The UK’s charity regulator has ruled that raising funds for Israel’s IDF is “not lawful” and has issued an official warning to a London Jewish charity over the offence.
The Charity Commission, the regulator of charities in England and Wales, issued the “official warning” after finding the trustees of Jewish charity, the Chabad Lubavitch Centre, had acted “outside the charity’s purposes” and “failed to safeguard its best interests and its reputation.”
The charity was found to have set up a fundraiser page in October 2023 to raise funds for a soldier of the IDF stationed in northern Israel.
The page, which was eventually removed in January 2024 following complaints by pro-Palestine activists, still managed to raise around £2,280. Of those monies, £937 was sent directly to an individual soldier.
According to the Charity Commission, the Chabad trustees were unable to account for how those funds were spent. The remaining funds were spent on “non-lethal military equipment” purchased by the trustees and sent to the same soldier in Israel.
The Director for Regulatory Services at the Charity Commission, Helen Earner, said: “It is not lawful, or acceptable, for a charity to raise funds to support a soldier of a foreign military. Our official warning requires the charity to set things right and is a clear message to other charities to stay true to their established purposes.”
In UK law, charities with appropriate purposes can raise funds to promote the efficiency of the UK armed forces. However, providing aid or military supplies to any foreign armed force is not a charitable purpose, and no charity can legally undertake such activity.
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The Charity Commission listed the charity’s actual purposes as “to advance the orthodox Jewish religion, advance orthodox Jewish education, and to relieve poverty and sickness.”
The official warning imposes a number of requirements on the charity’s trustees to remedy the misconduct and/or mismanagement. Any failure by the charity to implement the requirements in the official warning may lead to further regulatory action.
Other examples
This is not the first Jewish charity that has fundraised for the IDF.
Earlier in 2024, Middle East Eye reported that the Charity Commission had been urged to investigate the UK Friends of the Association for the Wellbeing of Israel’s Soldiers (UK-AWIS), which was also asking for donations to support forces taking part in Operation Swords of Iron.
In a post on its Facebook page on November 17, UK-AWIS said: “Each generous donation allows us to better provide essentials for our frontline soldiers in Operation Swords of Iron.”
Since then, the website and social media content belonging to the British charity under scrutiny over its fundraising activities is “no longer accessible online.”
The number of people killed in Gaza is significantly higher than the figure reported by Gaza’s authorities, a peer-reviewed study by researchers from a leading health research university in the UK has found.
According to findings announced by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and published in The Lancet journal, there were an estimated 64,260 “traumatic injury deaths” in Gaza between October 7, 2023 and June 30, 2024.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza put the figure at 37,877 at the time.
This means the ministry has under-reported the death toll due to violence by approximately 41%, the researchers found.
As of October, the number of Gazans killed by violence was thought to exceed 70,000, the study said, based on the estimated underreporting rate.
The IDF has been widely accused of committing war crimes, and even genocide, by human rights organisations.
Israel says it must wipe out Hamas which poses an existential threat to the Jewish state.
