Two UK charities donate millions to Israeli settlement in occupied West Bank
Documents show that the Kasner Charitable Trust (KCT), via a conduit charity, UK Toremet, has donated approximately £5.7m to the Bnei Akiva Yeshiva high school in Susya, in the Israeli-occupied territory.
As the budget of the school increased significantly as a result of the donations, the number of pupils, employees at the school and Susya residents have all increased. Dror Etkes, an expert on Israeli settlement, said: 'The school is likely the largest single source of employment in the settlement, and constitutes one of the main elements of the entire settlement's existence.'
Susya was established in or around 1983 south of Hebron adjacent to and impinging on the pre-existing Palestinian village of Khirbet Susiya (commonly known as just Susiya). In 1986, the Israeli authorities declared the main residential area of Susiya an archaeological site and evicted all of its residents, according to Amnesty International.
In March, settlers launched an attack on the Susiya home of Hamdan Ballal, one of the directors of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land.
In 2016 the Charity Commission wrote to UK Toremet saying: 'A donation to a school in the occupied territories would be a donation for the advancement of education and therefore on the face of it a legitimate grant for UK Toremet to make.'
The former Conservative party chair Sayeeda Warsi said: 'It's appalling that any British national should be engaged in funding illegal settlements on occupied land – and it's even more disturbing that this is being subsidised by all of us taxpayers.
'I'm sure the vast majority of my colleagues in Westminster will share my outrage that the Charity Commission is greenlighting these donations. Serious action must be taken so that settlements which are illegal under international law, and at the heart of a regime of discrimination and displacement, cannot benefit from charitable donations.'
Andy McDonald, a Labour MP and a solicitor, said: 'The government must urgently take the steps necessary to ban the use of funds originating from the UK being used to support any aspect of the illegal occupation and ensure the Charity Commission is in no doubt about its duty in preventing such transfers and having the powers to do so.
'Donations to illegal settlements should invalidate charitable status and result in individual prosecutions. If legislation is needed, we must do it.'
Concerns have previously been raised about charitable donations from the UK to Israeli settlements but this is believed to be the first time there has been a definitive paper trail of a major transfer of funds to an illegal settlement.
In a written answer in parliament in 2015, the government said the Charity Commission, which covers England and Wales, had written to UK Toremet's trustees 'and will be meeting them to review … [its] governance, policies, procedures and operational activity'.
The following year the commission confirmed it had an 'open case' and that UK Toremet had been issued with 'an action plan' and its compliance was being monitored.
The £5.7m of donations were made subsequently, between 2017 and 2021. When the law firm Hickman & Rose contacted the commission about them in 2022 it replied that the issues raised were not within its regulatory role as they involved allegations of war crimes and advised the solicitors to report the matter to the police.
The lawyers accordingly approached the counter-terrorism command, SO15, about individuals within the two charities. SO15 responded in March this year that it would not be pursuing a criminal investigation, based on reasons that the lawyers plan to contest, but said it would be highlighting the UK position on illegal settlements to the commission 'with our concerns'.
A Charity Commission spokesperson said: 'We know this is a highly contentious issue about which there are strongly held opposing views. The commission can only operate within our legal framework, and the fact that a charity operates in the occupied Palestinian territories does not in itself constitute a criminal offence or breach of charity law.'
It said it referred all potential criminal matters to the relevant law enforcement body, adding: 'Given the complex legal issues in relation to international law we are in the process of seeking renewed specialist advice from the attorney general.'
A UK Toremet spokesperson said it was 'not driven by any political or ideological agenda: and grants were made within the scope of English charity law', highlighting the 2016 letter from the commission about educational donations.
