Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Jewish Agency Yanks Funds From Youth Group Over Anti-Occupation Activism

The Jewish Agency has cut funding from an Israel trip for young Jews over allegations that trip leaders brought participants to at a leftist protest camp in the West Bank, Haaretz reported.

The Israel trip, called Achvat Amim, is run by the socialist Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair and funded by the Jewish Agency’s MASA program. The trip brought American Jews to volunteer for Israeli-Arab coexistence groups. Last month, a right-wing Israeli organization accused Achvat Amim of taking participants to West Bank protest camp, where they shouted at Israeli soldiers.

Achvat Amim said particpants went to the protest camp on their own. The group’s leader, Daniel Roth, said participants never clashed with Isareli soldiers.

“We face a big challenge these days as a left-wing Zionist organization trying to convince young Jews abroad that it is possible to oppose the occupation and at the same time support Israel,” Hashomer Hatzair secretary general Oren Zukerkorn told Haarets. “If it weren’t for programs like this that target left-wing Jews, these kids would be pushed straight into the hands of the BDS [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions] movement.”

Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected] or on Twitter, @joshnathankazis.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.