Dozens of prominent Jewish philanthropists from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Israel sent a letter to Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar decrying a proposed bill that would impose an 80% tax on foreign governments’ donations to Israeli nonprofits, ahead of a Knesset committee hearing on the legislation later this week.

The so-called NGO bill — proposed by Likud MK Ariel Kallner — would also limit the ability of foreign-funded nonprofits to file petitions to Israeli courts. The bill also includes a provision that would allow the Israeli finance minister to exempt nonprofits, raising concerns that this would be applied based on the partisan affiliations of the foreign-funded organizations. The legislation has been met with fierce resistance from Israeli civil society groups and now from international donors.

“It’s a piece of legislation itself, which I think is not the sort of legislation that you want to see in a democratic country because it grants powers of exclusion to politicians in power, which can be used in very negative ways,” Sir Mick Davis, a former chair of the British Conservative Party, who spearheaded the letter and is also one of the two leaders of the Israel-focused London Inititiave, told eJewishPhilanthropy.

“And it doesn’t matter who’s in power, whether it’s this government or a new government, it doesn’t matter. This sort of legislation should not be on the statute book,” he said. “It sends out the wrong signals about the sort of country that Israel is and the nature of the democratic dispensation that exists in Israel and the pride that every political leader in Israel has when they say, ‘We are the only democracy in the Middle East.’”

Describing it as an “assault on the philanthropic endeavours of Diaspora Jews,” the more than 60 donors who signed the letter explain their opposition to the bill on two grounds — that while it only affects foreign government donations, most of the nonprofits that it would affect have received “seed funding from Diaspora Jewish philanthropists”, and that the measure represents “a dangerous attack on the democratic foundations of the state.” The letter adds that the bill would also antagonize the allies funding the affected nonprofits “at a time when they are most needed.”

In addition to these issues, Davis noted that the measure undermines a common understanding in the nonprofit world, that organizations should strive to receive state funding for their initiatives and not only private donations, that this is a mark of good standing. “Many of [the organizations that would be affected] were seeded originally by Diaspora philanthropy, and because of that, they have achieved a certain objective and status where they are now receiving funding from certain states to further their objectives,” he said.

Addressing Sa’ar directly, the letter calls for him to “do what you can to scrap this cynical, dangerous and undemocratic bill.”

Proponents of the bill maintain that it is necessary in order to combat “foreign-funded legal warfare against the state,” as Kallner described it in February.

The signers of the letter against the legislation come from a range of political backgrounds. They include Charles Bronfman, Angelica Berrie, Lord Stanley Fink, Susie Gelman, Sally Gottesman, Jeffrey Solomon and Dame Vivien Duffield.

Davis said that most of the signatories are people whom he knew or was otherwise able to contact quickly, as he wanted to send the letter to Sa’ar ahead of the hearing on Wednesday in the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee.

The letter notes that all of the donors involved have made significant donations to Israeli causes over the years, including in the wake of the Oct. 7 terror attacks. “These contributions have been made possible thanks to Israel’s diverse and dynamic civil society sector, which we have long supported,” they wrote.

“We are dismayed, therefore, by the punitive bill introduced to the Knesset that seeks to deny legitimate and worthy NGOs of foreign state donations by imposing a crippling 80% tax on any such funding,” the letter reads. “This will, deliberately, cripple almost 100 organisations and appears motivated solely by narrow political interests ill becoming of any government, irrespective of its political ethos.”

Davis told eJP that he decided to address the letter to the foreign minister — and to the Israeli ambassadors to the signers’ home countries — as opposed to Kallner, the bill’s sponsor, or any other legislator, from a belief that the NGO bill would damage Israel’s standing abroad. “Because we think this impacts Israel standing internationally, the most appropriate minister to send it to was the minister of foreign affairs,” he said.