Abstract:
Friends of the Israel Defense Forces is a registered US 501c3 charity sending federally tax deductible donations toward Israeli military personnel, moving over three hundred twenty five million dollars between 2023 and 2025. This piece, the second in a series on dual national soldiers under war crimes investigation in six countries, examines the legally registered infrastructure connecting American citizens to IDF service. It documents Nefesh B Nefesh and FIDF own Lone Soldiers Program, both organizations own explicit disclaimers that recruitment is not their objective, and separately verified investigative reporting from The Intercept documenting a New York charity called Nevut organizing events for American volunteers and a school pipeline running through American Jewish day schools. It cites Nonprofit Quarterly, specialist nonprofit sector journalism rather than political commentary, raising unresolved questions about IRS oversight of these tax structures. The piece states plainly that none of the named organizations face documented criminal investigation, and that legal doctrines connecting institutional support to individual war crimes liability remain a real but unproven possibility, not an established fact, concluding only that a legally registered, tax advantaged infrastructure now connects directly to a system under active investigation in six countries.
Main Article:
Friends of the Israel Defense Forces is registered with the United States Internal Revenue Service under tax identification number 13 3156445, filed as a 501c3 public charity, the same legal category that governs a local food bank or a children hospital. Donations to it are federally tax deductible for the American taxpayers who make them. Between 2023 and 2025, the organization sent more than three hundred twenty five million dollars to Israel for the health, wellbeing, and education of Israeli soldiers, reservists, veterans, and their families, and reported revenue of two hundred eighty one million dollars in 2023 alone. This piece is the second in a series examining accountability for alleged war crimes committed by dual national soldiers serving in the Israeli military. The first piece documented the individual soldiers and the investigations now opening against them across six countries. This piece is about the infrastructure that made their service possible in the first place, and about a question the first piece could only gesture toward, whether a door opened onto individual criminal accountability eventually widens to include the institutions that built the pathway those individuals walked through.
Begin with the organizations themselves, because they are real, named, and legally registered, not shadowy or hidden. Nefesh B Nefesh, founded in 2001 and registered with its own American tax identification number, describes its mission as facilitating aliyah, Jewish immigration to Israel, and states it has brought more than eighty thousand immigrants to Israel since 2002. Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, older still, founded in 1981 by a group of Holocaust survivors, describes itself as the organization authorized to collect charitable donations on behalf of IDF soldiers across the United States. Together, operating under a formal partnership, the two run what they call the Lone Soldiers Program, providing financial grants, a twenty four hour call center, moving assistance, host families, and what the program itself describes as advocacy with government agencies and direct connections inside the Israeli government, including, in its own words, an employee who sits within the IDF itself. Both organizations state explicitly, in disclaimers posted on their own websites, that it is not the objective or part of the scope of their operational activities to help recruit soldiers for the Israel Defense Forces. This publication reports that disclaimer accurately and alongside it, because a stated purpose and a documented effect are not always the same thing, and the distinction between them is where this piece has to do its most careful work.
Investigative reporting conducted independently of these organizations own statements has found a considerably more active recruitment apparatus operating in parallel. The Intercept, in reporting published in July 2025, documented a New York based charity called Nevut organizing social events for American volunteers who sign up for the Israeli military, including gatherings with sitting members of Congress and a promotional video advertising a shooting range visit as, in the words of a man shown wearing military tactical gear in the video, a little dose of enjoyable fire, while stating that a majority of the men shown serve in the war in Gaza. The same reporting documented a separate organization, Garin Tzabar, continuing to recruit lone soldiers from the United States who go on to serve in combat in Gaza and in operations in the West Bank, and identified a recruitment pipeline running directly through American Jewish day schools, from conservative yeshivas to modern Jewish day schools, that advertise, as a point of institutional pride, how many of their own alumni go on to serve in the Israeli military. Friends of the IDF own support structure describes serving seven thousand lone soldiers with no immediate family in Israel, a population the organization states is drawn roughly evenly from Israelis without family support and volunteers from abroad.
