LONDON: A British charity is funding a Jewish religious school in an illegal settlement in Hebron, according to the UK government’s Charity Commission.
Friends of Yeshivat Shavei Hevron sent almost £200,000 ($267,000) to Hebron Yeshiva between 2019 and 2024, according to figures on the regulator’s website.
The school received approval for a new dormitory to be built in June after an agreement on planning authority in the city was broken by Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
Parts of the expansion are already complete and the Israeli military has built an outpost on top of a Palestinian house located next to the site.
The expansion will increase the population of the settlement, which is kept isolated from the local Palestinian population by an Israeli military-run complex of defense systems, including fences, walls and checkpoints.
Nadav Weiman, executive director of Breaking the Silence, a group founded by Israeli combat veterans to document military abuses in occupied Palestine, said students at the yeshiva were known for violence, including throwing stones at Palestinians.
“If communities fund that (new) dormitory, they are funding more violence, funding the next wave that will bring death to Palestinian families and Israeli families,” he said.
“Everything that happens in Hebron first, happens elsewhere afterwards.”
Issa Amro, a Hebron-based Palestinian human rights activist and co-founder of the group Youth Against Settlements, said: “We want British charities to fund peace, not to fund obstacles for peace. This is very wrong.
“The students at this yeshiva are very aggressive. A new building will mean more violence toward Palestinians, more restrictions, more Israeli military presence.”
Hagit Ofran, from the Israeli advocacy group Peace Now, said: “For this yeshiva to exist, thousands of Palestinians have already lost their shops, their housing and their daily livelihood in the heart of a Palestinian city.
“The new dormitory is a significant development because they are adding more settlers in Hebron, the most extreme settlement, where apartheid is everywhere.”
In 2023 Friends of Yeshivat Shavei Hevron donated £58,200 to the school and claimed £2,000 in gift aid from the government, despite claiming on its website that it is not registered for the incentive scheme. In 2024 it sent £21,360 to the school.
The website claims the charity’s aims are to fund education “in the state of Israel,” which Hebron Yeshiva is not. Israel has not defined its own borders, but the UK, which recognized the state of Palestine last year, considers Hebron part of Palestinian territory.
Friends of Yeshivat Shavei Hevron is one of 32 charities based in England and Wales identified by UK Labour Party lawmaker Melanie Ward as having donated about £28 million to Israeli settlements in recent years.
UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said last month that “charity systems are abused to funnel support to illegal settlements” and that “some evidence suggests that rules are being broken.”
She said that the Charity Commission had been asked to investigate links between charities and Israeli settlements. The Guardian reported that information had been passed by the commission to the Metropolitan Police but that no investigation was underway.
The commission said in a statement: “This remains a complex and contentious issue, which touches on wider legal principles about charities’ right to operate and support the most vulnerable, in parts of the world in which there may be conflict, contested jurisdiction or lawlessness.”
Hebron Yeshiva receives funding from around the world including other states where Israeli settlements are considered illegal. In the US, Israeli tech firm IsraelGives crowdfunds for businesses based in settlements.
In the UK, Friends of Yeshivat Shavei Hevron provides details of a Barclays Bank account for donors to transfer money to.
A Barclays spokesperson said it “does have policies and procedures in place to meet its legal and regulatory obligations — including appropriate due diligence and financial crime controls for charity clients,” but that it could not comment on individual customers.
Friends of Yeshivat Shavei Hevron was approached for comment.
