Your charitable dollars at work: UJA-Federation (New York) donates $6 million to radical Leftist New Israel Fund

I have never been a big fan of donating money to Jewish Federations in the United States. Perhaps this story will convince some of you - at least in New York - that you need more ability to control your charitable donations than donating to Federation gives you: JCC Watch reports that the New York Jewish Federation (UJA) has donated nearly $6 million to the radical Leftist New Israel Fund over the last 13 years. And UJA-JCF has kept it secret until now.

A fully-owned subsidiary of the UJA-Federation has sent $5,836,856 to the New Israel Fund since 2002, according to IRS form 990 filings examined by JCCWatch, with donations of between $258,000 and $802,000, made each year for the past dozen years.

The revelation contradicts the public statements from the UJA-Federation chair Alisa Doctoroff, past CEO John Ruskay and current CEO Eric Goldstein who have misled New Yorkers to believe that the umbrella charity has no financial connection to the New Israel Fund.

The New Israel Fund, in turn, is the financial banker for a network of organizations that demonize the Israeli government and the Israel Defense Forces, promote boycotts of Israeli products and call for international criminal proceedings against our very own Jewish state.

The findings come on the back of a JCCWatch investigation on Tuesday that showed that UJA-Federation leadership have been pressuring former Israeli diplomats, and the office of the current Consul-General in New York, to give cover for their support of the New Israel Fund to participate in this weekend's Israel Day Parade.

In 2014, the UJA-Federation reported on the IRS form 990 that it had assets of $1.382 billion, generating $76 million in investment income, in addition to the $167 million in new donations it received from the Jewish community.

Buried on page 7 of its audited financial statements, under "Additional Notes," the UJA-Federation listed an entity called the Jewish Communal Fund, of which it is the "sole member" and has "controlling financial interest," meaning the UJA-Federation owns the Jewish Communal Fund, "lock, stock, and barrel."

...

Jewish Communal Fund has 25 board members drawn mainly from the parent board of the UJA-Federation, including its president, Alisa Doctoroff.  As for supervision of the donations, from their annual report: "All qualified grant recommendations are submitted to the Charitable Distribution Committee of the Jewish Communal Fund’s Board of Trustees for approval."

Reading the detail of their grant-making guidelines, the board has two responsibilities: to be "committed to supporting causes that promote the welfare and security of the Jewish community here and abroad" and to "deny any grant request where the purposes and activities of the recommended charitable organization are deemed to be adverse to the interests of the Jewish community."

I guess they don't consider the New Israel Fund's activities to be adverse to the interests of the Jewish community. One has to wonder why.