Miles Howe
Mondoweiss / August 23, 2024
The Ne’eman Foundation, which recently had its charitable status revoked in Canada, is deeply entwined with settler violence in the occupied Palestinian territory and represents the Judeo-fascist edge of the Canada-to-Israel charity pipeline.
Much of the attention concerning two recent revocations of charitable registrations in Canada has centered upon the apparent downfall of the Jewish National Fund Canada. Undoubtedly, with its proximity to Canadian political power and its historical role as Canada’s bagman for land seizure and greenwashing endeavors in Israel, the Jewish National Fund’s revocation has become a focal point for both celebration and, within Zionist circles, abject dejection. Indeed, with the Jewish National Fund’s promise, made across multiple social media platforms, to “take action” against a perceived bias underlying the Canada Revenue Agency’s decision to revoke, the story may not be officially over.
Comparatively lost in the uproar, however, is the story of the second revoked charity, Ne’eman Foundation Canada. Deeply entwined with settler violence in the occupied Palestinian territory, headquartered in the illegal settlement of Shilo, and with a single donor representing nearly half of the $44 million dollars CDN in revenue that the charity has received since its formal registration in 2011, Ne’eman Canada represents the Judeo-fascist edge of the Canada-to-Israel charity pipeline, itself valued at, on average, upwards of $270 million CDN between 2018-2022.
Ne’eman Foundation Canada
Ne’eman Canada was founded in 2011 by Zionist settler – and Canadian – . Until its revocation, Ne’eman Canada acted in synchronicity with the 2015 registered, Boston-headquartered, and Chaim Katz-founded, Ne’eman Foundation USA. The two organizations operated with the sole purpose of funneling donations from the North American diaspora into the Israeli charitable sector. Ne’eman Canada, until its revocation, was the money-mover of the two charities, having brought in, on average, over $6 million CDN per year in revenue between 2016-2022. Comparatively, while revenue has increased, specifically over the last two years of filing, Ne’eman USA brought in under $2 million USA per year between 2016-2022.
While all remnants of Ne’eman Canada have been scrubbed from a still-active website that presently focuses exclusively upon Ne’eman USA’s ties to the Israeli charitable sector, an archived grab from 2022 describes Ne’eman Canada’s role in offering Canadian donors the opportunity to receive charitable tax credits for donating to any number of Israeli registered charities offered on the website, many of whom provide financial and material support to the Israeli military and/or are physically located within the illegal settlements. This is textbook conduit activity and is not legal in Canada.
Acting as a conduit, where a Canadian charity acts offers itself up as a fundraising device for organizations over whom it has no direction, control, or operational input, is illegal under section 168(1)f the Income Tax Act. Canadian charities are certainly allowed to use international intermediaries to further their respective charitable purposes. But they must be able to demonstrate direction and control over the moneys they send abroad. And the moneys must be allocated to activities that would have otherwise not taken place. Donations cannot just be siphoned into pre-existing operations or activities.
More specifically, financing a foreign military is not considered a charitable activity in Canada. Further, providing material and financial support to the illegal settlements are a direct violation of Canadian public policy and customary international law, as entrenched within the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act.
That said, between 2016-2022, the ‘Overseas Activity’ section of Ne’eman Canada’s tax returns show millions of dollars CDN headed to numerous IDF-supportive, Israeli, organizations. These include, but are certainly not limited to, the Michael Levin Base for ‘Lone Soldiers’, Netzah Yehuda, the ultra-orthodox battalion which, until early August 2024, was under consideration for American-imposed human rights-related sanctions for its activities in the occupied territory, after members of the unit murdered 80-year old Palestinian Omar Asaad by tying him to a tree overnight, and the Duvdevan Foundation, which provides material support to the Duvdevan Commando Unit, infamous for undercover assassinations of Palestinians.
During the same time frame, Ne’eman Canada also funneled millions of dollars CDN into numerous organizations located in the illegal settlements. While each such instance constitutes a contravention of the Canadian War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Act and Canadian public policy, along with customary international law to which Canada is obliged to adhere, perhaps the most problematic of these illegal settlement recipients are the hundreds of thousands of dollars CDN that have flowed into two pools of money for which no corresponding organization can be found: the Ne’eman Foundation for Social Progress and something called the Ne’eman Foundation Canada – General.
Likely corresponding to the Na’am Foundation for Social Advancement and the Naaman Foundation for Education, these “Haim” [sic] Katz-founded organizations exist on paper only and operate with zero accountability. Both organizations list their home addresses in the illegal settlement of Shilo, an epicenter of violent settler activity which acts as a nexus for expansionary settler outposts, from which Palestinian dispossession and land annexation have ramped up exponentially under the cover of the genocide taking place in Gaza since October 7, 2023. It should be noted that even in the comparatively lax regulatory framework of the Israeli charitable sector, neither of Katz’ Shilo-based organizations has ever filed an annual report for its activities, and neither is licensed to accept charitable donations.
Follow the money
Pointing to the overall diversity of the Canadian Zionist movement, tax return data suggest that Ne’eman Canada and its illegal activities did have a certain widespread appeal. Over $10 million CDN of a total of over $44 million CDN in revenue, between 2011-2022, originated from unique, individual, donors. But, just as Zionism has always been top-down and well-funded colonialism masquerading as a spiritual calling, most of the Ne’eman Canada’s revenue was always tied to a single source: Between 2016-2022 the Friedberg Charitable Foundation donated nearly $18 million CDN – 41% of all received revenue – to Ne’eman Canada.
