Your Daily Phil: How British sanctions could affect Israeli nonprofits
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In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we examine the possible effects that British sanctions will have on Israeli nonprofits that operate in the West Bank. We report on the inaugural Taib Prize for National Resilience being awarded toIsraeli nonprofit Daf Hadash, and on the launch of Birthright Israel’s Global Business Summit in November. We feature an opinion piece by Max D. Baumgarten and Arielle Levites about knowing where a data point comes from before relying on it, and a piece by Amy Meltzer about the impact of giving campers and staff opportunities to explore Israel’s complexities with the young people living them. Also in this issue: Ruby Chen, Stefanie Kushner and Whitney Weathers.
Today’s Your Daily Phil was curated by eJP Opinion Editor Rachel Kohn and Israel Editor Justin Hayet. Have a tip? Email us here.
What We’re Watching
The La’Aretz Foundation, an organization that provides humanitarian relief, emergency aid and educational support across Israel, will host its Annual Benefit Dinner tonight in Manhattan.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD FROM eJP’S JUDAH ARI GROSS
After weeks of signaling its intentions, the British government announced fresh economic restrictions on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, banning goods from settlements and imposing sanctions on “specific companies and individuals who provide services such as construction, infrastructure, financing, or real estate for settlement expansion,” accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and turning a “blind eye” to extremist violence against Palestinians. France and Canada have announced similar measures.
For British, Canadian and French nonprofits that support organizations in the West Bank, the practical effects of the new trade bans and economic sanctions will likely be minimal as existing laws already limit their ability to fund initiatives beyond the “Green Line” — the de facto border between Israel proper and the West Bank. As it is, British and Canadian authorities are investigating Jewish nonprofits that support activities in the West Bank.
And yet, while the sanctions and bans may have a limited concrete effect on Israeli nonprofits that operate in the West Bank, several figures involved in Diaspora philanthropy told eJewishPhilanthropy that they could have a chilling effect on foreign donations to all Israeli causes.
Speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive diplomatic issue, the sources said that these changes will make it easier for anti-Israeli organizations and individuals to lodge complaints with tax authorities in those countries and generally make support for Israeli initiatives more fraught and controversial. As a result, many would-be funders may decide that funding such projects is not worth the added hassle and social stigma associated with them, even if they are entirely in line with the law.
Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here.
News
RESILIENCE RECOGNIZED
Daf Hadash, an Israeli organization focused on financial responsibility, wins inaugural Taib Prize for National Resilience
For its work with military reservists whose finances buckled under prolonged service since the start of the war in Gaza, the debt-relief nonprofit Daf Hadash is the recipient of the Taib Foundation’s first Taib Prize for National Resistance, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Justin Hayet from the inaugural awards last night at the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation in Jaffa.
Beyond the check: Speaking on the sidelines of the event, Haim Taib, the international businessman and philanthropist who established the foundation, framed it as an active partner to the groups it supports. “To give money, it’s not enough,” he told eJP. “It is to be partners with whom you are giving money and together to build [their] idea.” The Taib Foundation intends to make the award an annual tradition to boost the profile of nonprofits and practitioners dedicated to strengthening national resilience in Israel.
EXCLUSIVE
Birthright launches Global Business Summit, connecting Diaspora donors, Israeli financial figures
Birthright Israel is launching a new Global Business Summit in November in Tel Aviv, connecting its top donors from the Diaspora and Israel, the organization exclusively told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross.
Who’s who: The invite-only summit will feature several of Birthright Israel’s largest donors from Israel and abroad — most notably Dr. Miriam Adelson — as well as British investor Sir Ronald Cohen; Eyal Waldman, founder of Mellanox; Amit Krig, NVIDIA-Israel site leader and senior vice president of networking software; former Mossad director Yossi Cohen; investor and ICON founder Yasmin Lukatz; former Microsoft Israel CEO Shelly Landsmann; and others.
