A Congressional Campaign Against Jewish Charities?

Said Rabbi Spritzler, "These guys are going straight to hell. Talk about irony. We don't even believe in hell".

A Congressional Campaign Against Jewish Charities

Democratic lawmakers enlist the GAO to investigate ‘compliance with IRS requirements’ by groups supporting Israel’s presence in the West Bank.

By Eugene Kontorovich and Mark Goldfeder, WSJ

July 10, 2026 5:45 pm ET

Several U.S. charities received letters last month from the Government Accountability Office seeking to “interview” each organization’s leader about its “compliance with IRS requirements.” The charities promote different kinds of causes, but they have one thing in common: They all support Israeli communities in the West Bank. Among them are One Israel Fund and at least five other groups that asked not to be named.

The GAO is an agency without any authority to investigate or audit taxpayers. It carries out research requests from members of Congress. In this case, the agency was asked by eight Democratic lawmakers—Sens. Peter Welch (Vt.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Tim Kaine (Va.) and Chris Van Hollen (Md.) and Reps. Summer Lee (Pa.), Al Green (Texas) and Joaquin Castro (Texas)—to investigate “U.S. policy regarding the provision of assistance by U.S. charities to Israeli settlements, and what types of assistance did selected U.S. charities report providing Israeli settlements,” according to a description of the project provided by the GAO to House staffers. The lawmakers also asked the agency to report the “estimated number of U.S. citizens living in Israeli settlements.”

The effort sounds to us like a political fishing expedition. On July 9, the National Jewish Advocacy Center, which represents several of the charities, sent the eight lawmakers a letter demanding that they identify the legal basis for subjecting these organizations to special scrutiny and explain whether they had sought similar investigations of charities supporting Palestinian activities in the West Bank.

If the lawmakers wanted to ascertain U.S. policy, they could have asked the State Department. No U.S. law or policy restricts charitable activities in the West Bank or with Israeli settlements. During the first Trump administration, the State Department formally declared that Israeli settlements don’t violate international law. Products from Israeli communities in the West Bank must be marked “made in Israel” when imported to the U.S.

U.S. policy largely followed the same path during Joe Biden’s presidency and the second Trump administration. Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, has repeatedly visited such communities, and embassy personnel go to them to provide passport services directly to U.S citizens there.

Even if the U.S. had a policy opposing Israeli settlement construction, that would have no bearing on activities of the relevant charities. Nonprofit status allows charitable organizations to oppose U.S. foreign policy or to promote ties with disfavored places.

Asking how many U.S. citizens live in Israeli settlements is an invitation to engage in illegal Jew-counting. There is no formal definition of an “Israeli settlement” other than those places in the West Bank where Jews live. When Israeli Arabs move to, build or buy houses in the West Bank—not an uncommon event—no one calls it a “settlement.” That term, which lacks a precise legal definition, is reserved for places where Jews have built or bought homes. Jews aren’t permitted to live in areas of the West Bank controlled by the Palestinian Authority.

Perhaps because many progressives like taxes and dislike Israel, they have spent decades seeking to revoke the charitable status of pro-Israel groups. In Khalaf v. Regan (1985), a federal court in the District of Columbia threw out a suit seeking to force the Internal Revenue Service to revoke the exemptions of charities supporting communities in the West Bank. An appellate court affirmed that ruling the next year. The same theory returned in Abulhawa v. Treasury (2017), which involved a demand that the government strip the exemptions of organizations sending money to Israeli communities. The D.C. district court dismissed that one too, calling the theory piling “conjecture on conjecture.”

More than a decade ago, the IRS sent some Israel-related applications for nonprofit status to a special office in Washington for more scrutiny and asked several Jewish groups to “explain their religious beliefs about the Land of Israel.” One organization sued. In Z Street v. Koskinen (2015), the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that the conduct stated a claim for unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination and was no ordinary tax dispute, because “in administering the tax code, the IRS may not discriminate on the basis of viewpoint.” The U.S. settled and apologized.

While such efforts have failed in the U.S. so far, they have advanced in Canada, where the Jewish National Fund was stripped of its charitable status, and the U.K., where the government has pledged to investigate such charities. The GAO action could set the stage for a massive assault on such nonprofits under a Democratic president.

The broader agenda is to create a unique pariah status for Jews living in the West Bank. Many American charities support needy communities around the world, some in disputed territories and conflict zones. Have lawmakers aired concerns about Armenian groups that supported Armenian settlements in occupied Azerbaijani territory? Members of Congress aren’t counting American citizens in Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus.

The legislators who made this request seem to be enlisting the GAO to chill protected activity by charities serving Jewish communities. The agency can deny such requests. In National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo (2024), in which a New York official pressured insurers to cut ties with the NRA, the Supreme Court held that the government may not use indirect pressure to punish speech disfavored by government officials. That is precisely what these lawmakers are trying to do.

Mr. Kontorovich is a professor at George Mason University and a senior legal fellow at Advancing American Freedom. Mr. Goldfeder is CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center.