Where's the money? - Haaretz

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Thu., August 16, 2007 Elul 2, 5767

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Last update - 23:25 15/08/2007

Where's the money?

By Amiram Barkat

The Rambam Medical Center in Haifa marked the arrival of a donation for purchasing medical equipment last Thursday. The NIS 50 million donation was granted by the IDB Corporation and the Jewish Agency to Rambam as well as hospitals in Nahariya and Safed. Under the unwritten rules for such events, there should have been an ostentatious ceremony outside, with the donor and his family participating. A short video in English would praise the donor and describe the importance of the project. Children would wave blue and white flags, dance and sing. But instead, this ceremony more closely resembled a board meeting. A short, to-the-point discussion was held in the director's conference room at the hospital. There were no flowery speeches, and the only refreshments were pastries and soft drinks. The event's main star, IDB chairman Nochi Dankner, wasn't there, due to "pressing business" in the United States.

Jewish Agency officials say there has been an impressive increase in Israeli businesspeople making donations for social causes following the Second Lebanon War. People including Avi Naor, Benny Landa, Eitan Wertheimer, David Kolitz and Noam Lanir have been donating more than $1 million a year for projects that help at-risk youth, Ethiopian immigrants and Holocaust survivors. However, the business sector's overall contribution to society is still negligible when compared to the sums donated by Diaspora Jewry.

A dearth of donations makes it difficult to initiate long-term projects that will shape Israeli society, such as promoting employment and narrowing the social gaps. Given that nearly all the social change organizations that defend human rights, environmental quality and quality of government exist thanks to donations from abroad, this raises questions regarding the health - or even the very existence - of civil society in Israel.

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Suspicion and cynicism

The low profile of the Rambam ceremony is indicative of the difference between Israelis and Jews from abroad, particularly the United States, with respect to attitudes toward donations. American donors often see donations as a way to increase their prestige and social status. American-Jewish donors are proud of their donations and do not relinquish the honors, flattery and credit they entail. Israeli businesspeople, while clearly not shy, prefer to downplay their philanthropic activity.

Jewish Agency Chairman Zeev Bielski cites one of Israel's top donors, who demanded that his name not be mentioned in donor reports received by the organization's board of trustees. Bielski thinks this strange behavior is fueled largely by Israeli public opinion's suspicion and cynicism for tycoons. "One businessman made a large donation to our youth village at Kiryat Yearim," says Bielski. "After we published this story, reporters from the local media contacted us to find out whether behind this donation stood an attempt to gain control of the real estate there."

The bottom line should disturb every Israeli citizen: Israelis donate very little. The Bank of Israel estimates the country receives $1.25 billion to $2 billion in foreign donations annually. About a third of that goes to national institutions, first and foremost the Jewish Agency. Another third goes to hospitals and universities, and the remainder is split among nongovernmental organizations.

However, there are almost no records attesting to how much Israelis donate. Israel's official record-keeping bodies do not publish estimates, and there is no body dedicated to supervising the quality and performance of charitable funds. The terms "philanthropic foundation" or "charitable fund" do not appear in Israeli law books. The charitable organizations active in Israel are characterized as "non-profit associations" or "religious endowments" - legal entities first defined under Turkish rule. Professor Benjamin Gidron of the Israeli Center for Third Sector Research (ICTR) at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev estimates Israelis give a total of $300 million annually - about 0.2 percent of the Israeli GDP. For the sake of comparison, Americans donate sums equal to 2 percent of their GDP, the highest rate of donation in the world.

In a 2006 study, Gidron estimated there were 6,000 charitable donors in Israel, but the vast majority of these were ultra-Orthodox charities and mutual aid organizations. Gidron has difficulty naming a single significant Israeli philanthropic fund. "There is the Sherover Foundation, which is registered as Israeli," he says at last, "but this is a very veteran foundation that was active mainly in the 1980s and 1990s."

Students at the Tel Aviv University business school presented another interesting figure: In 2006, the government allocated NIS 160 million for tax credits for donations (by law, donors can receive a tax credit of 35 percent of the donation, up to NIS 4 million), but even this small sum was not fully used. This irks high-tech entrepreneur and philanthropist Benny Landa. "It is hard to understand how entities like banks and insurance companies, who made their profits from Israeli society, don't give back even the minimum the law allows," he says.

Landa, the founder of Indigo, which was sold to the HP Corporation, has headed a family philanthropic fund committed to donating $5 million a year for a period of 10 years. "I believe in giving in secret," says Landa, referring to the traditional Jewish belief that this is the highest form of charity, "but in recent years something changed, and people have started to talk about this. I changed my opinion when I realized that in the Diaspora they think Israelis don't know how to help themselves, and that this has a negative effect on Diaspora Jewry's willingness to donate. Now I believe that everyone who is active philanthropically must make himself known in order to influence and serve as an example to others who do not understand the importance of this issue."

No collective responsibility

Bielski believes that the small number of Israeli donors is the result of a lack of education toward giving, something that still exists among the ultra-Orthodox public and in Jewish Diaspora communities. "Israelis say it is enough that they have served in the army and pay taxes," he says. "Donations are the responsibility of Diaspora Jewry." According to Landa, "The concept of a collective civil responsibility that goes beyond concern for one's self and one's family hardly exists in Israeli society."

Gidron says Israelis are simply provincial. "We are too sunk in our own paranoias. We do not have time for 'other people's troubles.' The ratio between the donations that Israel receives from abroad and the donations that Israelis give for international humanitarian issues is the worst in the Western world."

Israeli donors' choice of recipients arouses a great deal of criticism as well. The Landa family foundation is exceptional, because it is devoted to programs for narrowing gaps in Israeli society: the Atidim project for the advancement of youth from the periphery, and six similar projects at universities around the country. Landa says this area is considered "unsexy" among many of his colleagues. "If they are donating, they give the money to help immediate needs, like the physical needs of the elderly, children or the handicapped. Issues that affect the future of Israeli society, like increasing employment or equal opportunity, have almost no donors."

The New Israel Fund, which develops organizations for social change, estimates that more than 90 percent of the civil society organizations in Israel would not exist without foreign donors. Many organizations dealing with issues like human rights, environmental quality and advancing weak populations try to raise money locally, but have little or no success. Fund-raising is especially difficult for groups like the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, because potential donors often perceive it as anti-Israeli because it defends the rights of Palestinians.

New Israel Fund Executive Director Eliezer Ya'ari says he sees no chance of organizations like the ACRI being funded by local corporations in the foreseeable future, because these groups fear being labeled as political. However, the issue is a broader one - Israelis don't donate to uncontroversial causes, either. "There was a local initiative in Nahariya by residents who wanted to fight the use of asbestos in that city. They turned to us after they did not succeed in raising donations from Israeli sources. American donors frequently ask me: 'Where are the Israelis? Don't they care about what is happening in their own home?'"

The New Israel Fund is funded by Jewish donors and non-Jewish philanthropies like the Ford Foundation. "Fortunately for us, we have Diaspora Jewry and other entities that are interested in what happens here. But this casts into question the strength of civil society in Israel. Some U.S. sociologists are saying that Israel doesn't have a civil society at all."

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