The tax question sitting underneath all of this is not a fringe concern invented by critics of Israel. It has been raised inside the American nonprofit sector own specialist press, examining the same structure from a position of institutional rather than political concern. Nonprofit Quarterly, a publication covering the charitable sector rather than foreign policy, has noted plainly that it is not clear whether the Internal Revenue Service audits friends of organizations of this kind with the same scrutiny applied to domestic charities, and cited nonprofit sector experts suggesting it would be cleaner, from a compliance standpoint, for a foreign charity to register with the IRS directly rather than route donations through an intermediary American friends organization. The same reporting raised a specific and pointed version of the underlying question, whether it is appropriate for entities providing combat or technical gear for military purposes to solicit tax deductible donations from American citizens at all, a question this publication states plainly is being asked by people whose professional concern is the integrity of American charitable law, not by partisans of either side of the underlying conflict.
Hold this structure beside what the first piece in this series already documented. More than fifty thousand six hundred serving IDF members hold foreign citizenship, over twelve thousand of them American, and six governments have now opened or are actively pursuing investigations into alleged war crimes committed by soldiers holding their citizenship. None of the organizations named in this piece are themselves under any documented criminal investigation, and this publication states that distinction as plainly as it has stated every other one in this series. Facilitating immigration to Israel, providing financial support to soldiers, and running social programming for lone soldiers are not, on their own, criminal acts, and nothing in the reporting this piece has cited establishes that any of these organizations knowingly facilitated a war crime by any specific individual. What the documented record does establish is a fully built, legally registered, tax advantaged infrastructure connecting American citizens directly into IDF service, an infrastructure whose stated purpose, in each organization own disclaimers, is carefully distinguished from recruitment, while investigative reporting independent of those organizations has documented recruitment adjacent activity, including direct outreach to American teenagers through school pipelines, happening in parallel and often through separate but related entities.
This is the honest, bounded place this piece can end, because the question it raises is one the documented record cannot yet answer with certainty. If the investigations opened in Belgium, Britain, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere eventually produce convictions against specific dual national soldiers for specific war crimes, the legal doctrines governing accomplice liability, material support, and command responsibility are, in principle, capable of reaching upward from an individual soldier to the institutions that funded, recruited, transported, and sustained his service, if and only if a court finds the necessary knowledge and intent on the part of those institutions specifically. That is a real legal possibility this piece names plainly as a possibility rather than a certainty. It has not happened yet, no such case has been filed against any of the organizations named here, and this publication will not claim otherwise. What can be stated plainly is that the infrastructure now exists, is legally registered, operates with tax advantages granted by the American state itself, and connects, without concealment, directly to a system now under investigation in six countries for the conduct of the very soldiers it exists to support.
References:
1. Wikipedia, "Friends of the Israel Defense Forces," citing the organization's founding year, tax identification number, 501c3 status, and 2023 revenue and expenses figures.
2. FIDF.org, "Lone Soldier Support," citing the figure of 7,000 lone soldiers supported and the $325 million total sent between 2023 and 2025.
3. GuideStar Profile, "Friends of the Israel Defense Forces," citing the organization's self-description as the sole authorized collector of charitable donations for IDF soldiers in the United States.
4. Wikipedia, "Nefesh B'Nefesh," citing the organization's founding in 2001, its tax identification number, and the figure of more than 80,000 olim brought to Israel since 2002.
5. Nefesh B'Nefesh FIDF Lone Soldiers Program website, "Services for Lone Soldiers" and "Our Team" pages, citing the program's structure, financial grants, and its stated disclaimer that recruitment is not part of its operational objective.
6. The New Arab, "'Lone Soldiers': The Foreign Fighters in Israel's War on Gaza," September 2025, citing Nefesh B'Nefesh and Friends of the IDF's support packages for foreign volunteers.
7. The Intercept, "U.S. Nonprofits Funnel Millions to Israeli Army Volunteers," 19 July 2025. Citing the New York-based charity Nevut, its social events with members of Congress, its shooting range promotional video, the organization Garin Tzabar's continued recruitment of lone soldiers, and the recruitment pipeline through American Jewish day schools.
8. Nonprofit Quarterly, "'Friends-of' Charities Raising Money for Overseas Groups--Including Israeli Military Concerns." Citing the assessment that FIDF is a registered US 501c3 with tax-deductible donations, the uncertainty regarding IRS audit practices for such organizations, and the raised question of appropriateness regarding tax-deductible donations to entities supporting military purposes.
9. The first piece in this series, documenting Israeli military data on dual national soldiers and active war crimes investigations across six countries.