Almost everyone knows that a lot of Israel’s settlers in the West Bank are Americans. Perhaps even more importantly, American donors pump a lot of money into the settlements. I just did a deep dive for New Lines Magazine on one pro-settlement charity in the New York suburbs; the research and reporting had started in September, but the publication timing worked out well, because the Biden administration has just announced financial sanctions on four settler extremists.
You should read the full article at the New Lines website. This Substack post is a place for me to put audio-visual supplements, since I can’t embed videos in a magazine. Some of the moments I wrote about are also very striking to see and hear.
This specific settlement, Bet El, has gotten a lot of media coverage because Trump administration officials Jared Kushner and David Friedman were donors. It’s easy to imagine the American Friends of Bet El charity as a faceless institution buoyed by a few rich ideologues. The reality, however, is a lot more complex. Many of the Bet El donors are normal middle-class suburbanites, for whom the Bet El project is one of many charities serving underprivileged Israeli communities.
Until 2020, the American Friends of Bet El Yeshiva Center held an annual charity gala, where Bet El presented itself as a mix between a hippie commune and a frontier fortress. Here’s a video from 2015 (incorrectly labeled in the title) that captures the settlement’s pitch to donors: underprivileged Israeli kids, cheery music, military imagery. The video shows soldiers kicking in the door to a home, while a local matron talks about youths having a good time with friends, all set to saccharine music
Baruch Gordon, the head fundraiser for the settlement, goes to both extremes. He describes himself as a vegan yoga enthusiast, calls for the annihilation of Gaza, and claims that Arabs are untrustworthy because deceit is embedded their religion. Here is a 2020 sermon, called “the Morality of Conquest,” in which Gordon lays out his vision for “the Land of Israel.”
I’m no expert but I don’t think it’s a good look to be funding illegal Israel settlements in Gaza before or after the October attack by Hamas.
