Jewish Organizations Continue to Bag Vast Majority of DHS Nonprofit Security Grants as Funding Quadruples

Winter Watch – by Torchy Blane

Whenever you see a political alignment between Jewish New York Sen. Chuck “The Schmuck” Schumer President Donald “Black Pill” Trumpenstein, it means only one thing: some Jews somewhere are somehow benefiting — and probably at your expense.

Such was the case last month, when Trumpenstein signed a bill known as the Securing American Nonprofit Organizations Against Terrorism Act of 2019 (H.R. 2476). The bill authorizes $375 million over the next five years for the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP). 

Through the NSGP, $75 million will be allocated annually to nonprofits and faith-based organizations to help secure their facilities against targeted violence. Grants of up to $100,000 per organization per year can be used for security equipment, physical security and cyber-security training, target hardening, terrorism awareness, or employee training.

Initially, the funds were not to be used for security guards. But a 2016 press release from the Orthodox Union mentioned how it championed a new law that provides taxpayer funding in New York for security guards at private Orthodox schools.

Separately, as part of the federal appropriations legislation passed last month, Congress increased funding for the NSGP to $90 million — a 50 percent increase over the $60 million funding in 2019, the Jewish News Syndicate reports.

The funding program is nothing new.

The Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, a nonpartisan public policy arm of the Orthodox Union (OU), helped craft and advocate for the federal program 15 years ago together with the Jewish Federations of North America and other coalition partners, according to OU. Since then, Congress has allocated $419 million for grants, and the vast majority of recipients have been Jewish communal institutions.

As you may recall, in addition to its reputation for aggressive lobbying on Capitol Hill, the Orthodox Union is best known for its kosher certification service signified on products by a circled-U symbol (Ⓤ) and for covering up the pedophilia practices among its leadership.

Combined with the new bill Trump signed last month, the allocation of taxpayer funds now totals $794 million. In other words, the bill, pushed by The Schmuck, provides over the next five years as much money as Jewish groups have received during the last decade.

During the last funds distribution cycle, 174 non-profits (mostly religious-based) received NSGP grants. At least 132 (76%) of them are Jewish.

‘Jewish voters care. They want someone who’s good on Israel and who’s good on Jewish issues. But they also want somebody who’s going to be pro-choice and pro-gun control and pro-gay rights. To the vast majority of the Jewish community, just being good on Israel or on Jewish issues is not enough.’ — US Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York)

Some Jews Disavow NSGP

In September 2011, six years after the U.S. government created the grant program, Claudio Papapietro, an opinion writer for the Jewish Forward, criticized the the program after the Forward investigated its administration. He argued that U.S. lawmakers and taxpayers were essentially deceived.

Should public funds be used to upgrade security at an avowedly religious institution through a federal program whose guidelines give an advantage to those [Jewish] religious institutions? When the Nonprofit Security Grant Program began in 2005, it was not sold to Congress as a Jewish earmark, but it certainly acts like one today, with the vast majority of grants going to Jewish organizations not by accident, but by design.

Though many religious groups pushed for the grant program initially — including Catholic, Muslim and a broad base of Jewish sects — the vast majority of grants have gone to just one group of Chabad Jews in one state, New York.

Indeed, an analysis of grant recipients by the Forward, using documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, shows that the funds are not equally distributed throughout the community. For instance, the devout, relatively small sect of Lubavitch Jews received more grants than the entire Reform movement, the largest denomination in the country. Overall, Orthodox institutions were dramatically overrepresented, receiving about 45% of the grants that went to all Jewish institutions from 2007 to 2010. …

The DHS program also does not distinguish between wealthy not-for-profits and cash-strapped ones.

Two-thirds of grant funds go to Orthodox synagogues and day schools, even though only about one in 10 American Jews is Orthodox, the Forward reported. Jews of all sects only make up just 2% of the U.S. population.

Apparently the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) doesn’t approve of the program either. A spokesperson for the group told the Jerusalem Post that they felt the program lacks the “necessary constitutional and anti-discrimination safeguards.”

If Not You, Then Who?

Despite investigative reports showing questionable and concerning practices in the administration of the grant program during its first five years, such practices continued in the five years that followed, as Winter Watch covered in 2016, and continue today.

It doesn’t seem to matter to Capitol Hill that there’s zero evidence that institutional “hardening” prevents such attacks (because they’re staged events), but it certainly adds fuel to the multi-billion-dollar security industry and placates their lobbyists, as well as J Street.

Nor does appear to be any appetite in Washington, D.C. to produce a balanced budget or reign in spending.

Some speculate that spending fears are being quelled by rumors that the Treasury will soon be issuing 50-year bond notes. That way, generations not even born yet can carry the burden of our government’s wasteful spending today.

But if American taxpayers — who are each currently liable for nearly $183,000 in national debt (106% of GDP) — don’t chip in, who will? Who else is going to outfit rabbis’ homes with up to $100,000 worth of security enhancements so they can feel safe during Hanukkah parties?

Who will save them?

How about America’s Jewish billionaires?

Five of America’s Top 10 wealthiest people are Jewish, according to Forbes magazine and The Times of Israel. In 2018, they included Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (No. 4, $61 billion), Oracle’s Larry Ellison (No. 5, $58 billion), Google co-founder Larry Page (No. 6, $54 billion), fellow Google co-founder Sergey Brin (No. 9, $52 billion) and 2020 presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg (No. 10, $52 billion). Surely it could even be a tax write off for them — that is if they actually pay any taxes at all.

Or how about Israel? Israel is not a poor country. Yet, the United States provides the country with billions in aid annually. In December, the U.S. authorized $3.3 billion in aid “for Jewish-related priorities.” Can’t Israel give a little back in the form of security grants to protect Zionist Jews back in the U.S.?

Winter Watch

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