Charities in England and Wales ‘donate millions to illegal Israeli settlements’

A home torched by Israeli settlers in the West Bank village of Susya, where a Jewish school has received about £5.7m from two UK charities. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images View image in fullscreen A home torched by Israeli settlers in the West Bank village of Susya, where a Jewish school has received about £5.7m from two UK charities. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images Charities in England and Wales ‘donate millions to illegal Israeli settlements’ MP Melanie Ward calls on Charity Commission to look into 32 organisations she says have given at least £28m Thirty-two charities in England and Wales have donated at least £28m to Israeli settlements that are illegal under international law, an MP has said. Labour’s Melanie Ward said that if gift aid were claimed against the donations in the usual way, it would mean taxpayers had subsidised illegal settlements to the tune of £5.6m, a situation she described as deplorable. The foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced on Tuesday that the Charity Commission has been tasked with investigating UK charities’ links to settlements. Ward, formerly the chief executive of Medical Aid for Palestinians, set out the details of their recent activities in a letter to the commission in which she urges the regulator to take action by investigating them and removing them from the charity register. She writes: “The existence and growth of Israeli settlements in the state of Palestine is globally recognised as one of the major impediments to peace. Any activity which supports the maintenance and the expansion of Israeli settlements – such as that funded by these 32 ‘charities’ – is extremist and not of benefit to the UK public. Further, it risks being materially and financially used in pursuance of breaches of international law.” Among the charities she names are the Kasner Charitable Trust (KCT) and UK Toremet, which the Guardian revealed last year had together – the latter acting as a conduit – donated about £5.7m to the Bnei Akiva Yeshiva high school in Susya, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Ward said researchers, who examined documents in English and Hebrew, found Kasner had also donated to a yeshiva in the Palestinian city of Hebron while, in 2022, UK Toremet donated £38,479 to Regavim, an extremist pro-settler group that supports the destruction of Palestinian homes and which the EU has imposed sanctions on . View image in fullscreen A member of Regavim with a map of the West Bank in the recently deserted village of Zanuta, where the population say they were forced out by settler harassment. Photograph: Jason Burke/The Observer Through the Jgive platform, for which UK Toremet processes UK currency donations, people can donate to Regavim and other pro-settler groups including Shivat Zion Lerigvy Admata, which the UK announced on Tuesday that it would be imposing sanctions on . UK government has failed Palestinian people, says senior Labour MP Read more A UK Toremet spokesperson said the Charity Commission had foun