Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF)

FIDF has received some criticism for being an American organization that raises money for a foreign military, and for allegedly being a source of domestic radicalism and pro-Israel extremism within Israel and the international Jewish community. ^{3 4}

FIDF has also had financial controversy, particularly in 2017 when 45 plaintiffs sued several Israeli government officials and members of the first Trump administration under the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, a post-9/11 law that made it possible for individual victims of terrorism to sue foreign government officials who financed the terrorism. ⁵

Activities

Friends of the Israel Defense Forces has several programs it offers IDF soldiers, veterans, and their families. These include mental health and spiritual counseling, financial support, educational programs, emergency war support, wounded soldier aid, lone soldier support, and construction help. ¹ Between 2020 and 2025, Friends of the IDF has reportedly spent nearly $20 million on lone soldier programs while supporting over 6,500 lone soldiers annually. A statement by the organization stated it provides them, “with practical, emotional and mental health support throughout their service to make sure they never feel alone.” ⁶

FIDF also has various campaigns, including canine companionship for IDF veterans and their families, “operation hug” to bring IDF soldiers’ families to see them on deployment, and an “adopt a battalion” program through which donors can sponsor individual IDF battalions. ^{7 8 3}

FIDF also hosts benefit dinners, fundraising events, and charity galas. One such 2025 benefit dinner involved an address from Glenn Cohen, a clinical psychologist and hostage debrief team leader who counseled former hostages taken by Hamas in the October 7, 2023 attacks after their release. ⁹

Leadership

Steven Weil was appointed the CEO of the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces in 2020. He previously worked as a pulpit rabbi, serving congregations in Michigan and California. His daughter is an IDF Lone Soldier (an Israeli soldier without family resident in Israel), and he has spent much of his career advocating for Israel and the IDF. In 2009, Weil assumed the position of senior managing director of the Orthodox Union. Weil attended Yeshiva University, where he concurrently completed his ordination at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, and earned an MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business. ¹⁰

Marc Perlman is the president of the FIDF board of directors. Larry J. Hochberg and Morey Levovitz are co-chairmen of the FIDF board of directors. ¹¹

Finances

In 2023, Friends of the Israel Defense Forces reported $281,961,247 in total revenue, $143,165,470 in total expenses, and $336,434,268 in total assets. ¹²

In 2023, FIDF received several grants from large donor advisor groups and nonprofit charitable organizations including the following: a $180,000 grant from the Natan and Lidia Peisach Family Foundation; a $105,000 grant from the Janet and Tony Goldman Family Foundation Inc; a $1,895,000 from the Fund for Israel’s Tomorrow; a $6,366,000 grant from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews; a $890,000 grant from the Iranian American Jewish Federation; a $866,740 grant from the Ocean State Job Lot Charitable Foundation; a $300,000 grant from the Crown Family Foundation; a $399,302 grant from the Paypal Charitable Giving Fund; and a $2,783,674 grant from the Fidelity Investment Charitable Gift Fund. ^{13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21}

In 2014, Hollywood billionaire mogul and fundraiser Haim Saban hosted a dinner to benefit the FIDF. The event brought in nearly $34 million in donations, including from the following donors: $10 million from Larry Ellison; $5 million from top Republican fundraisers Sheldon and Miriam Adelson; $5.2 million from Maurice and Paul Marciano of Guess Jeans; $3.6 million from Saban and his wife Cheryl Saban; $2 million from Steve Tisch, chairman and executive vice president of the New York Giants; $1 million from Leo David, founder of the Western Region of FIDF; and $1.6 million from The Helmsley Charitable Trust. ²²

Saban hosted another event in 2015 which produced $31 million in donations for FIDF. ²³

Following the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack against Israel, Israeli singer Noa Kirel conducted a tour of the United States during which she performed and solicited donations from her audience. The tour was organized in coordination with FIDF and the Ben Yosef family. It brought in $29.5 million in donations. ²⁴

Controversy

In 2014, members of the anti-Israel protest group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) occupied the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces building in protest of FIDF’s support for the IDF’s military operations in Gaza. When the activists occupied the building, they held banners accusing FIDF of supporting war crimes in the Palestinian occupied territories and read the names of dead Palestinians. All nine of the JVP protesters were arrested. ²⁵

In January 2025, an opinion editorial in The Jewish Independent supported the mission of the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces and other pro-Israel groups but also criticized them for stoking pro-Israel radicalism in Israel and across the international Jewish community. The piece argued that domestic extremism in Israel is as much a threat to Israel as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. ⁴

Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorist Act Suit

In 2017, 45 plaintiffs sued several Israeli government officials and members of the first Trump administration under the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, a post-9/11 law that made it possible for individual victims of terrorism to sue foreign government officials who financed the terrorism. The 2017 suit was led by Martin McMahon of the Transnational Business Attorneys Group who claimed that Israel’s expansion into Palestinian-occupied territories amounted to “war crimes,” including “promoting, participating in, or funding international terrorism.” Among the individuals, charities, and nonprofits who were listed as co-defendants were then-Israeli Ministry of Defense officials Ehud Barak and Avigdor Lieberman, President Trump’s then-U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, the American Friends of Bet El Institutions (where Friedman was president), Jared Kushner’s Kushner Family Foundation, and FIDF, where Kushner sat on the national board. The initial legal complaint asserted that because Israel’s tax code prohibits Israeli citizens from making charitable donations to Israeli settlements in the disputed territories, the Friedman and Kushner families “set up NGOs in Israel to receive their donations.” The complaint accused the defendants and their accountants of committing tax fraud, perjury and violations of federal money-laundering laws. Since 2009, Jared Kushner’s family foundations have donated $325,000 to FIDF. ^{5 26 27}

Helen Diller Foundation

In 2024, students at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) called on its Jewish Studies center to drop funding from and remove its connection with the Helen Diller Foundation over its support for pro-Israel nonprofits and NGOs. The student group claimed that the foundation has given $8.9 million to “explicitly Zionist, anti-Palestinian, and anti-Muslim groups,” including FIDF. ²⁸

Resnick Family

Between 2015 and 2022, billionaire couple Stewart and Lynda Resnick donated $2.4 million to FIDF. In 2024, the couple was accused of impacting the availability of water to address the Los Angeles wildfires. Through their Wonderful Company, the Resnicks own a significant portion of California’s water resources. The Unity News Network suggested that the couple bears partial responsibility for the lack of water to treat the flames in Los Angeles, a supposition that others have decried as an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. ²⁹

Google Donation-Matching

In 2024, Middle East Eye published a story detailing how Google matches its employees’ donations to various pro-Israel groups, including FIDF. Google, which faces pressure from many of its employees over its ties to Israel through Project Nimbus—a $1.2 billion partnership with Amazon to provide cloud computing and AI services to Israel’s government and army—has received pushback from its employees who claim the company is funding human rights violations in Gaza. Since 2024, Google has had employee-led sit-ins in protest of its support for Israel and has been criticized by No Tech for Apartheid, an anti-Israel tech group. Under the name Googlers Against Genocide, pro-Palestinian Google employees have claimed to have endured intimidation from the company and other workers for their activism. ³⁰