The Israeli government is moving to dissolve Unit 360, a nonprofit that for years raised money under the ZAKA name, after investigators found what they described as a pattern of financial misconduct stretching back nearly a decade, including evidence that the organization’s leader allegedly billed his daughter’s wedding to charity.
The story was first reported by TheMarker. A 29-page report by the Registrar of Associations and the Corporations Authority, sent to the organization in recent weeks, recommends dissolution proceedings against both a public benefit company and a parallel NGO controlled by the same two men: Hezi Shabaks, who served as CEO, and Yisrael Morgenstern, who served as chairman. The report accuses them of mixing funds across multiple entities they controlled, filing misleading disclosures, and spending donor money on expenses with no connection to the organization’s stated mission of supporting disaster victims and their families.
The organizations pushed back hard. “We reject the claims with disgust,” they said in a joint statement, calling the investigation a product of a turf war with the leadership of the mainstream ZAKA organization. The wedding payments, they said, covered “a consolidation evening for volunteers held in a wedding hall,” not a private celebration.
The investigation centers on a cluster of payments made on and immediately after October 24, 2021, the date of Shabaks’s daughter’s wedding. The Haredi press had covered the event; photos circulated of rabbis, politicians, and communal figures in attendance. What guests did not know, according to the report, was that the bills were allegedly being routed through the nonprofit. On the day of the wedding and in the days that followed, the public benefit company’s accounts were drawn down by close to half a million shekels. More than 200,000 shekels went to “petty cash.” Another 125,000 shekels were paid to the Dimol Platinum banquet hall in Ramat Gan. Forty thousand shekels went to a sound production company. Twenty-five thousand shekels were paid to an event producer. A recording studio received 5,400 shekels for producing the couple’s wedding video, which the report notes is still up on YouTube. When regulators pressed for an explanation, the organization sent back an invitation to a “ZAKA Israel volunteer graduation ceremony.” That ceremony had taken place more than eight months after the wedding. “There is a suspicion,” the report states, “that these expenses were incurred for the purpose of that wedding.”
The wedding allegation is the most vivid in the report, but it sits inside a much longer story of regulatory failure. Shabaks founded the public benefit company in 2005, after a falling-out with the leadership of ZAKA Tel Aviv, where he had run the telemarketing operation. The broader ZAKA organization he was trading on has its own troubled history: its founder, Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, attempted suicide in April 2021 after Haaretz published allegations of rape, sexual assault, and abuse of men, women, and children spanning decades. He died in June 2022, never having stood trial. The organization he built has since been led by Dubi Weissenstern.
Shabaks set up his own entity under the ZAKA name and continued operating alongside his former employer, until 2013, when the Registrar of Associations stepped in and told both organizations they had to separate completely. No joint operations. No shared funds. They didn’t. In 2015, Morgenstern, a Haredi businessman, joined Shabaks to launch a parallel NGO, also marketed publicly as “ZAKA Israel.” A supervisory report that same year found the PBC soliciting donations under another organization’s name and using another body’s receipts. The Registrar gave them a chance to fix it. They didn’t fix it. A second report in 2020 found the organization advertising rescue motorcycles, ambulances, and jeeps in its fundraising materials, none of which it actually owned. By 2022, the Registrar had seen enough and ordered the organization to drop the ZAKA name. They rebranded as Unit 360.
The third and most recent investigation, opened in November 2023, looked at where the money was actually going. In 2021, the PBC took in roughly 14 million shekels. About 12 million of that came from a government contract to run COVID-19 antigen testing. A 2022 investigation by Maariv had already reported that the company was issuing Green Pass certificates to people who hadn’t actually been tested, collecting 20 shekels per test from the state.
Of the funds regulators examined, more than 5 million shekels were transferred to other nonprofits the Registrar identified as connected to the same leadership, without adequate documentation. About 2.7 million shekels went to an NGO called Siman LeChaim, also founded by Shabaks and Morgenstern, which had not filed required disclosures and had no proper-management approval. Another 1.2 million went to Israel Fights for Life, also founded by Shabaks, registered to his home address. A further 1.3 million went to the Sephardic Charity Fund, connected through a shared officeholder. Of the total transferred, roughly 4 million shekels went to NGOs that had not reported to the Registrar at all. “There is a severe suspicion of the NGO’s funds leaking into private hands, and even of prohibited distribution of profits,” the report states.
There were other problems. Legal fees totaling 438,000 shekels were logged as expenses for “advice and exhaustion of rights for families.” In fact, 406,000 shekels of that went to a lawyer who represented the PBC itself in its legal fights against the Registrar and the Ministry of Interior. Salary payments to members of the Shabaks family alone came to 217,801 shekels in 2021, representing 26 percent of the NGO’s total payroll. The NGO bought a family car for 180,000 shekels with no explanation on file. And 118,000 shekels recorded in the PBC as “support for needy families” turned out to include purchases at Zara, Mango, Adidas, and Renuar. The organization said the clothes were for people in need. The Registrar said there were no recipient lists, no distribution criteria, and no evidence the items ever reached anyone.
Both men had, on paper, stepped away from their roles in 2021. Shabaks moved from CEO to secretary. Morgenstern left entirely. Regulators didn’t buy it. The PBC’s registered address was still Shabaks’s house in Bnei Brak. When the Registrar sent a draft of its findings, Shabaks and Morgenstern were the two men who showed up at the Ministry of Justice to push back. Documents the PBC itself submitted in response to the draft confirmed both men were still functioning as senior officeholders. The report also cited a certificate of appreciation that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued to both men at the end of 2021, naming them as managers of ZAKA Israel.
The Registrar concluded the step-back was designed, at least in part, to obscure a web of family employment across the two entities. The NGO employed Chaya Shabaks and her daughter Shira Shoten. The PBC employed Chaya’s husband Yehezkel Shabaks, his brother, and Shira’s husband. In June 2023, an application was filed to register yet another entity, “Unit 360 National Assistance System.” The Registrar flagged it as a potential vehicle to absorb the existing organizations’ assets. The application was eventually deleted after the applicants stopped responding, though not before the Registrar noticed it was filed using Shabaks’s personal email address and phone number.
On behalf of Morgenstern, a spokesperson said he “never received any funds or benefits from the NGOs in question” and is “not familiar with or involved in any other activity mentioned in the reports.” He is, the statement said, a philanthropist who has spent time since October 7 trying to broker peace between rival ZAKA factions, with no personal benefit.
The Registrar of Associations and the Corporations Authority concluded jointly that grounds exist for dissolution of both entities. “The conduct of the NGO and the PBC was aimed at evading supervisory procedures,” the summary states. “A mixing of two corporations was found, including joint activity contrary to the law, which includes the transfer of resources and the employment of relatives. In addition, it was found that the NGO’s assets were used not for the benefit of advancing its goals, which raises a suspicion of smuggling assets into private hands and prohibited distribution of profits.” The organizations have not yet been formally dissolved and retain the right to contest the findings before the Registrar.
Somebody needs to go to prison, yeesh