Opinion
HABITS OF INQUIRY
The best defense against the dangers of fake data
In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Max D. Baumgarten, director of North American operations at The Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation in Los Angeles, and Arielle Levites, managing director of the Collaborative for Applied Studies in Jewish Education at George Washington University, urge the Jewish community to take data literacy seriously.
“[W]e are also vulnerable to misinformation and low-quality information, both of which can inadvertently shape how we understand the challenges facing the Jewish world and decide where to direct our interventions. The fix isn’t catching hoaxes, whack-a-mole-style, after they start to spread throughout our information ecosystem. It’s building a habit of asking where a number comes from before using it to inform decisions and assumptions.”
SIDE BY SIDE
A different kind of Israel encounter at camp
In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Amy Meltzer, director of training and talent development at Foundation for Jewish Camp, reflects on a pilot initiative she directed this summer that brought two Israeli 18-year-olds — one a Jewish IDF soldier, the other a self-described Palestinian Israeli – to speak at multiple Jewish camps.
“[C]amps want to provide opportunities to discuss and explore Israel’s complexities but aren’t always sure how. Givat Haviva and the Natan Fund helped FJC provide camps with exactly that: time with Israelis nearly their own age, bringing perspectives many campers and staff had never heard before.”
Worthy Reads
Remembrance and Accountability: In Jewish Insider, Marc Rod spotlights Ruby Chen, whose son Itay’s remains were taken captive during the Oct. 7 terror attacks and returned from Gaza in November 2025, as he presses Washington to create an Oct. 7 memorial and faults Israeli political leaders for ducking accountability. “I did not hear an individual that showed any type of remorse or accountability, but actually [former Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer] looked at it as a win by stating, ‘Oh, we had all the hostages out,’ Chen said of Dermer’s remarks. ‘You don’t get points when 45 hostages were killed in captivity.””
Unity’s Long Unraveling: In The Wall Street Journal, the paper’s former Washington bureau chief, Gerald F. Seib, argues that the sweeping national unity after 9/11 gave way to the wars, cynicism and anti-establishment anger that define today’s partisan politics. “Still, American politics moves in cycles, and there is ample reason to believe that the current phase of divisiveness will give way to a new spirit of unity, perhaps under some leader yet to be determined. Few would have guessed that Abraham Lincoln, or Franklin Roosevelt, or Ronald Reagan were capable of unifying Americans as they did, so it would be a mistake to say it isn’t possible”
Judaism’s Printing Press: In The Times of Israel, Jewish educator Chaim Botwinick contends that AI is his generation’s printing press for Jewish day schools — able to tutor each child individually and free teachers for the mentorship only humans offer, if schools confront cheating and fabricated sources. “Not unlike other professions, the fear that many teachers have is whether AI will replace them. But in reality, a teacher using AI will replace a teacher not using AI.”
Transitions
ElStefanie Kushner was hired to be the next CEO of Jewish Federation of Madison (Wis.)…
Jake Shapiro joined Repair the World as its next managing director of New York…
Bamah, an organization that builds connections to Israel outside the Jewish community through Israeli culture, hired Whitney Weathers as its chief program and strategy officer…
Democratic Majority for Israel appointed Michael Horowitz, David Kramer, Jeffrey Stewart, Jerry Yanowitz and Kinney Zalesne to its board of directors…
Word on the Street
Raul Morales was indicted Tuesday on 10 counts, including attempted murder as a hate crime, over the July 23 stabbings of two men near Upper West Side’s Jewish Center in attacks prosecutors are calling antisemitic…
More than a dozen Michigan rabbis, cantors and lay leaders launched a petition pressing Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed to affirm five “nonnegotiable” commitments to the Jewish community, warning his rhetoric threatens Jewish support for the party, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports…
As Jewish students return to K-12 classrooms and face another year marked by increased antisemitism, five major Jewish organizations — the Jewish Federations of North America, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and StandWithUs — released a Jewish Students’ Bill of Rights…
