A member of ZAKA’s board of directors has sued the Israeli ultra-Orthodox search and rescue organization in Jerusalem District Court, claiming that tens of millions of shekels raised abroad never made it to the nonprofit’s accounts in Israel. The financial allegations, reported by Haaretz, center on donations collected internationally after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks.
The plaintiff, Doron Shahar, a sitting board member, claims that at least 80 million shekels (roughly $26 million) raised overseas went unaccounted for in ZAKA Israel’s financial records. The suit names director general Dubi Weissenstern, businessman Rafi Manat, and Hizki Farkash, a director and authorized signatory for ZAKA U.S. who until recently served as the organization’s Northern District operations officer, as defendants. Shahar is asking the court to order the return of the funds, remove the current leadership, install a new board, and appoint an independent investigator.
The numbers at the center of the case tell a stark story. For 2023, ZAKA U.S. reported total donation income of about $12 million and said it sent roughly $4 million to Israel, but ZAKA Israel’s own records show only about $2.4 million actually arrived. A subsequent 2024 filing then revised the 2023 income figure upward to approximately $15 million, a change the lawsuit says raises “serious concern about an attempt to make late improvements and data adjustments, after significant discrepancies were revealed compared to the Israeli nonprofit organization’s reports”. For 2024, ZAKA U.S. reported receiving about $8 million in donations, yet ZAKA Israel recorded receiving only $700,000 from it, even as ZAKA U.S. disclosures indicated around $2 million had been transferred. Over the same stretch, fundraising expenses at the U.S. affiliate reportedly jumped from $750,000 to $3 million, and the organization swung from a surplus of more than $6 million to a stated deficit of $3 million.
One of the lawsuit’s sharpest allegations involves roughly $4.2 million transferred from ZAKA U.S. to an American organization called Lehitiv, whose stated mission has nothing to do with identifying disaster victims or preserving the dignity of the dead. Farkash is listed as a trustee of Lehitiv. The organization reported only about $200,000 in turnover in 2023, then saw its finances balloon the following year almost entirely on the back of the ZAKA U.S. transfer. “There is a real concern that Lehitiv effectively served as a dormant shelf entity that coincidentally came to life in 2024 to absorb a sum of over 4 million dollars,” the lawsuit stated. The suit also takes aim at ZAKA’s French affiliate, noting that while the amount donated to it is unknown, ZAKA Israel’s records show it received nothing from France at all.
The financial scrutiny of ZAKA comes alongside a separate controversy that has long shadowed both ZAKA and United Hatzalah. The two organizations are perhaps best known for fabricating atrocity stories in the aftermath of October 7, most notably the claim that a baby had been cut from a mother’s stomach. The story was spread by ZAKA’s Yossi Landau and United Hatzalah’s Eli Beer, who went so far as to say he witnessed it with his own eyes. No evidence for the claim has ever emerged.
ZAKA pushed back through its law firm, Gideon Fisher and Co., which told Haaretz the lawsuit “raises recycled issues that were previously examined by the Registrar of Nonprofit Organizations, by the nonprofit organization’s internal auditor, and by the plaintiff himself, and no substance was found in them”. The firm accused Shahar of deliberately relying on a draft interim report while ignoring the final conclusions, and said the overseas affiliates are separate legal entities operating under their own local laws. The lawsuit, it added, is nothing more than an attempt to seize control of the organization.
