Revealed: how US residents are funding illegal settlements in the West Bank

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: ::: spoiler Click here to see the summary The revelations come amid an escalating humanitarian crisis caused by IDF attacks killing civilians in Gaza, and mounting campaigns in the US to enforce laws that should prevent US non-profits from funding illegal settlements.

On 13 October, Israeli human rights organization B’Teselem circulated a video of a settler from the community shooting a Palestinian man at point-blank range with an AR-style rile in the neighboring village of Tawani as an IDF soldier looked on.

The Guardian contacted IsraelGives to ask if it was concerned about exposing international donors to legal liability, citing the Ma’on fundraiser as a specific example of, and founder and CEO Jonathan Ben-Dor responded in an email.

Ben-dor said that the site supported “human and civil rights organizations, humanitarian aid projects, and movements for the promotion of democracy, alongside religious and educational activities – some leftwing, some rightwing (some Jewish, some Arab)”.

Ben-dor wrote that the Ma’on campaign was “created automatically on our platform through a war-time program designed to provide emergency assistance to communities and families directly affected by the October 7th attacks”.

However, she pointed to initiatives including the so-called “Not on Our Dime” bill, supported by CCR and other organizations, currently before New York’s state house, which “clarifies that funding Israeli settlement activity… is illegal”, according to a campaign website.

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