Nonprofit Groups Mount Fund-Raising Efforts Tied to Middle East Strife

The escalation of violence in the Middle East has sparked aggressive pro-Israeli fund-raising campaigns by American Jewish organizations, rallied other groups to muster financial support for Palestinian relief, and led still others to seek money to promote alternatives to a military standoff.

The 189 Jewish federations around the United States have been among the quickest to act. After a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 27 Israelis and injured 140 during a Passover Seder in Netanya last month, federation leaders started an emergency campaign under the auspices of United Jewish Communities, an umbrella group in New York.

United Jewish Communities said it aims to raise “hundreds of millions” of dollars to help Israeli residents and businesses hurt by the suicide bombing, provide social services that the Israeli government has cut because of increased defense spending, and advance other goals, such as resettling Argentine Jews in Israel.

Federation trustees contributed $13-million to the effort, and individual federations are seeking to raise millions more. The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, for example, aims to raise $12.5-million, says Bill Bernstein, its executive vice president. In the first three days of its campaign, it raised $100,000 — all before soliciting the federation’s major donors, Mr. Bernstein says.

The Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago already had raised $9-million for its own Israel campaign before the start of the United Jewish Communities drive, says Beth Turner, vice president of the Chicago campaign. In the week after the United Jewish Communities effort was announced, she says, the Chicago group raised at least $500,000 more — again, before appealing to the federation’s largest donors.

Hospital Renovation

Besides spurring big cash donations to Jewish-federation drives, the recent Middle East violence has also invigorated fund-raising campaigns outside of the federation network.

Hadassah, for example, has stepped up a $28-million campaign to renovate and expand trauma facilities at a hospital that the women’s Zionist organization operates in Jerusalem, says Joyce Rabin, who oversees the group’s fund raising. The campaign had been scheduled to begin this summer, but Hadassah instead kicked it off earlier this year and already has raised $10-million toward its goal. After the Passover bombing, it sent a direct-mail appeal, promoting Hadassah’s medical work in Israel and reminding prospective donors of the urgency of the group’s mission.

The American Jewish Committee, an advocacy group in New York, has conducted several direct-mail campaigns in recent weeks. David Harris, the group’s executive director, declines to say how much the committee has raised, but he says that late last month the committee put $100,000 — garnered from several donors — into a fund to compensate Jews injured by the violence in Israel.

Lack of Cohesion

While Jewish groups historically have mounted well-organized fund-raising efforts when crises involving Zionist causes have erupted in Israel or elsewhere, Arab-American groups have tended to lack the cohesion, infrastructure, and fund-raising experience to carry off similarly effective campaigns.

In the current crisis, a key obstacle facing Arab-American charities is intense scrutiny from federal authorities, who suspect that several major Muslim charities in the United States have been fronts for terrorism. After the September 11 attacks, the government closed three Muslim organizations — the Benevolence International Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation, both in the Chicago area, and the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, in Richardson, Tex. — and froze their assets.

Now, in light of the current situation in Israel, some Muslims in the United States are trying to free those assets for relief efforts for Palestinians.

Yahya Basha, a radiologist in Royal Oak, Mich., who chairs the American Muslim Council, an advocacy group that has recently concentrated mainly on domestic political issues, met with U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill earlier this month in an effort to persuade the federal government to release the assets of the Global Relief Foundation and the Holy Land Foundation. Dr. Basha says he wants the money to be distributed to Palestinians either through a new group that would be monitored by the U.S. government or through an established, non-Muslim charity.

Rob Nichols, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, says that Secretary O’Neill believes releasing the money now would be premature.

Faiz Rehman, a spokesman for the American Muslim Council, says the funds that the council is seeking to free amount to $2-million to $3-million. “That money was given to help the impoverished and needy,” Mr. Rehman says. “What’s happening right now [to Palestinians] is a humanitarian disaster. People need relief, and the relief is being blocked.”

Palestinian Drives

While the Muslim council seeks to unfetter donations that already exist, other organizations — some of which have no religious, ethnic, or nationalistic agendas — have started emergency fund-raising drives to raise new money on behalf of the Palestinians.

Peter Gubser, president of American Near East Refugee Aid, a humanitarian-relief charity in Washington, began mailing appeals to the group’s 25,000 donors immediately after the Passover bombing, seeking money for Palestinian relief efforts. The group will send another appeal letter soon, says Mr. Gubser.

The organization, which works with aid groups in Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon, this month delivered to Palestinians three 40-foot-long containers of food and supplies together valued at $500,000, Mr. Gubser says. The group’s 30 staff members in the Middle East screen the local groups with which it works for signs that they may be involved in violence, Mr. Gubser says.

Established American relief charities also are keeping a close eye on events in the Middle East, though not all of them are making special appeals to donors in the wake of the most recent spate of violence in Israel.

Catholic Relief Services, which administers relief programs for Palestinians, allocated an additional $50,000 earlier this month for programs in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza to supplement its $5.7-million operation in that area.

The charity does not have relief programs specifically for Jews in Israel because, says Kate Moynihan, a Catholic Relief Services official in Jerusalem, they already have a network of hospitals and aid agencies. “Their social safety needs are adequate,” she says.

Another Approach

While much of the money being raised is intended for the victims of violence, some groups are taking another approach: raising money to promote efforts to end the military standoff in the region.

The Tikkun Community, a Jewish nonprofit group in San Francisco that is critical of the administration of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, has been raising money to pay for newspaper ads in the United States advocating an end to Israeli military incursions into Palestinian-controlled territories. Liat Weingart, an editor at Tikkun magazine, which is affiliated with the Tikkun Community, declined to say how much the group has raised.

In a full-page ad soliciting donations of as much as $1,000, the 1,500-member organization advocates that the U.S. government and the United Nations intervene to stop the violence in the Middle East.

“It is time to create peace and security for both peoples,” the ad declares, “each in its own state: The liberation of each requires the liberation of the other.”