The New York Times is soliciting reader feedback on “how Israel’s war in Gaza is affecting New Yorkers,” specifically asking Jewish respondents to let them know how their views and feelings have evolved since the Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023…
In The Wall Street Journal, Harvard University professor Roland Fryer and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman announced the Carob Trust Prize for Academic Courage, which will award up to $1 million each to as many as five social scientists a year who were attacked or silenced for publishing sound research on controversial topics…
Temple University scrapped a record $55 million pledge from alumnus and former trustee Christopher Barnett — reversing the renaming of its public health college — after federal investigators began probing his autism-care company for alleged wire fraud and money laundering…
In The Forward, four Bronfman Fellowship alumni who first visited the United States as Israeli teenagers reflect on their shifting views of America and its Jewish communities as the U.S. marks its 250th anniversary…
Actor John Malkovich has pulled out of a satirical show set for next year in Tel Aviv after a PR firm hired by the Israeli promoter published a fabricated quote in his name gushing about a return to Israel that he says he never spoke nor approved…
Kamran Hekmati, a Jewish Iranian-American man from Long Island, was reportedly freed from Tehran’s Evin Prison after about a year of imprisonment but is still barred from leaving Iran…
Pic of the Day
Israeli President Isaac Herzog meets with David Danieli at the President’s Residence in Jersualem on Tuesday nearly 80 years after Herzog’s grandfather, Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Isaac Halevi Herzog, helped rescue Danieli and hundreds of other orphaned Jewish children from postwar Poland.
Birthdays
Reuven Rivlin, president of Israel from 2014 to 2021, turns 87
Barbara Schechter, Beverly Hills resident
Kenneth Lieberthal, senior fellow emeritus in the foreign policy program at The Brookings Institution, turns 83
Donald M. Berwick, former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, turns 80
Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum and publisher of its Middle East Quarterly journal, turns 77
Richard Joel, president emeritus of Yeshiva University, turns 76
Nissim Ze’ev, a founder of the Shas party, he served in the Knesset for 16 years, turns 75
Martin Kramer, founding president of Shalem College in Jerusalem, he is the Walter P. Stern fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, turns 72
Steven Elworth, Brooklyn educator
Altie Karper, retired editorial director of Schocken Books (the Judaica imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, which is part of Penguin Random House)
Shari Arison, Israeli businesswoman and philanthropist, at times reported to be the wealthiest woman in the Middle East, turns 69
Aaron G. Frenkel, Israeli businessman, based in Monaco, he is the president of Limmud FSU, turns 69
Suzanna Stone
Jeffrey Weintraub, D.C.-based communications strategist and tactician
Eric B. Dezenhall, crisis management consultant, author and co-founder of D.C.-based PR firm Dezenhall Resources, turns 64
Lloyd Appel, founder and managing member of Alternative Asset CFO Services
Chris Coons, U.S. senator (D-DE), turns 63
Skip Kendall, professional golfer formerly on both the PGA Tour and then on the Champions Tour, turns 62
Adam Sandler, actor, comedian, screenwriter, film producer and musician, turns 60
Jonathan Cohn, author and former senior national correspondent at HuffPost for 10 years, now senior national correspondent at The Bulwark, turns 57
Sacha Frédéric Litman, former partner and associate director at Boston Consulting Group, now an independent consultant
David Freedlander, features writer and political columnist for New York magazine
Zeev Farbman, Israeli entrepreneur and the CEO and co-founder of Lightricks, turns 47
Michael B. Greenwald, director of global executive relations at Amazon Web Services
Carla Hashley, program specialist at USC’s school of architecture
Brett Perlmutter, former head of Google Cuba, now an investor and strategist
Trey Meehan, managing director at Alums for Campus Fairness
Ben Lang, co-founder of International Hummus Day in 2012, now an angel investor, he served in the IDF’s signals intelligence group, Unit 8200
Luke Hughes, fourth overall pick by the New Jersey Devils in the 2021 NHL draft, he is the son of hockey star Ellen Weinberg-Hughes, turns 23
