‘ Decision to replace United Israel Appeal head invalid, won’t be respected’
Board of Trustees chair Steven Lowy says ‘ all avenues’ will be explored to prevent incumbent world chairman Sam Grundwerg from being ousted
Steven Lowy, the chairman of the World Board of Trustees of Keren Hayesod– United Israel Appeal, has said that the vote passed in the 38th World Zionist Congress last week to extend the tenure of the organization’s current world chairman for just six months is invalid and violates its constitution and bylaws.
The decision, as it stands, means that world chairman Sam Grundwerg’s time in his position will end in April 2021, and a candidate from the Blue and White Party will subsequently be elected to replace him, in accordance with a political deal forged at the WZC last week.
Lowy said that United Israel Appeal itself does not recognize the legitimacy of the vote in the WZC, and that it was the “unilateral position of the entire World Board of Trustees” of United Israel Appeal that the organization “never agreed to this decision or will ever agree to this decision.”
Asked if the Board of Trustees would take legal action if the decision is not reversed, Lowy said simply, “We would look at all avenues in dealing with what
will happen.”
The World Zionist Organization declined to comment.
Lowy’s comments presage a potentially severe struggle over the control and governance of the organization between its Diaspora leadership and the political and denominational elements that formulated the agreement as passed in the WZC.
Keren Hayesod– United Israel Appeal is a major fundraising organization for the State of Israel in the Diaspora outside of the US, and distributes close to $ 200 million annually, overwhelmingly to projects in Israel.
It is governed by the World Board of Trustees and Board of Directors, but its chairman is supposed to be agreed upon by a joint committee of United Israel Appeal and WZO officials who have equal weight and representation on the panel, known as the Advice and Consent Committee.
Once a candidate is agreed upon, the World Zionist Congress takes a vote to confirm them as world chairman.
In August, ahead of last week’s congress, Lowy said that he communicated clearly to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz that the World Board of Trustees strongly believed that current chairman Sam Grundwerg should remain in his position until 2022 due to the COVID- 19 crisis and the importance of organizational stability at a very challenging time for fundraising operations.
Last Sunday, however, before the congress began on Tuesday, Netanyahu wrote a letter thanking Grundwerg for his work and stating that a new chairman would be appointed.
Two candidates, former Likud MK Avraham Neguise and Shifra Shahar, an NGO director, were proposed as candidates to the Advice and Consent Committee, which rejected both of them as inappropriate.
On Wednesday, the Advice and Consent Committee convened again by video conference call, including outgoing WZO chairman Avraham Duvdevani, incoming WZO chairman Yaakov Hagoel, Yaron Shavit, a representative of the non- Orthodox Jewish denominations, and Masha Lublanski of the Labor Party, along with Lowy and two other World Board of Trustee members, to discuss again the matter of United Israel Appeal chairman.
Lowy said that during that meeting it was agreed by all sides that Grundwerg would continue in his position until the end of April 2022.
On Thursday morning, however, Lowy said that agreement was “unilaterally changed” when the WZC voted to extend Grundwerg’s tenure by just six months, meaning that his position