The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) revoked Canadian Zionist Cultural Association (CZCA)’s charitable status because the tax agency says its fundraising efforts were supporting the Israeli military, according to documents released to The CJN. The move follows years of complaints by anti-Zionist organizations that have campaigned for the charitable status revocation of a number of Canadian Jewish charities.
Toronto-based CZCA and the Montreal-based Canada Charity Partners (CCP) had their tax status, and their ability to issue tax receipts for charitable donations, revoked on March. 31.
The move didn’t come without warning, More than a year before the revocation, CRA had sent CZCA its Administrative Fairness Letter (AFL), dated Dec. 12, 2024, outlining its view of the organization’s charity law violations. The decision stemmed from audits the CRA conducted of the organization’s activities in 2019 and 2020.
Since August 2024, when the revocation of charitable status of Jewish National Fund of Canada and Ne’eman Foundation were made official, at least half a dozen or more Jewish charities have also been revoked. CZCA and CCP were the latest ones, after three other Jewish charities lost their charitable status between Oct. 18 and Nov. 15, 2026.
Canadian Jewish charities have come under increased scrutiny from groups opposing Canadian charitable support linked to Israel. Critics include Just Peace Advocates and Independent Jewish Voices, which supports boycott, divestments and sanctions against Israel, and whose members organized a petition and a formal complaint to CRA to investigate CZCA. The 2021 complaint to CRA, as The CJN reported, alleged CZCA supported Israel’s military through charities benefitting soldiers, a claim CZCA refuted.
Just Peace Advocates has also called for Jewish summer camps to be de-accredited and their charity statuses revoked over hiring Israelis who have served or are about to serve in the military as camp staff. Camp associations across the country rejected the decertification campaign.
The CJN has received CRA documents sent to CZCA, including the regulator’s letter of administrative fairness, dated Dec. 12, 2024; CRA’s letter of Notice of Intent to Revoke (NITR) charitable status, issued March. 31, 2026, plus additional comments in an appendix; and a lengthy response from CZCA’s lawyers, dated March 31, 2026, providing the organization’s rebuttal to the infractions in the administrative fairness letter on specific non-compliance issues.
Support for Israeli military-linked programs: CRA’s case
CRA says CZCA failed to operate exclusively for charitable purposes and had engaged with the non-charitable goal of “increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of a foreign armed forces,” naming four CZCA recipient organizations in Israel that CRA deemed were non-qualified donees.
The CRA website entry for CZCA shows the organization brought in about $3.5 million in total revenue for 2024, and made total expenditures outside of Canada of about $2.45 million, all of that in Israel. This included $1.3 million to the Association for Israel’s Soldiers (ASI), a merged organization of the former LIBI Fund and the Association for the Welfare of Israeli Soldiers (AWIS) and $773,000 to the Shamoon College of Engineering.
Along with the organization failing “to be constituted and operated exclusively for charitable purposes,” CZCA kept inadequate books and records, lacked direction of control of its resources in its donations to Israeli organizations, according to CRA.
The charity maintains it supported Israeli military members and their families following, not during, active service, and that its partnering Israeli organizations provided benefits such as post-IDF service educational scholarships, treatment for ex-soldiers with PTSD, and support for bereaved families like rehabilitation services.
In an interview with The CJN in 2021, a former administrator called the complaints submitted to CRA “inaccurate, false, and misleading,” and said CZCA’s donations in Israel supported programs such as camps for families of fallen soldiers, scholarships for Israeli military veterans in need of financial aid, and grocery vouchers for families of soldiers in need.
CZCA’s stated charitable purpose since 2014, CRA wrote, involved running youth camps and centres in Canada and Israel “designed to encourage and promote Jewish cultural activities,” including rehabilitation centres in both countries, and supporting the “moral and educational improvement of youth and adults,” promotion of Hebrew language education, literature and ethics, and “the conduct of charitable activities in any of the provinces of Canada, [in] Canada and in Israel.”
CZCA also distributed funds in Canada and Israel to further its purposes through “research, publication, education, libraries and the maintenance of religious, charitable or educational activities,” and CZCA established and ran community centres in Canada and Israel.
Support for specific IDF-linked organizations: CRA’s case
Following an audit of CZCA’s activities in 2019 and 2020, CRA concluded in the December 2024 letter that the charity maintained a “significant relationship” with the Association for the Soldiers of Israel – Canada (ASI-Canada), a non-charitable organization.
The regulator cited a decade-plus of co-hosted fundraising galas, between 2013 and 2024, where proceeds were explicitly directed toward the “needs of the Soldiers of Israel,” activities which CRA characterized as an “unstated collateral non-charitable purpose” by “increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of a foreign armed force.”
By acting as a “conduit” for non-qualified donees, the CRA argued the CZCA failed to devote its resources exclusively to its own charitable purpose. The CRA’s March 2026 Notice of Intent to Revoke (NITR) letter listed instances where it found CZCA funds directly benefited IDF units and personnel.
Major infractions CRA cited included CZCA’s support for elite units of the IDF, according to the agency, which pointed to scholarships and mentorship programs specifically for veterans of the Duvdevan Unit, an elite counter-terrorism commando unit, and the Erez Foundation, veterans of an alpine unit, both of which CZCA had funded.
Meanwhile, CRA viewed the organization’s support for programs restricted to military members, run by the Libi Fund (also called Yahad) and Friends of the IDF, as a private benefit rather than a public one, and highlighted a series of annual Passover seders for “lone soldiers” hosted at resorts and attended by high-ranking military officials.
Years of annual seders that CRA cited included one in 2017 that honoured then-IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, and another in 2019 in Hadera attended by more than 400 lone soldiers. “Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and the IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi joined the celebration,” CRA wrote, and included links to news articles about the event (“Lone soldiers from 35 countries mark Passover with Rivlin, chief of staff”).
