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Taxing talk

Jewish groups divided over House bill addressing terror-supporting nonprofits

The Orthodox Union and AIPAC are supporting the bipartisan legislation, while the Conservative and Reform movements have lined up in opposition

Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

FBI agents guard the entrance to the Holy Land Foundation December 5, 2001 in Richardson, Texas.

A growing list of Jewish groups, including the Conservative movement, joined the Reform movement and progressive Jewish groups on Wednesday to oppose a House bill, set for a vote on Thursday, that would streamline the process for the Treasury Department to remove tax exemptions for groups providing material or financial support to U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations.

In a joint letter to members of Congress led by the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism (RAC), 55 Jewish groups expressed “strong opposition” to the legislation, which would allow the secretary of the Treasury to unilaterally determine that a charity is supporting terrorism, rather than requiring a court decision as under current law — which has been infrequently applied.

The groups argued that the legislation “threatens to politicize decisions that should be made neutrally and deliberatively” and that the current procedures are “less susceptible to political interference or the chilling effect on speech and activity than H.R. 9495 is likely to have.”

Notable signatories to the letter include the Central Conference of American Rabbis (the Reform movement’s rabbinic arm), Hadassah, Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Jewish Women International, National Council of Jewish Women, Mazon, the Rabbinical Assembly, Reconstructing Judaism, the Union for Reform Judaism and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. 

They join more progressive Jewish groups that have been opposing the legislation.

Several local federations and community relations councils, including the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix, Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor and Jewish Federation of the Bluegrass, also signed the RAC letter, as well as several synagogues and other local Jewish organizations. The national Jewish Federations of North America didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Unlike the other major denominations, the Orthodox Union is supporting the legislation. AIPAC is supporting the bill, as is the Anti-Defamation League, although the ADL is urging lawmakers to add due process protections before it passes the House.

Supporters of the bill argue that it’s necessary to cut off funding and support from U.S. nonprofits to Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations, and argue that opponents have overstated its scope.

Some point to the case of the Holy Land Foundation, a now-shuttered nonprofit whose founders were convicted and sentenced to prison for supporting terrorism after funneling millions to Hamas, as an example of the necessity of the legislation.

Some analysts argue that the Holy Land Foundation has functionally reformed and is currently operating under new names.

The House passed a previous version of the bill with near-unanimous support in April, but in the months since, an aggressive progressive lobbying campaign led by the ACLU against the legislation has picked up, with opponents warning that the legislation would give the incoming Trump administration unchecked power to declare nonprofits that oppose it to be supporting terrorism and shut them down.

The ACLU has long been outspoken against efforts to shut down U.S. charities over ties to terrorism, and in a 2009 report claimed that the Holy Land Foundation was unfairly targeted and discriminated against because it was a Muslim group, dismissing the substance of the accusations against the group as unproven or misleading.

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