A court filing in Cook County, Illinois, has put some of the most serious allegations imaginable on the public record against the leadership of United Hatzalah, the prominent Israeli response organization with a major American fundraising arm. The documents, filed in February 2026, allege conduct that the plaintiff’s attorneys say may implicate federal racketeering law, money laundering, obstruction of justice, and the unlawful brokering of defense articles under U.S. arms export regulations. For Eli Beer, the organization’s founder and global face, it is not the first time he has found himself at the center of a significant legal fight.
The case was brought by Lisabeth Gansberg, who says she worked for Friends of United Hatzalah, Inc., the organization’s New York-based American nonprofit, from August 2023 until her termination in December 2025. Her attorneys at the Garfinkel Group filed a Verified Petition for Discovery under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 224, a procedural tool used to identify the proper defendants before a formal lawsuit is filed. The petition names Beer; Michael Littenberg-Brown, who held executive titles at both the American and international arms of the organization; and Jerry Silverman, who Gansberg’s attorneys say directed her daily work despite having no clearly identifiable formal role within the organization’s structure.
The respondents, represented by the law firm Greenberg Traurig, have denied everything. In correspondence included in the court record, their counsel described the claims as “false and improper” and stated plainly: “Suffice it to say that our clients disagree with and dispute all of your clients’ allegations and accusations.” No charges have been filed, and no court has made any finding of wrongdoing.
The petition itself centers on a narrower question: who exactly employed Gansberg, and through what legal entity did they do so. Her attorneys argue the corporate structure surrounding United Hatzalah is so deliberately tangled that she cannot identify the proper defendants without court-ordered discovery. The filing alleges “shifting and inconsistent entity affiliations among key decision-makers,” pointing specifically to the fact that Littenberg-Brown hired Gansberg while holding the title of Vice President of Friends of United Hatzalah but terminated her while identifying himself as Chief Executive Officer of United Hatzalah International. Despite extensive searches of corporate registries across multiple jurisdictions, Gansberg’s attorneys say they were unable to locate any legal entity by that name anywhere.
The confusion, they argue, is not accidental. A February 2026 job posting for a Director of Human Resources, included in the filing as evidence, advertised the role as based in Friends of United Hatzalah’s New York headquarters and responsible for that organization’s HR function, while simultaneously stating the hire would report to the “CEO of United Hatzalah International.” The attorneys describe this as proof that even the organization’s own public-facing materials conflate entities whose legal relationships remain undisclosed.
The more explosive allegations are contained in attorney correspondence attached to the filing as exhibits. In a March 10, 2026, letter to Greenberg Traurig, Gansberg’s attorneys wrote that after reviewing “a substantial amount of additional evidence,” they had concluded that actions taken by the individual respondents “may not have been within any proper agency capacity.” The letter then lists the federal and state statutes the attorneys believe may be implicated. Quoting directly from the filing, those statutes include “18 U.S.C. §§ 1341, 1343 (mail and wire fraud); 18 U.S.C. § 1001 (false statements in matters within federal jurisdiction); 18 U.S.C. §§ 1503, 1512 (obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and evidence tampering); 18 U.S.C. § 371 (conspiracy to commit an offense against, or to defraud, the United States); 18 U.S.C. §§ 1956–1957 (money laundering); 18 U.S.C. § 1962, with terms defined in 18 U.S.C. § 1961 (RICO); 22 U.S.C. § 2778 and 22 C.F.R. Part 129 (unlawful brokering of defense articles or defense services under the Arms Export Control Act and ITAR); N.Y. Penal Law §§ 175.05, 175.10 (falsification of business records); 225 ILCS 460/9 and 225 ILCS 460/1 et seq. (violations of the Illinois Solicitation for Charity Act); 815 ILCS 505/2 and 815 ILCS 505/1 et seq. (violations of the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act); and 720 ILCS 5/8-2 (conspiracy under Illinois law).”
The attorneys were clear that these were not abstract legal theories. They pointed to a December 17, 2025, demand letter sent directly to Beer and Littenberg-Brown, which they say identified specific instances of misconduct. According to the March filing, that earlier correspondence raised concerns about “donor fraud,” described internal fundraising materials labeled “Volunteer Protection,” and documented directives to staff that they “should not mention ‘guns’” in donor communications. The filing also references representations made to donors that “100% of donations were going to Israel,” which Gansberg’s attorneys characterize as false.
The document destruction allegations are equally serious. The December 17 letter, as described in the March filing, raised “allegations regarding edited Zoom recordings, deleted WhatsApp messages, and the suppression or concealment of reports and communications.” Those claims map directly onto the obstruction and evidence tampering statutes cited in the same letter.
