US Citizens Sending Tax-free Donations to Extremist Israeli Organization: Report

Wednesday, 25 January 2023 7:08 PM 

Amiram Ben-Uliel, clad in white, arrives in court in Lod, the occupied Palestinian territories, May 18, 2020. (File photo by AP)

US citizens are sending tax-free donations to the Israeli organization Shlom Asiraich, which is active in raising funds for Israeli extremists convicted of hate crimes against Palestinians in the occupied territories, according to a report.

Associated Press and Israeli investigative platform ‘Shomrim’ reported that records in the case suggest the extremist organization, also known as ‘The Well-Being of your Prisoners,’ was gaining a new foothold in the United States.

AP and Shomrim have documented the money trail from New Jersey to imprisoned Israeli radicals, who include former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassin and people convicted in deadly attacks on the Palestinians.

The overseas fundraising arrangement has reportedly made it easier for the extremist group to collect money from Americans who can make their contributions with a credit card and claim a tax deduction.

Since 2018, Shlom Asiraich has been raising money in the occupied territories and was officially registered as a nonprofit in 2020 by a group mostly made up of Israelis from settlements in the occupied West Bank.

At least five of the group's seven founders have been detained for crimes related to their anti-Palestinian activities.

The group's beneficiaries include Yigal Amir, who assassinated Rabin in 1995; Amiram Ben-Uliel, who murdered a Palestinian baby and his parents in an arson attack; and Yosef Chaim Ben David, convicted of abducting and killing a 16-year-old Palestinian boy in al-Quds in 2014.

The group also assists an extremist ultra-Orthodox man who fatally stabbed a 16-year-old Israeli girl in 2015.

It comes as a far-right regime led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come to power in the occupied territories. The cabinet is made up of ultranationalists and extremist lawmakers with unprecedented power. 

The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas and other factions have slammed the “neo-fascist” Israeli coalition cabinet, saying the Palestinian people are capable of defeating the far-right occupying regime.