A KCT spokesperson questioned whether the settlement was illegal. Before ending the call, he said the donation was for a 'religious school, not for settlement purposes', denied KCT was in any way encouraging the settlement and said the commission had 'cleared' the donations.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Sun
27 minutes ago
- The Sun
More protests held outside migrant hotels across UK as anger over crisis continues to rise
MORE protests have been held outside migrant hotels across the country yesterday as anger over the issue continues to rise. Another demonstration was held nearby to the Brittania International Hotel in Canary Wharf, East London — which had been revealed earlier this week to be set to house asylum-seekers. 4 4 4 The large group of various ethnicities held a banner saying: 'Stop calling us far right. "Protect our women and children.' Meanwhile, rival groups clashed outside The Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex. Around 300 anti-migrant protesters had been kept in one fenced-off pen while around 500 in the pro-migrant group were in another, with cops between them. Around 500 officers from 31 forces across England and Wales attended — with three arrests reported by Essex Police, including a woman on suspicion of a racially aggravated public order offence. It was the latest incident in Epping since Ethiopian asylum-seeker Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu was accused of sexual assault. He has denied three charges. Elsewhere, around 250 protested near the Brook Hotel in Norwich, while more than 200 stood outside a migrant hotel in Altrincham, Gtr Manchester. Other gatherings over the weekend have been reported in Portsmouth, Bournemouth and Leeds. Migrant hotel protests spread across the country with more planned today as cops clamp down on weekend of stand-offs 4 Four in 10 sex attack charges non-Brits Exclusive by Jack Elsom NEARLY four in ten people charged over sex attacks in London in the last seven years are foreign nationals, police figures show. Non-Brits are thought to be behind 2,809 out of 7,798 such crimes — 36 per cent — but make up less than a quarter of the city's population. A further 358 charged are of unknown nationality, meaning the foreigner total may be higher. Brits accounted for 4,631 charges. The largest cohort of foreign suspects were Romanian at 308, but Afghans are the most prolific by share of population at 89. The Centre for Migration Control obtained figures on nationalities of those charged with sex offences since 2018. It said: 'The spike in sexual offences against women and girls is directly attributable to our open borders.' The Home Office said: 'We continue to deport foreign nationals who commit heinous crimes in the UK.' Fury over Sharia law job advert A JOB ad for a 'Sharia law administrator' on the Department for Work and Pensions website sparked fury. Islamic Sharia law is followed by many Muslims around the world — though it is not accepted in the UK. The Manchester Sharia Council job pays £23,500 a year to help provide guidance on matrimonial matters under Sharia law. It requires a diploma or degree in Sharia law but only 'familiarity' with our legal system. Reform UK's Nigel Farage warned: 'Our country and its values are being destroyed'. Tory Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: 'This is wrong. 'We only have one set of laws in the country. No other law should be recognised by the state.'
Daily Mail
27 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
STEPHEN DAISLEY: The out-of-touch political dreamers who've now been handed a rude awakening by reality
Ten years and a few months ago, I was dispatched to Paisley to try to interview Mhairi Black. I say 'try to' because everywhere we went someone would interrupt to tell the 20 year-old they were voting for her. It's not easy grilling a candidate on currency options for an independent Scotland when every few minutes a passing stranger suddenly downs their Tesco bags and asks for a selfie. This was the eve of the 2015 general election and the SNP was poised to sweep Labour from its west-central heartlands. Nicola Sturgeon was selling out the Hydro. Black was about to become the youngest MP since the Great Reform Act. I still had hair. It was another Scotland. A decade on, Black says she's done with the SNP and is no longer a member. She pinpoints 'capitulation on LGBT rights, trans rights in particular' as her reason for leaving, though adds: 'I thought the party could be doing better about Palestine as well'. Much as I don't share Black's views on gender or Gaza – or a great deal else, for that matter – I respect them. They're sincerely held. If you're going to hate anyone in politics, don't hate the ones who disagree with you on principle, hate the ones prepared to agree with you on any principle just to get ahead. Unfortunately her principles are far removed from those of the median voter, who remains baffled by the notion that someone can 'identify' into a different sex and even more baffled as to how this became a priority for politicians across the land. Many feel strongly about the deaths in Gaza but for most voters it is nowhere near the top of their concerns, which are dominated by their family, then their social circles, then their neighbourhood, then their country. Idealists who make a virtue of empathising more with those on the other side of the world get very angry about this. They even invented a term for it, 'hierarchy of death', which seems superfluous when we already had a term for it: human nature. For the SNP to have clung onto Black's membership subs, it would have had to return to a subject (trans rights) which has caused it no end of internal division and political misery, and adopt an even more strident stance on Israel's military response to the Palestinians' October 7 invasion and murder, rape and abduction of its citizens. The SNP is a political party, not a moral philosophy seminar. It exists to win elections and, in theory, achieve Scottish independence. What votes would it win by taking Black's advice? What votes is it at risk of losing by not? The former Paisley and Renfrewshire South MP comes close to identifying the problem herself, when she says: 'If anything, I'm probably a bit more Left-wing than I have been. I don't think I have changed all that much. I feel like the party needs to change a lot more.' The SNP does have to