To be sure, Albert Friedberg is a legendary philanthropist in Canada, specifically within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). His managerial work appears to be tireless, and he is an active director at the Rofeh Wellness Centre, Kesher Employment Services, The Friedberg Jewish Manuscript Society, the Maimonides Educational Foundation, the Yedidut Torah Foundation, and the Stepping Stones Foundation. His largess within the GTA Jewish community is notable; Since the Friedberg Charitable Foundation’s registration in 2007, it has moved literal hundreds of millions of dollars CDN to qualified recipients. He also seems to have a soft spot for rare and ancient Judaic scripts, which he donates from time to time to corresponding libraries, specifically at the University of Toronto.
But there has always been a shadow side to Friedberg’s philanthropy. Between the Friedberg Foundation and his directorially connected Buckingham Charitable Foundation, between 2013-2022, Albert Friedberg has donated over $54 million CDN to Canadian charities funneling money into Israel, whose statuses were subsequently revoked for contraventions of the Income Tax Act. Standout Friedberg donations to illicit charities include over $35 million CDN to high-profile revoked charities Gates of Mercy and the Beth Oloth Charitable Organization, which, between them, not only shared a bank account but moved hundreds of millions of dollars CDN to thousands of uncontrolled and undirected Israeli recipients. Indeed, within the last decade, Friedberg money has been far and away the single largest source of private donations underwriting the activities of transgressional Canadian charities doing overseas activity with Israel.
The Friedberg Mercantile Group Inc, the source of Albert Friedberg’s wealth, bears some investigation too.
Initially incorporated in 1987 out of Delaware, USA, America’s port of corporate convenience, Friedberg Mercantile’s head office is now located in Toronto, Ontario. Beyond offering typical broker and dealer services, the investment firm offers two main hedge funds, the Global-Macro Hedge Fund and the Asset Allocation Fund. Long-term views of Friedberg’s investments, specifically as it pertains to the Global-Macro Fund, suggest a high-risk, roller coaster ride; a 2020 article from OPM Wire notes that Friedberg’s last “good year” was 2011, when Forbes magazine notes that Friedberg pocketed $60 million CDN, personally, and managed over $2 billion CDN in investments.
Yet transfers of money from Friedberg’s Buckingham Charitable Foundation into the Friedberg Charitable Foundation have remained surprisingly constant and, within the Canadian charitable sphere, massive. Between 2009 and 2022, Friedberg moved over $367 million CDN from the Buckingham Foundation to the Friedberg Foundation. Tax return data suggests that the Buckingham Foundation’s current, sole, operational purpose is to every now and then receive a donation of about $100 million CDN (the last one, worth over $111 million CDN) took place in 2021), maintain tens of millions of dollars CDN in long-term investments, and make multi-million-dollar transfers, every year, to the Friedberg Foundation. So, while there’s no exact calculation of the size of the Friedberg fortune, it’s enough to comfortably shuffle tens of millions of dollars CDN, from one private foundation to another.
For all that, there’s no record of Friedberg ever publicly pronouncing his stance on Zionism, the occupation, or anything else for that matter. This movement of charitable donations, from a massive pool of wealth apparently gleaned from the world of hedge funds, through Canadian charitable organizations, and then into the hands of frontline settler organizations in the occupied territory and IDF supportive organizations in Israel, is the only verifiable track record of Friedberg’s political leanings.
Whack-a-mole
Ne’eman Canada is far from the only Canadian charity operating as a conduit for illegal Israeli settlements and IDF-supportive Israeli organizations.
The Mizrachi Organization of Canada, along with Canada Charity Partners, and the Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada, among others, actively issue Canadian donors charitable tax receipts for donating to the illegal settlements and IDF-supportive organizations. So, while Ne’eman Canada’s revocation is certainly a victory for those who would bring the Canadian charitable sector in line with customary international law, the Canada-to-Israel charity pipeline has proven itself to be adaptive and responsive to instances of ‘one-off’ regulatory enforcement.
In response to Ne’eman Canada’s revocation, Israelgives.org, a small-scale websites that act as a clearinghouse for the Israeli charitable sector, has already begun its own disinformation campaign, in which it claims that Canadian charities illegally funneling money to the settlements and the IDF are being wrongfully “targeted” simply for their association with Israel. Suggesting that Ne’eman Canada’s charitable status was revoked simply because it “failed to maintain proper books and records”, Israelgives.org is actively encouraging concerned Canadian Zionists to shift their philanthropic activities to its Canadian conduit, Canada Charity Partners.
For enforcement to be effective, the Canada Revenue Agency must bring the entire Canada-to-Israel charitable sector into compliance with pre-existing Canadian public policy and customary international law, specifically considering the International Court of Justice’s advisory ruling, determining that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territory was patently illegal. The ICJ noted that member states at the United Nations are “under an obligation not to provide aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” While we may be more primed to target shipments of military hardware with our activist campaigns, there is no reason to suggest that state subsidies, in the form of charitable tax credits, should be somehow immune from the World Court’s assessment of “aid or assistance”.
Legislative reform of the Canadian Income Tax Act must also be directed at those who utilize these transgressional charitable organizations, such as Albert Friedberg, to illegally underwrite the Zionist project. Without such meaningful reform, the status revocations of the JNFC and Ne’eman Canada, while significant are evocative of punishing a gun, but not the one who wields it. With enough conviction of purpose, the solution is all too simple:
Register another charity. Find another gun.
Miles Howe is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Sociology, Critical Criminology, Brock University. His current work focuses on Canadian Zionist philanthropy
