settlements that house over 600,000 Israeli citizens.”
A 2015 Haaretz investigation found that U.S. charities spent $220 million funding Israeli settlements between 2009 and 2013. Tlaib’s letter specifically cites The Central Fund of Israel (CFI), a nonprofit registered in New York. In May The Intercept published a piece by Alex Kane looking at the relationship between groups like CFI and Israel’s settlement expansion.
“This isn’t about what we think is morally or ethically right or wrong. It’s about the simple proposition that Americans — through these so-called charities — cannot directly support, or aid and abet, unlawful activities regardless of where they occur,” Center for Constitutional Rights staff attorney Diala Shamas told Kane. “Members of Congress should call on the Department of State and the IRS to investigate these groups, and at the very least, not grant them the privilege of tax-deductible status.”
Tlaib’s letter was championed by a number of Palestine activists and organizations.
“The violent settlers torching Palestinian fields in the West Bank, attacking shepherds & livestock in the S. Hebron Hills, taking over Palestinian homes in #SheikhJarrah#Jerusalem are all funded by US orgs getting tax exemptions as supposed charities,” tweeted Palestinian attorney Huwaida Arraf. “Thx for this @RepRashida!”
[Secretary Yellen] please act immediately on @RepRashida’s letter to enforce U.S. law and end the 501c3 status of organizations such as the Central Fund of Israel, which is one of several U.S.-based groups fueling the dispossession of Palestinians to make way for Israeli settlers,” tweeted American Muslims for Palestine.
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