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British taxpayers unknowingly subsidize therapy for Israeli soldiers: Report

The Cradle | August 14, 2026

UK taxpayers are unknowingly subsidizing “therapeutic healing” and psychological treatment of Israeli soldiers who served in Gaza, Declassified UK reported on 13 August.

The investigation revealed that an undisclosed sum reached the Yahalom Foundation, an Israeli veterans group serving the Israeli military engineering unit, through a British charity, with the government adding a further 25 percent under the Gift Aid scheme.

That additional quarter comes from the British government, which administers Gift Aid through His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

Barred as a foreign organization from claiming Gift Aid itself, the foundation instructs its British supporters to send money instead through UK Toremet, a charity registered in Britain.

Emails written by its head of fundraising call Toremet a “registered partner platform” that handles donations on the foundation’s behalf, telling donors that giving this way secures “full tax recognition and enabled Gift Aid.”

The projects put to British donors include a £5,000 (around $6,746) “therapeutic healing journey” for soldiers coming out of Gaza, individual psychological treatments, and a £100,000 (around $134,909) hall commemorating dead Israeli soldiers.

Records from two years earlier show British money also flowed toward equipment for troops still in service, with one fundraising page telling donors their help would buy more specialized kit to supply to the soldiers. Whether Gift Aid was added to those donations is unclear.

The Charity Commission has previously warned that raising funds for a soldier of a foreign military is neither lawful nor acceptable for a charity.

The disclosures deepen the scrutiny already surrounding UK Toremet, which since 2016 has been the subject of three regulatory compliance cases brought by the Charity Commission over its work in occupied Palestine.

The regulator has since opened an inquiry into eight British charities operating in illegal Israeli settlements.

UK-registered charities are promoting programs that send young British Jews into illegal settlements in occupied Palestine and put them through Israeli army training, according to an investigation by Middle East Eye (MEE) published in July.

The United Jewish Israel Appeal (UJIA), whose stated aim is to inspire young Jews to build a relationship with Israel, routes participants into Marva, an army-run course in which they spend weeks living on a military base and undergoing basic training. Bnei Akiva, meanwhile, houses its gap-year students in a West Bank settlement and drills them for military service.

The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) told MEE that the activities breach international law, describing Marva as closer to “pre-enlistment military training” than cultural exchange.

The pattern is not new, with The Guardian reporting in July last year that the Kasner Charitable Trust had moved £5.7 million (around $7.69 million) to a religious school inside the illegal settlement of Susya near Hebron through the conduit charity UK Toremet, in donations made between 2017 and 2021.

The Charity Commission told the outlet that operating in the occupied Palestinian territories is not in itself a criminal offense or a breach of charity law.

August 14, 2026 - Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Israel, Palestine, UK, Zionism