By Daniel Sokatch, NIF International CEO
Originally published May 15, 2025
An exceptionally dangerous bill came up for debate in the Knesset last week. And even as we all continue to drink from the firehose of news—Prime Minister Netanyahu announcing plans to ‘capture’ all of the Gaza Strip; the military aid bombardment and blockade there killing scores of civilians and starving children; and the Israeli military bulldozing entire West Bank villages—it is worth slowing down for a moment to consider this bill.
The bill, alternatively called the “NGO killer” or “the Russian law” (since Putin was the first to model it) would tax donations to Israeli organizations from foreign governments like Great Britain or the E.U. at an exorbitant rate of 80%.
My colleague Elisheva Goldberg put together an explainer video about the bill and our opposition to it. Please watch it and share it with others.
This bill may seem removed from the judicial coup, annexation, and the attempt to override the power of the judiciary. It is not. Indeed, just as it was in Russia, this bill is an essential element of the effort to deconstruct Israeli democracy. The people this bill will affect, and the organizations it will shutter, are precisely those who are pushing back against the judicial coup, the war, the violence in the West Bank, and the would-be authoritarianism of the current Netanyahu government. Netanyahu is trying to eliminate a huge chunk of his opposition in one fell swoop.
The bill would take out Netanyahu’s civil society opponents, and it would not hurt his friends. That’s because it includes two clear ways to exempt NGOs that the government favors: First, NGOs that receive Israeli government funding—even just one shekel—are automatically exempt from the tax. Second, the bill gives Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—a man who described himself as a “fascist homophobe”—near-sweeping power to exempt any NGO he likes.
In the explanatory notes, the authors of the bill try to make the case that money from governments makes Israeli non-profit organizations “foreign agents” disrupting Israel’s internal political process. But this is preposterous on its face. A full 60% of all donations to Israeli NGOs comes from abroad—not just from foreign governments, to be sure, but from abroad. Magen David Adom, Israel’s equivalent of the Red Cross, and the Foundation for the Welfare of Holocaust Victims, for example, both rely on foreign donors for more than half of their philanthropic funding.
And millions of ideological dollars flow into Israel from individual donors, corporations, and private foundations. Consider the giving history of right-wing millionaires and billionaires like Irving Moskowitz, or Sheldon Adelson, or Jeffrey Yass—and their evangelical friends. This is certainly money with an agenda, but it is not money that will be taxed.
All of this points to one thing: This bill is part of the Netanyahu government’s attempt to silence anyone who criticizes it or gets in its way—from the justice system to the media. They are now turning their sights on the civil society sector that NIF has nurtured and sustained for more than 45 years.
What will be taxed is money that, say, the government of the Netherlands donates. That government gives to organizations that support some of the same values as NIF: equality, democracy, aiding the most marginalized, environmental justice, minority rights, civil rights… the list goes on. This bill will, quite simply, spell the end for a number of organizations who rely largely on funding from friendly governments. But not only. The entire NGO sector in Israel would be hit by this bill—because it is designed to chill speech through fear. Even organizations that don’t lose funding might well think twice before speaking up. After all, if you were an organization doing good work, would you be critical of a government that could defund you in an instant? Probably not.
Finally, the current version of this bill also bars NGOs who receive foreign funding at a certain level from petitioning Israel’s High Court of Justice, a fundamental tool civil society has used for decades to hold the government accountable.
This is the judicial coup by another name. This bill would weaken grassroots opposition to government policies, undermine a system of checks and balances, entrench Netanyahu and his extremist allies’ power, and ultimately degrade Israel’s democracy.
This authoritarian tactic is playing out in the U.S., too. Just this week the House Ways and Means Committee passed a tax bill with a provision that would allow the Treasury Secretary unilateral authority to designate an American non-profit a “terrorist supporting organization” and to revoke its tax-exempt status. Giving one person this kind of discretionary power is not only exceedingly dangerous; it is antithetical to democracy. We are meant to be countries ruled by laws, not kings.
We will remain steadfastly opposed to these efforts and keep you in the loop as things develop.