Gansberg’s attorneys also allege that Beer was operating well outside the scope of what Friends of United Hatzalah is legally authorized to do as a registered American nonprofit. The filing states that while Beer was employed by FoUH and working in the United States, he “made major operational decisions involving activities on the ground in Israel” that “had nothing to do with fundraising efforts in the United States and were well beyond FoUH’s stated mandate as registered with the IRS and the State of New York.”
The personal claims against Beer and Littenberg-Brown are intertwined with Gansberg’s own employment story. The December 17 demand letter describes her as a Stage 4B cancer patient and states that Littenberg-Brown was aware of her illness before she was fired. Greenberg Traurig’s own correspondence acknowledges that Gansberg’s prior letters asserted claims for “failure to accommodate a disability, retaliation and wrongful termination.” Her attorneys say she was fired in retaliation for raising donor fraud concerns internally, writing that she “engaged in numerous instances of protected activity including repeatedly raising issues of donor fraud to the named individuals” before her termination. They invoke the Illinois Whistleblower Act as one of the legal bases for her forthcoming claims.
The filings also raise questions about whether the organization’s leadership has been using its charitable resources improperly in the course of this litigation. Gansberg’s attorneys argue that FoUH, as a 501(c)(3) organization, is using its tax-exempt assets to defend individuals against claims asserted against them personally, and that this “may itself constitute a breach of the fiduciary duties owed by FoUH’s officers and directors to the organization and its charitable mission.” They further allege that “some members of executive leadership may have used FoUH and related structures to serve their personal interests.”
None of this is the first time Beer has faced serious legal scrutiny. In 2021, an Israeli court issued a judgment against United Hatzalah and several of its senior officials, including Beer, finding that the organization had run a defamatory campaign against Magen David Adom, Israel’s national emergency medical service. The case stemmed from a public campaign United Hatzalah launched in December 2018 under the slogan “Cause of Death: MDA,” accusing MDA’s leadership of causing deaths by refusing to share emergency call data with United Hatzalah’s responders.
Beer was personally named in the court’s findings. According to the judgment, Beer published a video stating: “In recent weeks I see real harm to human lives, caused by MDA leadership’s desire to keep its monopoly on saving lives in Israel… Our request is one: stop MDA’s ego games, which cause deaths.” He also posted on his Facebook page urging volunteers and the public to share the campaign’s materials, and circulated posters bearing the slogan “MDA’s monopoly kills.” The court found that Beer also published a video accusing MDA’s leadership of “malice and wickedness” in withholding addresses from United Hatzalah volunteers.
The Israeli court found the campaign was “malicious, unreasonable, and defamatory,” concluding that the defendants had not verified their accusations, had concealed the Israeli Ministry of Health’s repeated statements that MDA had acted lawfully, and had exceeded reasonable criticism in a manner designed to humiliate MDA. The court ordered all defendants, including Beer, to pay MDA 200,000 Israeli shekels for the defamatory campaign, in addition to 50,000 shekels for a separate set of false statements made in connection with the death of a toddler in Kiryat Gat. The court also noted that MDA had produced evidence of a United Hatzalah strategic plan prepared by a consulting firm that recommended tactics against MDA to increase fundraising, including “creating prominent events, even if they did not occur.”
Greenberg Traurig has pushed back forcefully on all of the current Illinois allegations. In a March 26, 2026, letter, the firm called Gansberg’s filings a “letter writing campaign” and described her attorneys’ arguments as “confusing, contradictory, and put simply, legally and factually incorrect.” The firm has argued throughout that the Rule 224 petition is procedurally improper because Gansberg already knows she was employed by FoUH and therefore has no need for pre-suit discovery to identify her defendants.
Whether Gansberg ultimately files a formal complaint, and whether any of the allegations in these pre-suit documents are ever tested in court, remains to be seen. For now, the filings stand as a public record of some of the most serious accusations ever leveled against the leadership of one of the Jewish world’s most heavily marketed organizations.
All allegations described in this article regarding the Illinois proceedings are drawn from court filings and attorney correspondence in Lisabeth Gansberg v. Friends of United Hatzalah, Inc., Eli Beer, Michael Littenberg-Brown, and Jerry Silverman, Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, No. 2026L001683. They represent the claims of one party in a pre-suit legal proceeding and have not been proven in court. The respondents deny all allegations. Details regarding the 2021 Israeli court ruling are drawn from the judgment issued by the Israeli court on July 29, 2021. Filing from Illinois is below:
Sigh...... So much for "shevet achim gam-yachad".....
We Jews are our own worst enemy.