New York Charities Send Combat Gear to West Bank Settlements

Since the October 7 Hamas attack that killed around 1,200 Israelis, the New York-based nonprofits have raised millions for tactical equipment for settlers across the West Bank. The organizations — right-wing groups dedicated to Jewish rule over the holy land — work directly with the Israeli military and with the settlements, which are illegal under international law.

“The ties between New York state and war crimes being carried out by Israeli settlers are egregious,” said Jay Saper, a New York City-based organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace. “It’s long overdue for the state to take action.”

Earlier this year, Jewish Voice for Peace and other anti-occupation groups launched a campaign to stem the flow of tax-exempt donations from New York organizations to West Bank settlements. The Not on Our Dime Act, introduced in the state legislature in May, grew out of the activist effort and sought to empower the state attorney general to revoke the nonprofit status of groups funding settlements. Dozens of state legislators almost immediately condemned it as “a ploy to demonize Jewish charities.”

With human rights officials and advocates warning that the violence could accelerate mass displacement in the West Bank, where farmers can’t harvest their olives without fear of settlers shooting at them, the bill’s backers see renewed urgency.

“The forcible transfers, the attacks, the harassment, the murders … we are complicit in them,” Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, who introduced the Not on Our Dime Act in his chamber, told New York Focus. “I’m even more committed to the necessity of this legislation in this moment.”

Since October 7, the New York-based nonprofits, too, have ramped up their efforts — and rhetoric against Palestinians.

“We are seeing pure evil,” Daniel Luria, executive director of American Friends of Ateret Cohanim, says in an October 24 Instagram video. “There is only one way to deal with evil, and that is to eradicate pure evil.”

The video ends with a slide: “Donate today.”

Other One Israel Fund initiatives seek to raise over $200,000 to build dozens of command and dispatch centers throughout West Bank settlements, more than $7.5 million for car-mounted and stationary surveillance camera systems, and roughly $250,000 to add searchlights, PA systems, and Israeli military communication systems to vehicles the military has purchased for settler security teams.

The fund’s director of security operations, Marc Provisor, a Philadelphia-born artist who moved to the West Bank and joined the Israeli military, is credited with spearheading militia settlement security initiatives across the territory. Rifle-clad settlers, some in military fatigues, have recorded videos thanking Provisor and his organization. “I want to thank … the One Israel Fund for this important tool,” says one settler in Hebrew, posing with a new drone and a sign with the One Israel Fund logo.

The One Israel Fund also works closely with the Israeli military. According to the organization’s website, the Israeli Defense Ministry has committed to matching the first $400,000 of a $2 million project to equip civilian response teams with mobile surveillance systems that allow them to view thermal camera feeds from their cell phones and tablets.

The organizations assert that settlers need the tactical equipment to protect themselves from violent Palestinians. “But what we really see is these vigilante settler groups using them in really horrific ways that only stoke insecurity,” said Sophia Goodfriend, an Israel-based researcher focusing on Israel’s weaponization of surveillance technology.

Goodfriend pointed to instances where settlers have used drones to disperse Palestinian shepherds’ flocks, follow Palestinian children to school, and identify Palestinian homes for the military to demolish. In recent research in East Jerusalem and Hebron, where settler security works closely with the military to enforce what human rights advocates describe as one of the most extreme versions of Israeli apartheid, Goodfriend documented how vast camera systems equipped with facial recognition track Palestinians so closely they peer into their homes.

In Hebron, armed settlers have reportedly helped enforce a lockdown for Palestinian households and driven Palestinians from their homes at gunpoint. The Brooklyn-based Hebron Fund, meanwhile, is seeking to bolster the settlers’ surveillance apparatus: After October 7, the group issued a call for donations to purchase drones and cameras, as well as radios, flashlights, bullet-proof vests, and other tactical gear.

The solicitation came directly from Hebron’s civilian security chief, Yoni Bleichbard, who also coordinates security for Hebron Fund tours and is listed among the organization’s staff.

The Hebron Fund, the One Israel Fund, and American Friends of Ateret Cohanim did not respond to multiple phone calls and emails.

“Our right to Hebron protects our right to the rest of the land of Israel. It speaks to the Jewish claim of the land of Israel,” read a recent recruiting email from The Hebron Fund’s executive director, Rabbi Daniel Rosenstein. “We own it.”

The Not on Our Dime Act met with significant opposition in the state legislature. The week after Mamdani and state Senator Jabari Brisport introduced it, 66 Democratic assemblymembers — a majority of the conference — released a letter decrying it as a ploy “to antagonize pro-Israel New Yorkers and further sow divisions within the Democratic Party.” The letter didn’t mention West Bank settlements.

“I’m not against the settlements in the West Bank,” Assemblymember Jeffrey Dinowitz, one of the signatories, told New York Focus. “It’s not a problem for me.”

“We would have been better off if the bill was focused on not-for-profits not sending money to terrorist organizations like Hamas, which some do, as we know,” Dinowitz added. Asked for clarification, Dinowitz’s office sent a New York Post article about liberal donor networks funding “anti-Israel” groups. The paper didn’t accuse anyone of funding US-designated terrorist organizations, which, unlike sending money to West Bank settlements, would be a federal crime.

Beyond their violation of international law, the settlements encroach on Washington’s preferred “two-state solution,” as settlers and the Israeli military, under the direction of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, restrict Palestinians to smaller and more isolated pockets within the West Bank. New York Senator Chuck Schumer, a staunch pro-Israel advocate, said he urged Netanyahu to crack down on settler violence when he visited Israel last week. But few other New York officials have addressed settler violence since October 7.

Governor Kathy Hochul hasn’t mentioned settlements at all. After several weeks of pro-Israel rallies, raising the Israeli flag at government buildings, and a trip to Israel — sponsored by a nonprofit that provides money to groups that support West Bank settlements — Hochul recently shifted her attention to ramping up policing and social media surveillance to protect from “domestic and international threats.”

“What is so frustrating is when people speak about the importance of peace, as we all must, and yet they refuse to name the settlements,” said Mamdani. “They are intentionally disconnecting the dots.”