The nonpartisan educational group The Israel Project (TIP) closed its office in Israel last week and is expected to do the same in Washington.
Started in 2002, the pro-Israel organization saw a massive decline in donations in recent years—from $8,696,052 in 2015 to $4,922,854 in 2016. Last month, its CEO and president, Josh Block, resigned.
In a Facebook post, Lior Weintraub, former head of the project’s Israel office, said the reason for declining support for the organization is its nonpartisan stance.
He wrote, “In the last two-and-a-half years when the polarization in America reached new highs, we safeguarded our apolitical bipartisan middle line with all the strength possible and no compromises because we knew it was the right way to serve Israel and it was the way to serve Israel-U.S. relations.”
“There were no buyers for anything in the middle in 2019, and TIP as a middle organization was the first victim of polarization in the pro-Israeli system in America, and to a large extent this is fine; there are goals for which is worth getting hurt in the long run.”
Weintraub told The Jerusalem Post discussions have been underway about what will happen next, and that “there’s a chance that the organization will have a successor. TIP has a unique mission. If no one continues its work, there will be a need to reinvent it. Something else will need to fill the void.”