By Asaf Elia-Shalev
A Jewish adversary of Israel was dealt a major blow in a fraud complaint.
The anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace, which wants the US to end military aid to Israel, agreed to pay a penalty of nearly $700,000 to settle an allegation of financial fraud, according to the Justice Dept., Jan. 15.
The resolution of the case, which centers on JVP’s application for COVID-19 relief funds in 2020, puts a significant strain on the group’s finances — the group’s annual budget is a little below $3 million — and hands the group’s many Jewish critics a weapon against it.
JVP promotes divestment from Israel Bonds, says Israel has a boundless disregard for human life and is commiting genocide.
JVP is the latest left-wing and pro-Palestinian groups that an attorney has succeeded in saddling with huge financial penalties for violating the law, including Americans for Peace Now, the Middle East Institute, the Institute for Policy Studies and Norwegian People’s Aid.
David Abrams uses a law that allows private citizens to become whistleblowers when they discover government fraud.
The law also lets him collect a portion of the penalty paid to the government, under his enterprise, “the Zionist Advocacy Center” or TZAC.
“I’m a passionate Zionist and I’m also an attorney,” Abrams told Politico in an article published last year. “And so it’s natural to say, ‘Well, how can I combine those two things?’ And that’s what I started doing about 10 years ago.”
His earnings in this work as of last year are at least $1.7 million, according to a tally based on court records by The New York Times.
Abrams is one of several attorneys making money by hunting for pandemic fraud, but Abrams is in it for more than just the earnings.
“We’re in America,” Abrams told Politico. “People have an absolute right to attack Israel unfairly, to slander Israel and so on. However, from my perspective, they don’t have the right to take government money to support their work that they’re not entitled to.”
He refers to his solo act as “lawfare” on behalf of Israel.
Abrams found that JVP had received $340,000 through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act. He believed the group should have been ineligible for funding — money that millions of American companies and nonprofits had also received during the pandemic — due to rules excluding entities “primarily engaged in political or lobbying activities.”
He filed a lawsuit in late 2021 accusing JVP of lying on its application form, citing the group’s stated mission of campaigning to change US policy on Israel.
The federal prosecutors who looked at the case agreed with Abrams’ assessment and decided to move forward with it.
If the matter had gone to trial and prosecutors had prevailed, JVP would have had to pay back in damages triple the amount it received.
Instead, a settlement limits the penalty to only double the amount, with no admission of liability by JVP.
The group maintains that “any misstatements in this application were inadvertent,” according to the Justice Dept.
Abrams is owed about $68,000, or 10% of the penalty, according to a copy of the settlement agreement from the Justice Dept.
He will also collect about $1,800 from JVP, an amount representing his fees and expenses in filing the initial whistleblower lawsuit.
The JVP settlement comes several months after the resolution of another Abrams-instigated case against a Jewish group that is critical of Israel.
In September, Americans For Peace Now, the US fundraising arm of a progressive Israeli group, reached a deal with federal prosecutors to pay $262,000 over an identical allegation.
The group’s president and CEO, Hadar Susskind, told the The New York Times it settled to avoid the cost of litigation, but that the group didn’t consider itself a political organization when it applied for the pandemic relief money.
Abrams is also behind two earlier pandemic fraud settlements signed by left-leaning Washington think tanks: the Middle East Institute and the Institute for Policy Studies.
Before the pandemic, when Abrams had just started his Zionist Advocacy Center work, he waged lawfare with a focus on humanitarian groups working in Gaza, such as Norwegian People’s Aid, that had received contracts from the American government through USAID.
He alleged that his targets lied when certifying to USAID they had no links to terrorists.
Norwegian People’s Aid paid a penalty of $2 million to settle the matter.
Not all of the cases Abrams brings are successful. In 2020, a judge threw out a case he brought against the New Israel Fund, which supporting left-wing causes in Israel, in which he alleged the group had abused its tax-exempt status.
In 2015 he sued the Carter Center for support of Palestinian terrorists. Government prosecutors dropped the case.
