Fact Check: Did Biden administration spend $1B to topple Israeli government?

WASHINGTON, DC: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dropped a bombshell claim this weekend that had heads spinning.

“Massive foreign intervention in an attempt to replace a right-wing government in Israel,” he warned on X. “An official document published by the US Congress reveals shocking information.... The previous US administration transferred close to a $1 billion to left-wing NGOs in Israel.”

Fact Check: Unfounded

Benjamin Netanyahu pointed fingers at what he called “an official document published by Congress.” According to the Jerusalem Post, however, it is from the House Judiciary Committee, but calling it an “official” document is a stretch.

The title itself, “The Biden-Harris administration’s funding of anti-Netanyahu nongovernmental organizations,” appears to be more of a political memo than a government mandate. “This memorandum provides an update on the inquiry and a summary of the committee’s key findings to date,” the intro states.

Dr Osnat Hazan of Tel Aviv University told the Post, “It’s not a legally binding document or an official report like that of the state comptroller.”

“These reports are written by committees in either the House or Senate, and control of these committees is clearly in the hands of the party that holds the majority in that house,” said Yiftach Dayan, an expert on US politics. “In the Senate, there is sometimes still bipartisan input – depending on how polarized things are and the size of the majority – but in the House of Representatives, the narrative and sometimes the facts reflect only one side.”

Advocate Galia Feit added, “President Donald Trump was fed up with the financial support the US provides to democratic principles and values worldwide, and this memo is another expression of that.” Meanwhile, Dayan said it’s all part of Trump’s “broader isolationist agenda — that the US shouldn’t be seen as interfering in other countries’ elections, unless the outcome isn’t to Joe Biden’s liking.”

Where’d the money go?

It's worth noting that the $1 billion doesn't exist in the actual report.

The closest match is $884 million, and that’s not from the US government. That chunk of change was funneled through PEF Israel Endowment Funds Inc, a US nonprofit that lets private American donors send money to Israeli organizations. Between 2021 and 2024, that’s how much flowed to “over 1,000 Israeli organizations, including groups involved in the judicial reform protests.”

But there are two big problems here. First, the current Israeli government wasn’t even around in 2021–2022. So lumping in those years inflates the total. Strip it down to 2023–2024, and we’re looking at under $545 million.

Second, even though that money didn’t go straight to protest groups. PEF supports everyone, from lefties like B’Tselem to mainstream groups like the Israel Museum and Hebrew University.

Prof Theodore Sasson from the Institute for National Security Studies chimed in, “They talk about huge numbers, but the overwhelming majority of the money – or perhaps all of it – goes to other kinds of causes in Israel that are much more similar to the Israel Museum, Magen David Adom, and the Hebrew University. So, yes, PEF facilitates donations to some protest organizations, but that’s at the request of private donors. Any money received by one of the protest organizations was sent by a donor to PEF with a request that it should be transferred to a specific organization.”

Dr Hazan backed that up. “You can even look at the Israeli NGOs mentioned to trace their funding. All the foreign money received by all the listed Israeli organizations in a given year only totals a few tens of millions of dollars, and most of it is from private sources," she said.

What was the Biden administration's role?

So, did the Biden administration funnel money to groups trying to topple Bibi?

The report does cite one direct transfer—$42,000 from the State Department to MQG (Movement for Quality Government in Israel) for a “Civic Activism Training Program” in three Jerusalem high schools. It came during 2020–2022, when Trump was still in office and Israel’s current government hadn’t yet formed.

But the report throws around theories that US money went to PEF or the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA), which then sent cash to protest-linked orgs. But the report hedges hard.

For instance, the claim about Blue and White Future getting $18 million via PEF in 2023 is not conclusive. It says BWF “may have been a downstream recipient of US grant funding.”

Even the report’s source, a JNS article by David Isaac, calls the federal funding to PEF “negligible” — just under $150,000.

“This document throws around a lot of ‘maybes,’” said Feit. “The memo implies that the money transferred from the government to RPA was used for the protests – something they don’t prove and can’t prove this way.”

Hazan commented, “Even solely on the basis of the data presented in this document, it’s 99.9% certain it didn’t happen.”

She points out that each year, about $2.5 billion flows from 2,000 US orgs to Israeli nonprofits, nearly all of it private. “So, there’s no plausibility to the claim that $1b. went from the administration to just four or five Israeli organizations," she insists.

According to Sasson, the Rockefeller Foundation acts more like a financial middleman for tiny nonprofits.

“It serves as a financial adviser to small nonprofits organizations too small to be recognized as NGOs," Sasson explained. "The government money apparently has no connection to Israel. The money the government gave to RPA probably went to one of these small groups for which the foundation acts as a financial agent.”

The latest spin appears to be that nonprofits like PEF sending money to political orgs violates tax laws. Sounds dramatic, but the IRS says 501(c)(3) orgs can engage in limited lobbying and public policy work as long as it’s educational or not too heavy-handed.

“The law is not entirely clear on this point, which is why there are American organizations that, to some extent, promote policy,” says Feit. “In Israel, there is no restriction on such activity.” If there is evidence that these guidelines were violated, the report does not provide it."

Benjamin Netanyahu’s big stretch

Benjamin Netanyahu declared, “The document reveals that the same hand that funded political left-wing organizations in Israel also funded... organizations affiliated with Hamas.”

But the report says that groups like the Rockefeller Foundation and USAID sent money to orgs like Defense for Children International Palestine (DCI-P) and American Near East Refugee Agency (ANERA) — both of which have been linked to terror groups.

However, DCI-P got funding starting in 2017, during Trump’s presidency, and was cut off in 2022 after Israel labeled it a terror group in 2021.

Meanwhile, ANERA’s funding goes way back, across decades and multiple presidents. Nothing special to Biden or the Democrats.

Feit and Hazan both insisted that lumping Hamas-linked orgs with Israeli protest groups in one document is misleading at best.