Gaza and Charities at War: Nonprofit Cancel Culture Season

Ways and Means will hold a hearing on Wednesday.  The title is From Ivory Towers to Dark Corners: Investigating the Nexus Between Antisemitism, Tax-Exempt Universities, and Terror Financing.  We can expect to hear horror stories the details of which will support the reactionary movement to deny tax exempt status to nonprofits on the wrong side of the Hamas-Israeli war.  Allies of both sides  continue to threaten to yank tax exemptions or impose other sanctions on charities that say the wrong thing regarding the war.  In Tunisia, for example, the war seems to have rallied otherwise disparate voters around an effort to shut down NGOs.  It now looks increasingly likely that a bill aimed at restricting NGOs, a law that has been condemned by Amnesty International, might just pass:  

The war in Gaza has granted Tunisia a rare moment of political unity, fuelling public appetite for new legislation that risks fracturing civil society groups and potentially isolating the country on the international stage . . . Israel’s relentless bombing of the Gaza Strip after an October 7 surprise attack in southern Israel by the military wing of Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, has tugged at deep historical threads within Tunisia, drawing society together in a way that nothing else has, including the 2011 revolution. The deep public anger against Israel and its Western backers, who seem unwilling to even ask it for restraint, have given new momentum to existing proposals to curtail the work of all of the country’s NGOs. They are being seen as a legislative curb on Western influence.

Closer to home, Governor DeSantis’s order to shut down two student groups for having the same name as a national exempt organization seems to have hit a minor roadblock.  One or more very intrepid attorneys somewhere down the line advised against it so it didn’t happen.  Something about free speech and due process.  But it was good for a campaign slogan anyway.  The top candidates have all said they would yank tax exemption from organizations that “support” Hamas, by the way.  

FIRE, the free speech nonprofit wrote a letter to Brandeis University after Brandeis banned two student groups for the same reasons given by DeSantis:

FIRE is deeply disappointed that Brandeis University has derecognized its campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine based on the university’s opposition to the group’s views, specifically students’ “chants and social media posts calling for violence against Jews or the annihilation of the state of Israel.” The university also cited the National SJP’s “call on its chapters to engage in conduct that supports Hamas in its call for the violent elimination of Israel and the Jewish people,” tactics Brandeis says “are not protected by the University’s Principles.”

While criminal conduct such as issuing true threats, incitement, or providing material support to terrorist groups is unprotected, there is no evidence these students have done anything other than engage in fully protected speech—even if it is speech many members of the Brandeis community find deeply offensive. Derecognition is the harshest form of punishment Brandeis can mete out on a student group, and imposing it here gravely contravenes Brandeis’ clear and legally binding promises to honor students’ expressive freedoms on campus. We urge Brandeis to swiftly reverse its decision to derecognize this student group and publicly recommit to the institution’s laudable free expression policies.

I guess both sides agree on some things.

darryll k. jones