Effort to remove UNRWA Facebook fund-raising page fails
Social media giant to ‘Post’: Any 501(c)(3) is eligible to participate in its GivingTuesday program
Jerusalem City Council member Dan Illouz (Hitorerut) failed in his attempt to stop Facebook from allowing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to participate in its “GivingTuesday Donation Match Program.”
Illouz organized a petition, which he promoted at stopunrwa.com, because “UNRWA is an agency of the United Nations that is supposed to help Palestinian refugees. However, over the past few years, it has been under attack for inciting violence against Jews, glorifying terrorism and calling for the end of Israel as a Jewish state. Reports have shown that textbooks used in UNRWA schools incite hatred.”
“As a city council member in Jerusalem, I see UNRWA as a real strategic threat to our city and to peace,” he continued. “Giving Tuesday is a day meant to promote charity and generosity – not terrorism and hatred.”
He added that Facebook should draw some redlines: “Support of terrorism should be a redline,” he said.
But by the end of the day of charity on Tuesday, which follows Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the United States, Illouz had managed to get only 940 out of an expected 5,000 signatures.
UNRWA, on the other hand, put up its fund-raising page with the aim of raising NIS 35,057 and brought in NIS 25,509 from 106 people, according to its Facebook fund-raising page.
“On the day when the world calls upon individuals to open their hearts and wallets and contribute to a better global community, show Palestinian refugees they can count on you because it’s not about the dollar amount you choose to give; it’s about showing Palestinian refugees that Americans care,” the UNRWA page explained.
The Facebook GivingTuesday program offers $7 million in matching funds to eligible 501(c)(3) US charities that use the donation tools Facebook provides on GivingTuesday to solicit funds from their donors. Organizations can receive up to $20,000 per donor and up to $100,000 in total matching funds.
The matching funds became available at 8 a.m. EST on Tuesday and were matched on a first come, first served basis. In 2018, the funds ran out in minutes, UNRWA reported.
An UNRWA representative told The Jerusalem Post that it had not yet been informed whether it would receive any matching funds this year, and would likely know only in January, when Facebook would send a notification to the organization’s fund-raising page “to let us know how much was matched.”
The representative said that donors, on the other hand, could check if their donations were matched by going to their Facebook payment history page and tapping on the donation about which they would like more information.
“I hope we were able to double the donations for Palestine refugees!” the representative said.
JORDANA CUTLER, head of policy for Facebook, shared Facebook’s seven-page GivingTuesday Donation Match Program terms and conditions document with the Post, which makes clear that while “Facebook reserves the right at any time to require you to provide, and you agree to provide within the time frame requested, documentation, information, or other proof that you are eligible or otherwise are in compliance with the terms and the TOS [terms of services],” the program is open to any 501(c)(3) in good standing.
She told the Post that “501(c) (3) designation is given by the IRS. The IRS has its own criteria through which they determine to give this status. Facebook did not come and determine which 501(c)(3) would and would not be eligible.”
“If anyone has an issue with any organization that was eligible, those arguments should be put forth to whoever gave them their 501(c)(3) status and not Facebook,” Cutler concluded.
A source close to Facebook noted that it was unclear to the social media giant why anyone would want Facebook to determine which 501(c)(3) would get funds, which could leave organizations open to subjective discrimination.
Last week, former mayor of Jerusalem and Likud MK Nir Barkat proposed a bill calling for the end of UNRWA services for Israel’s Arab residents by January 1 and ending UNRWA’s involvement in some of Jerusalem’s Arab educational institutions by the end of June 2020.
Barkat made statements similar to Illouz’s in a release about the bill, such as that “UNRWA explicitly encourages incitement against Israel and attacking our citizens” and that “UNRWA facilities are also known to be terrorist bases in Gaza that store missiles used against Israeli civilians.”
Last month, the United Nations voted to extend UNRWA’s mandate until 2023. UNRWA’s mandate is renewed every three years in two stages. The second stage of the approval is expected to occur this month at the General Assembly.
In recent months, UNRWA underwent an ethical probe into its managerial conduct, which led UNRWA commissioner-general Pierre Krähenbühl to resign. A UN ethic report alleged mismanagement and abuses of authority among senior officials of the agency.
In August 2018, the United States announced it would cut all funding to the organization.