While acknowledging the seder’s religious nature, CRA ruled the events supported active IDF members, and included gifts and access to educational and recreational activities for soldiers.
“We recognize that the activity of the Passover celebration contains religious elements; however, it appears that the celebration activities go beyond what is considered charitable under the advancement of religions and are intended for active soldiers of the IDF,” CRA wrote.
Beyond military support, the audit uncovered significant governance and accounting failures, including $1.9 million in receipting discrepancies CRA identified, and questions about the charitable link to CZCA’s purchase of properties in Ashdod and Kiryat Malachi, which the 2024 letter indicates were being rented to Israeli municipal governments.
The regulator initially proposed a financial penalty of $3.7 million, and had calculated a total “undue benefit” provided to non-qualified organizations exceeding $3.5 million.
But now that the organization’s charitable status has been revoked, that penalty is now moot. The CRA now requires CZCA to disperse its remaining assets to qualified Canadian charities.
‘A breach of procedural fairness duty’: CZCA’s lawyers respond
In a response letter to CRA, lawyers for the CZCA argued the regulator breached its duty of procedural fairness by withholding internal audit work papers and notes, claiming the lack of transparency denied the charity a meaningful opportunity to understand or challenge the basis of the findings.
“The CRA effectively denies the affected party the opportunity to understand the basis of the audit findings,” the lawyers wrote, arguing the regulator failed to show a link between the facts it asserted and its final conclusions.
The CRA’s March 2026 response defended withholding its audit notes as necessary to “safeguard the integrity of the audit and ensure taxpayer confidentiality,” with the regulator noting it had offered to clarify any unclear findings, but that the CZCA “failed to advise the CRA what audit findings required clarification.”
In disputing the allegations of IDF support, CZCA’s lawyers focused on the definition of “increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of an armed force,” arguing that social services—such as food vouchers for impoverished families, religious festivals for lone soldiers, and transition mentorship for veterans—do not constitute military support.
“Providing social services to young people who happen to be engaged in compulsory service… does not fall under the category of ‘enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of armed services,’” the response stated. Lawyers for CZCA characterized CRA’s logic as “grasping at straws,” arguing that by the same reasoning, a childhood nutrition program in Israel could be deemed non-charitable because the children might one day be conscripted.
The letter from CZCA’s lawyers also maintained that post-service scholarships for higher education in academic disciplines—not military training—do not improve a force’s effectiveness.
In response to CRA’s concerns over joint fundraising and third-party agents, CZCA’s lawyers argued that emails it shared proved the organization maintained appropriate direction and control over its resources. The organization’s agents in Israel did not act without explicit approval, they wrote, with every project vetted by legal counsel before any funds were transferred.
“The Charity always checked the project with its lawyer at the time in advance… CZCA has never taken a project that its lawyer did not approve,” the letter dated March 9, 2026 stated.
The organization also maintained that it had operated and was constituted separately from ASI-Canada.
CZCA executive director Liora Katz declined The CJN’s interview requests, referring instead to the CZCA lawyers’ response, and a March. 20 email to CZCA supporters announcing the imminent revocation, in which the organization said it “has always conducted itself in compliance with Canadian law.”
In a brief email to The CJN, Katz said the CRA was “wrong in its assessment,” while confirming the board would not engage in a “lengthy and costly legal battle” to fight the revocation.
“These funds are better put to use supporting Israeli families and youth in need,” Katz wrote.
Charitable compliance means non-exclusive benefits: Lawyer
The crux of the support for foundations and non-profits in Israel comes down to the way CRA views the nature of benefits and whether they meet charity tax rules.
Mark Blumberg, a Canadian charity lawyer, outlined the way CRA determines non-compliance, including that joint fundraising with one charity and one non-charity (such as ASI-Canada), is a no-no. As for scholarships, Blumberg explains that benefits cannot be given to what CRA considers a “common employer,” regardless of whether it’s a military force or a business.
“If I wanted to set up a scholarship for children of IBM employees, it’s not charitable,” he said by way of example.
Aside from the question of supporting the military, any such exclusivity of a single employer makes it already a non-charitable object, Blumberg said, citing a case of a university fraternity whose charitable status was recently revoked for giving scholarships largely to its members—rather than all students, which would have made it charitable.
Even scholarships for a soldier who has finished their service could constitute a recruitment incentive if it is directly tied to service in a foreign military, making those also non-compliant with CRA rules, he explained. There are many viable charitable activities that a Canadian registered charity can conduct in Israel, Blumberg says.
“For example, there are about 15 universities in Israel registered with the CRA and Canadians can make restricted or unrestricted donations to them,” he said, noting that educational programs and scholarships run by those schools are legitimate charitable activities. Still, charitable donation options aren’t limited to supporting an Israeli university, he emphasizes—though any project needs to abide by Canadian charity law.
“The rules that Canadian charities must follow have not significantly changed and relate to conducting charitable activities within your purposes, having direction and control over resources sent to non-qualified donees, ensuring that there is no inappropriate private benefit given to any party, not supporting the armed forces of a foreign country, and ensuring that with scholarships there is sufficient public benefit,” said Blumberg.
He observes that although a few Jewish Canadian charities have been revoked—many of whom CRA, as the regulator, gave significant warning of their non-compliance—Blumberg estimates there are about 1,000 Jewish charities in Canada, which he says “are sending hundreds of millions of dollars to Israel every year for charitable work.”
“Focusing on a few outlier Jewish charities, and ignoring the big picture and massively increased funding of projects in Israel, is not helpful,” said Blumberg.
When a charity is revoked, he encourages reading the letters exchanged between CRA and an organization in their entirety in order not to form conclusions based on partial information.
