|
Trending Topics
|
The IRS Campaign Against Israel
(Wall Street Journal) Lori Lowenthal Marcus - I founded Z Street in 2009 to educate Americans about the Middle East and Israel's defense against terror. We applied to the Internal Revenue Service for tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code in December 2009 - a process that usually takes 3 to 6 months. In July 2010, an IRS agent responded to our lawyer's query about why processing was taking so long: Z Street's application was getting special scrutiny, the agent said, because it was related to Israel. In August 2010 we sued the IRS for violating Z Street's First Amendment rights to be free from viewpoint discrimination - government treatment that differs depending on one's political position. Now that the case has been settled, IRS documents reveal that an IRS manager in our case said in sworn testimony, the IRS needed to investigate whether Z Street was funding terror. In August 2010, three other Jewish organizations applying for tax-exempt status were asked by the IRS to "explain their religious beliefs about the Land of Israel." Between 2009 and 2016, while Z Street's application was stalled, the IRS granted numerous applications for tax-exempt status that proclaimed donations would be spent in Gaza - a territory formally under the jurisdiction of Hamas, which the U.S. State Department designates as a terror organization. The IRS ultimately granted Z Street's application, in October 2016.