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[shinobi602]

Main investigative article: http://www.haaretz.com/settlementdollars/.premium-1.689683

Makes me sick.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Private American donors have pumped more than $220 million into Jewish West Bank settlements in recent years through tax-deductible donations, effectively subsidizing a policy opposed by U.S. administrations for decades, according to an investigation published in an Israeli newspaper on Monday.

The Haaretz daily found that some 50 nonprofit organizations from across the U.S. were raising funds for settlements in the West Bank, an area the Palestinians want as part of a future state, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Israel captured all three areas in the 1967 Mideast war.

The newspaper said the money's tax-deductible status means the U.S. government "is incentivizing and indirectly supporting the Israeli settlement movement," even though Washington opposes settlement construction and views it as an obstacle to peace with the Palestinians.

http://www.usnews.com/news/world/ar...tion-us-donors-pump-millions-into-settlements

Haaretz’s investigation shows some of the funding has gone toward providing legal aid to Jews accused or convicted of terrorism, and supporting their families, through an Israeli nonprofit called Honenu. Annual reports filed by the group with Israeli authorities show that Honenu received nearly 600,000 shekels ($155,000) – 20 percent of its income – from U.S. sources last year.

Among those who benefited from the group’s support in 2013 were the family of Ami Popper, who murdered seven Palestinian laborers in 1990, and members of the Bat Ayin Underground, which attempted to detonate a bomb at a girls’ school in East Jerusalem in 2002.

One of the largest U.S. organizations involved in funding Jewish communities in the West Bank is the Brooklyn-based Hebron Fund. It transferred $5.7 million to the Jewish settlement in Hebron from 2009-2014. Much of the funding has been invested in parks, playgrounds and libraries, in line with the fund’s stated goal of “the improvement of the daily life for the [Jewish] residents of Hebron.”

However, it has also paid the monthly salary (cumulatively amounting to hundreds of thousands of shekels) of Menachem Livni, who headed the nonprofit Renewal of the Jewish Community in Hebron between 2010 and 2012, which in turn was funded by the U.S. organization.

A convicted murderer, Livni was one of the leaders of the Jewish Underground, which operated in the territories in the 1980s, killing three Palestinian students and severely injuring two Palestinian mayors and a Border Police sapper. Livni was sentenced to life imprisonment, but was released after six years.

 

[EightBitNate]

There isn't a part of this conflict that doesn't make my blood boil.

 

[zer0blivion]

Absolutely disgusting. How is this not illegal? Tax-free donations that fund known terrorists?

 

[ApharmdX]

Absolutely disgusting. How is this not illegal? Tax-free donations that fund known terrorists?

Hey, we aren't allowed to call the Israelis "terrorists". They're the good guys.

Spoiler

/s