Supporting Genocide with a Non-Profit Status

Since at least Spring 2024, universities in the United States and Canada have suspended or banned various student organizations opposing the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians, especially in Gaza. It’s worth reminding the reader that several international human rights organizations, including the United Nations have called the Israeli onslaught genocide. It’s also useful to point out that several of Israel’s rulers have been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Court of Justice. One more important note would be that Israel would not be doing what it is doing without the “moral”, political, military and financial support of the United States. In addition to banning the aforementioned student organizations, many universities have refused to give students the degrees they earned and have kicked them out of school. Furthermore, some university administrations have turned over the names of students attending the antiwar/anti-genocide protests to federal law enforcement. The federal governments, meanwhile have arrested, kidnapped and otherwise detained students for their public support of the Palestinian struggle against the occupation.

Meanwhile, over the same time period, a Zionist organization funded in large part by the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish National Fund continues to get approved by universities in its efforts to set up branches across the continent. Despite the major sources of its funding, the group, which goes by the obvious title Students Supporting Israel, advertises itself as a grassroots organization while receiving 501(c3) nonprofit status in the United States. At best, this is stretching the meaning of the word grassroots. According to the Jewish News Service (JNS) and other sources, the WZO receives most of its funding (some sources citing 98%) from the Jewish National Fund (JNF), a subsidiary organization that is itself funded by income from its vast landholdings in the Occupied Territories and Israel. Additionally, the WZO’s “Settlement Division”—a division which handles the financing and so of the illegal “settlements” in the West Bank. The WZO also receives funding directly from the Israeli government. In other words, the Students Supporting Israel are actually supported BY Israel. As a side note, another group funded by the WZO is the group Betar, an extremely right-wing Zionist organization founded in 1923 in Riga, Latvia, by Ze’ev Jabotinsky….and was closely affiliated with the pre-Israel Revisionist Zionist paramilitary group Irgun Zevai Leumi. It adopted some of its practices from other fascist organizations at the time while also adapting some of their politics. Betar’s reach inside the Israeli government goes deep with many of its political figures coming from its membership, most notably prime ministers Yitzhak Shamir, Ehud Olmert and Menachem Begin.

When one considers the nature of SSI’s funding and compares it to the ongoing attempts by the US government to criminalize any if not all donations by US residents to charities designed to feed, clothe and provide medical assistance to Palestinians, the contradiction should be too obvious to comment on. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Indeed, all the US government has to do to make any donations to a charity that assists the Palestinians is to decide there is a connection to a group Washington has labelled as terrorist. No actual link has to be proven. This form of repression has been taking place for decades. Furthermore, as the recent resurrection and media rehabilitation of the current president of Syria Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa makes quite clear, yesterday’s terrorist is today’s statesman. For those who don’t recall, al-Sharaa was one of the most wanted terrorists until last year, when his US and Israeli-funded organization was given the go-ahead to overthrow the Assad government in Syria. Al-Sharaa’s redefinition even led to the lifting of sanctions against him and his staff by the United Nations Security Council and to Wikipedia redefining him as a revolutionary and not a terrorist. My point in bringing that up is to prove how the terrorist label is related to how one serves the government(s) who gave you the label.

Back to the Students Supporting Israel. The group is currently sponsoring a tour of IDF soldiers who were involved in the Israeli war on the Palestinians. Calling itself Combat on College, the tour stopped at UCLA and featured two IDF soldiers sharing “their harrowing stories about their service in Gaza.” This follows an earlier tour titled Triggered: From Combat to Campus with “IDF reservists sharing firsthand stories from October 7th and beyond. The name plays on the irony of campus outrage, “triggered,” by Israel’s genocide (which SSI of course calls defense), ….and the literal triggers IDF soldiers defend Israel with from neighboring terrorist entities.” In other words, Israeli soldiers, who have been arrested for war crimes in some countries, are traveling around North America justifying the mass murder—through bombing, snipers, and starvation—of thousands of Palestinians., many if not most of them children. So far, they have appeared at twenty-five campuses across North America, mostly in the United States and most in Spring 2025. They have also appeared at Jewish community centers run by pro-occupation congregations. Most recently, on November 6, 2025, antiwar and anti-occupation students protested a meeting of the SSI, who had brought the IDF soldiers to Tulane at a heavily guarded and so-called private event. At UCLA, one was only provided the location of the IDF troops’ presentation after RSVP’ing to SSI, who presumedly then vetted the attendees. When recalling the well-funded and violent attacks on the anti-genocide/anti-occupation encampments at UCLA in 2024, one can only wonder who helped them in their vetting.

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