This past weekend, the coalition claimed a political earthquake: "Massive foreign intervention in an attempt to replace a right-wing government in Israel," wrote Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "An official document published by the US Congress reveals shocking information… The previous US administration transferred close to a billion dollars to left-wing NGOs in Israel." But a careful reading shows that’s not what the report says. We're here to make things clear.
What sort of report is this?
Let’s start with, "An official document published by Congress." It is indeed a report from the House Judiciary Committee, but "The Biden-Harris Administration’s Funding of Anti-Netanyahu NonGovernmental Organizations" is more of an interim summary, as stated in the introduction: "This memorandum provides an update on the inquiry and a summary of the Committee’s key findings to date."
Dr. Osnat Hazan, a researcher and head of the Philanthropy Data Lab at the Institute for Law and Philanthropy at Tel Aviv University, adds that even if it were a final report, "It’s not a legally binding document or an official report like that of the State Comptroller." Indeed, this is a committee report-i.e., one compiled by elected representatives.
There are countries where such committee reports are bipartisan and considered neutral, but that’s not the case in the US. "These reports are written by committees in either the House or Senate, and control these committees is clearly in the hands of the party that holds the majority in that house," explains Yiftach Dayan, a commentator on American politics. "In the Senate, there is sometimes still bipartisan input-depending on how polarized things are and the size of the majority-but in the House of Representatives, the narrative and sometimes the facts reflect only one side."
Adv. Galia Feit, head of the Institute for Law and Philanthropy at Tel Aviv University, adds political context: "President Donald Trump was fed up with the financial support the US provides to democratic principles and values worldwide, and this memo is another expression of that." According to Dayan, "It’s part of the Trump administration’s broader isolationist agenda-that the US shouldn’t be seen as interfering in other countries’ elections unless the outcome isn’t to Joe Biden’s liking."
How does the money move?
Of course, the fact that there’s partisan bias in congressional committees doesn’t necessarily mean that the report is wrong. So let’s ask: What does it actually say?
Let’s start with the "billion dollars" figure. That number does not appear in the document. The closest figure is $884 million. According to the report, this is the amount that was transferred through PEF Israel Endowment Funds Inc., a US tax-exempt entity that enables private donors to donate to organizations in Israel, in the period 2021 to 2024, to "over 1,000 Israeli organizations, including groups involved in the judicial reform protests."
But there are two problems here: First, in 2021-2022 the current Israeli government had not yet been formed, so including those years inflates the number. According to the source from which the report’s authors took the $884 million figure, in 2023-2024-i.e., after the formation of the current government-just under $545 million passed through PEF. Still, it’s a significant amount to send on to protest groups, no?
This is the second problem: These entities, as described in the report, are just a few out of the thousand-plus organizations using PEF’s services. According to the list on the PEF website, you can indeed donate to left-wing groups like B’Tselem, but also to many others. "This document contains a ‘bait and switch’ element," explains Prof. Theodore (Ted) Sasson, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) and a lecturer at Middlebury College in Vermont. "They talk about huge numbers, but the overwhelming majority of the money-or perhaps all of it-goes to other kinds of causes in Israel that are much more similar to the Israel Museum, Magen David Adom, and the Hebrew University. So yes, PEF facilitates donations to some protest organizations, but that’s at the request of private donors. Any money received by one of the protest organizations was sent by a donor to PEF with a request that it should be transferred to a specific organization."
"You can even look at the Israeli NGOs mentioned to trace their funding," says Hazan. "All the foreign money received by all the listed Israeli organizations in a given year only totals a few tens of millions of dollars, and most of it is from private sources."
Biden Administration Involvement
So: not a billion dollars, and not necessarily to protest organizations. But did the Biden administration support those trying to topple the current government?
The report points to one direct transfer. "Between 2020 and 2022, the Biden-Harris State Department provided approximately $42,000 in federal grant funds to MQG (Movement for Quality Government in Israel) to fund a ‘Civic Activism Training Program’ for 11th and 12th graders at three Jerusalem high schools." Beyond the fact that this is a small sum, during this period the current Israeli government had not yet formed-and in 2020, the US president was, in fact, Donald Trump.
Some claims concern indirect federal funding, such as that the administration transferred money to PEF or the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA), which then transferred funds to protest organizations. But the language of the report is noncommittal. For example, regarding $18 million that went to Blue and White Future from PEF in 2023, it states, "[BWF] may have been a downstream recipient of US grant funding." Meaning-it’s not for sure.
If we look at the source on which the report relies-an article by David Isaac in JNS, which also provides the $18 million figure-it describes the government funding reaching PEF as "negligible," as it amounts to less than $150,000.
"This document throws around a lot of ‘maybes,’" says Feit. "The administration apparently gave money to RPA, which gave money to PEF, which gave money to Israeli organizations, including some that supported the protests. They also donated to the Jewish Community Foundation (JCF), which transferred money back to PEF. Each of these organizations receives many private donations. The memo implies that the money transferred from the government to RPA was used for the protests-something they don’t prove and can’t prove this way. This misleads the public into thinking that it’s possible to trace the money trail, which can’t be done without a real investigation."
"Even solely on the basis of the data presented in this document-it’s 99.9% certain it didn’t happen," adds Dr. Hazan. "There’s no information or documentation that presents to the public the flow of who gave how much to which organizations through PEF. If the IRS decides to trace the money, it can. But on the basis of raw and official data, we know that, each year, about $2.5 billion in total is transferred from around 2,000 US organizations to a few thousand Israeli nonprofits-and that’s mostly, if not entirely, private money. So, there’s no plausibility to the claim that $1 billion went from the administration to just four or five Israeli organizations."
Commenting on the Rockefeller Foundation’s role, Prof. Sasson says, "It serves as a financial advisor to small nonprofits-organizations too small to be recognized as NGOs. The government money apparently has no connection to Israel. The money the government gave to RPA probably went to one of these small groups for which the foundation acts as a financial agent."
After many rejected the idea that $1 billion had been transferred to these organizations, the argument shifted to, "The administration didn’t donate directly, but the mere fact that tax-exempt nonprofits transferred money to political organizations constitutes a violation." Is there merit to this claim?
Section 501(c)(3) of the US Internal Revenue Code governs tax-exempt status for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are non-profit and stipulates that the organization may not engage in lobbying activity. However, as explained on the IRS website, the issue is flexible; "A 501(c)(3) organization may engage in some lobbying, but too much lobbying activity risks loss of tax-exempt status… Organizations may, however, involve themselves in issues of public policy without the activity being considered as lobbying. For example, organizations may conduct educational meetings… without jeopardizing their tax-exempt status."
"The law is not entirely clear on this point, which is why there are American organizations that, to some extent, promote policy," says Feit. "In Israel, there is no restriction on such activity." If there is evidence that these guidelines were violated, the report does not provide it.
We conclude with the following: Netanyahu wrote, "The document reveals that the same hand that funded political left-wing organizations in Israel also funded… organizations affiliated with Hamas." What does this refer to?
According to the report, entities such as the Rockefeller Foundation or US Agency for International Development (USAID) transferred money to organizations such as Defense for Children International Palestine (DCI-P) and American Near East Refugee Agency (ANERA), which indeed have been linked to terror. However, DCI-P began receiving funding in 2017, under Trump, and stopped receiving it in 2022 following an Israeli declaration of the organization as terrorist a year earlier. ANERA is indeed identified with entities like the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Hamas-but its funding goes back decades and is not specifically linked to Biden or the Democrats. During our interviews, both Hazan and Feit criticized the conflation of these organizations with Israeli protest groups in the same document.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on July 30, 2025.
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