IHRC is one of many organisations and civil society figures who have been in contact with the regulator of charities in England and Wales, the Charity Commission, raising concerns about UK registered charities fundraising or facilitating fundraising for the Israeli Defense Forces. Some of these complaints date back to the 2000s and 2010s. Others have been sent since October 2023.

An alarming number of fundraisers have sprung up since the beginning of the onslaught on the Gaza Strip by the Israeli administration, seeking funds for military equipment and other support for soldiers who are active on the warfront. Some of these fundraisers have shown themselves to be connected to UK registered charities and are processing donations from the UK through these charities. UK donors are able to receive tax back on these donations via the Gift Aid option offered by HMRC. This report outlines a few of the cases that have come to our attention.

Given the Charity Commission’s own advice on its website and communications it has previously sent to organisations, including IHRC, that fundraising for non-UK armed forces is not considered charitable, it would appear that these fundraisers, even in normal circumstances would be violating charity rules. Given that the IDF are committing war crimes and in the opinion of the International Court of Justice, quite probably genocide, in the Gaza Strip, these fundraisers are even more shocking and appalling.

This report presents briefly our concerns inter alia regarding the due diligence employed by the UK registered charities mentioned, the risk to their reputations and the reputation of the charitable sector, the failure of the Charity Commission’s oversight duty, and the violation of charity rules.

It is surely the job of the Charity Commission, not individuals or civil society, to monitor and follow these cases. At least one organisation (UK Toremet) had been shown to be facilitating donations for an organisation buying military equipment for the IDF in 2015. At the time the Charity Commission had stated that it had opened a case into the charity and asked them to remove that organisation from its list of recipient organisations. How is it that the same organisation is able to behave in similar fashion again?

None of the fundraisers in this report were difficult to find, or the associations with UK based charities oblique or hidden. It begs the questions, as to whether more of this behaviour is to be found by other UK registered charities, and why is it that the Charity Commission has not uncovered these by themselves.