change, but not in the direction Black wants. The Nationalists and most other parties have spent the past decade or so breenging off on a tangent about trans rights, systemic racism, Donald Trump and the rest. A correction was long overdue. This agenda lacked popular consent and stoked resentment among both those who opposed it fiercely and those who protested over so much time and effort being frittered away. The Supreme Court judgment in For Women Scotland has helped immeasurably. Party leaders and policy-makers were able to point to the ruling and pass responsibility onto the justices. They weren't backsliding, the court was clarifying the law. For John Swinney, this has been a blessed opportunity to ditch positions he went along with at the time, I've no doubt against his better judgment, but which he knows have gravely damaged his party's standing with the public. A man with more gumption would have stood up and said something when it mattered, but if Swinney isn't much of a leader – and he certainly isn't – nor is he alone in that category. During the initial consultation stage for reforming the Gender Recognition Act, a senior politician in one party admitted to me that they didn't understand the issue, or why it was a priority, but they'd be voting for it because they had been told to. Politics is the trade of dreamers and cynics and while Mhairi Black might be wrong about everything at least she's sincere about it. She isn't the only dreamer to be rudely awakened lately by political reality. Maggie Chapman has found herself dumped as the Greens' lead candidate in North East Scotland, replaced by Guy Ingerson, ex oil-and-gas worker turned Net Zero enthusiast. According to a pet theory of mine, that makes it unlikely that Chapman will be re-elected next May. The theory: a person's likelihood to vote for the Scottish Greens correlates with their proximity to a Pret A Manger. Edinburgh and Glasgow, home to 11 and six branches of the posh sandwich chain respectively, just so happen to be the Greens' best and second-best performing areas on the regional lists. Aberdeen, with just two, lags far behind in Green support. Whether or not my theory holds water (or overpriced coffee), Chapman's Holyrood career appears to be over after years of headline-grabbing pronouncements. Her principles also deserve respect. Not because they're sincerely held but because we should remain open to ideas from other planets. When the landmark ruling was handed down in For Women Scotland, Chapman attended a rally to denounce the 'bigotry, prejudice and hatred coming from the Supreme Court'. She once told an interviewer that allowing eight year olds to change their legal sex was something that 'in principle we should be exploring'. Following the October 7 attack on Israel, she shared a tweet saying the murderous rampage was not terrorism but 'decolonisation'. Yes, her views are deranged, but the more pertinent question is how these came to be the views of someone elected to make sure Scots can see a doctor, find a good school for their children, and not get mugged at knifepoint. The answer is that ideologues like Chapman are not interested in all that boring, quotidian stuff that fixates middle-class taxpayers. Simply ghastly people, those bourgeois types, with their petrol-guzzling cars, their authoritarian demands for more police on the streets, and their grasping fixation with ambition and acquisition. Don't they know there are more important issues in the world? There are far too many in Holyrood or keen to get there who think like this. For them, life is just one long university debating society match, in which enlightened elites like them exchange barbs and bon mots over affairs of state. The little people might fret about bills and savings and leaving an inheritance for their children, but they are above such vulgar materialism. They are here to change the world, you know. In my observation, those most keen to change the world tend to have the least experience of it. They make terrible politicians because they quickly find out the world doesn't work the way they want and they resent the voters for that. If the voters set the agenda in politics, Mhairi Black and Maggie Chapman wouldn't be the only ones in our insular, self-righteous governing class that would be stampeding for the exit. Democracy is still the most radical idea of all. Maybe one day we'll give it a try.
The Sun
27 minutes ago
- The Sun
Horse racing faces ‘grave risk' from new betting tax bombshell, bosses warn
A LOOMING tax on horserace betting would wipe £330million off the industry in just five years and risk thousands of jobs, bosses have warned. The levy has been branded an existential threat to the beloved spectator sport and sparked urgent calls for a climbdown. 1 Ministers are proposing to raise the 15 per cent tax on horserace bets into line with the 21 per cent for online casinos. Devastating analysis has revealed this could cost the sector £66million every year and put up to 2,752 people out of a job. Towns where racecourses are a big source of employment - like Doncaster and York - would be particularly affected. The British Horseracing Association has warned this would send the sport into 'irreversible decline' in a blow to the five million racegoers who attend every year. Chief executive Brant Dunshea said: 'This latest tax bombshell from the Government, if followed through, poses one of the gravest risks to horseracing the sport has ever seen. 'The horseracing industry is already in a precarious financial position, and the latest research provides a much more catastrophic forecast than we first thought. 'We're talking thousands of jobs at risk across the supply chain, severely impacted towns and communities, and the irreversible decline of the country's second most popular sport.' David Menuisier, a trainer at Coombelands Racing Stables, added: 'Racing is much more than just a sport in this country. 'It brings fun and excitement to millions and is a major local employer, particularly here in West Sussex as we prepare for another fantastic year at Goodwood.' A Treasury spokesperson said: 'We are consulting on bringing the treatment of online betting in line with other forms of online gambling to cut down bureaucracy - it is not about increasing or decreasing rates, and we welcome views from all stakeholders including businesses, trade bodies, the third sector and individuals.'
