In a leaked message to a pro-Israel WhatsApp group posted on July 9th, 2025, Avi Kaner, a national board member of Friends of the IDF (FIDF), wrote:
“Hi everyone – please avoid posting anything negative about the FIDF since our enemies will use it against us, and the soldiers suffer the consequences.”
This is not the voice of a principled defender of Israel. It is the panicked plea of a man more worried about optics than outcomes. The soldiers aren’t suffering because people are speaking out. They’re suffering because too many people in power refused to.
What Kaner and others like him fail to grasp is that this isn’t a PR issue. It’s a credibility crisis, rooted in facts, documented by insiders, and exposed by whistleblowers. An 18-page internal report obtained by Ynet reveals financial mismanagement, cronyism, donor deception, and institutional rot at the highest levels of FIDF. And still, the response from some board members is to squash dissent, not fix the problem.
Why? Why is the instinct to silence, not to listen? Are certain members of FIDF’s leadership more concerned with saving face than saving lives?
Sloane Citron, a 20-year board veteran, asked the same thing before resigning in disgust. After being refused permission—despite IDF unit approval—to donate better gear to his nephew’s combat unit, he wrote:
“The FIDF has been a poorly run, disingenuous organization for some time now… I personally have stopped all donations”.
Citron also criticized the abrupt dismissal of regional powerhouse Amarelle Green, calling her “the best leader I have ever seen” and warning that “you have made a huge mistake.”
He is not alone. Another board member, Marilyn Sarig, wrote:
“I am disheartened and disgusted by the FIDF leadership… I too am resigning”.
These are not outsiders with axes to grind. These are insiders who gave decades of money, time, and trust—and are now walking away in protest.
If FIDF leadership spent half as much time addressing these issues as they do managing their public image, maybe frontline soldiers wouldn’t have been left scrambling for support while donors were being assured everything was fine.
The truth is simple. The FIDF brand is not more sacred than the lives of the soldiers it claims to support. If those in charge can't grasp that, they have no business leading.
