What Is an American Heritage Commission Mandated for Europe Doing in East Jerusalem

On October 7, 2021, Israeli settlers backed by an organization called the Elad Foundation, seized an apartment in the Silwan neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem. The apartment was home to Nidal Froukh and his family, who were not home. When family members got back and tried to enter their home, they were beaten, sprayed with tear gas, and arrested by Israeli police. The Froukh family had owned the property since 1989. The settlers' justification for seizing the Froukh family’s home was that Nidal Froukh owed unspecified accumulating debts - debts which the Elad Foundation had bought out, and then leveraged as a legal basis to seize the home. This is just one story amongst hundreds in Silwan, where the Palestinian population is gradually being ethnically cleansed in an operation ostensibly backed by Congress, and endorsed by a body funded with your tax dollars.

Nine months earlier, on January 18, 2021, the United States Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad had presented Elad with a plaque, recognizing the foundation's work as "a testament to America's Judeo-Christian heritage and founding principles."

What is the The Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad

The Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad was established by Congress in 1985 for the purpose of preserving “American history and heritage in Central and Eastern Europe.” The Commission's own framing of its purpose is unsparing. Its mission statement describes how:

"The Holocaust annihilated much of Europe's Jewish population, killing most Jews and forcing others to flee. In many countries, none were left to continue to care for the communal properties that represented a historic culture in the area and have importance within the Jewish religion."

The Commission goes on to describe how the destruction continued under Communist regimes that desecrated and neglected these properties for forty-five years; how Cold War tensions blocked Americans from accessing them; and how many properties remain endangered today, with some Jewish sites affected by a resurgence of antisemitism.

In the current funding bill for Fiscal Year 2027 National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs that is going through Congress, the commission is appropriated $770,000. 

Red Flags of the Commission

The Commission's statutory mandate is geographically specific: Central and Eastern Europe. Two project locations sit outside that mandate. The first, in Armenia, has a defensible logic, the Armenian Genocide produced one of the major immigrant communities the Commission was created to serve, and the project preserves a memorial to that genocide. (The project's own webpage erroneously lists its location as Croatia, suggesting the Commission's basic web operations are not closely supervised, but the underlying mission fit is sound).

The second is Israel - and the Israel project differs from every other project in the Commission's portfolio in several ways. Israel does not appear in the Commission's directory of partner countries. There is no publicly available agreement between the Commission and the Government of Israel. There are no financial disclosures regarding the project's funding. There is no public explanation, in any congressional record, agency report, or Inspector General review accessible to a researcher, of why the project was added.

Despite these absences, the report accompanying the Fiscal Year 2027 National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs appropriations bill includes the directive mentioned above for the U.S. Government to “supports historical, archaeological, and cultural initiatives, including in Jerusalem, that strengthen and deepen the United States-Israel special relationship. The Committee notes that the City of David in Biblical Jerusalem has been recognized by the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad.” The same section directs that the U.S. should fund such efforts - precisely the efforts that led to the forced displacement from their homes of the Froukh family. ”

The Commission’s focus on Israel - and its involvement in the expropriation of Palestinian property - should perhaps not be a surprise, when looking at who sits on the Board of the organization. The Commission’s chair is Lesley Weiss, a member of the US Delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance which formulated the definition of antisemitism that conflates it with criticism of Israel. Also on the Commission are Herb Block, who is also Executive Director of the American Zionist Movement, and Joseph Douek, an investor whose most prominent public appearance to-date has been as a shark in a version of Shark Tank for Israeli settlers in the West Bank. 

Why is Congress explicitly backing a scheme directly intended to ethnically cleanse the historically Palestinian neighborhood of SIlwan? And what does any of this have to do with the Commission’s mandate to protect American heritage? 

The Commission’s Relationship with Settler Organization

On January 18, 2021, Ambassador David Friedman and Commission Chairman Paul Packer held a ceremony at the City of David to recognize what they called the site's 'seminal role' in 'connecting visitors to the origins of the values that helped shape America.” The framing collapses on closer inspection. The City of David has received extensive criticism for bad methodical practices motivated by a political desire to remove East Jerusalem from being part of any political solution. A significant criticism the Commission disregarded when it bestowed its recognition is the 2017 analysis from Emek Shaveh: “the people at the Elad Foundation are creating an imaginary historical reality that is shaped by their religious beliefs and nationalist goals, rather than by the archaeological finds and other historical evidence.” 

In 2018, the Guardian reported on an EU document that found organizations such as the City of David Foundation are using projects in East Jerusalem “as a political tool to modify the historical narrative and to support, legitimize and expand settlements.” Many of the sites misrepresent Byzantine and Umayyad structures and artifacts as being part of the City of David appropriating Roman, Arab, and Palestinian history. The development of the City of David has resulted in the demolition of over 100 Palestinian homes and the forced expulsion of 1,500 Palestinians. 

What the City of David Actually Is

The City of David is the Palestinian inhabited area of East Jerusalem known as Silwan, and is considered occupied under international law. Silwan is a Palestinian neighborhood of approximately 60,000 to 65,000 residents. Approximately 1,000 Jewish settlers live among them, in homes acquired by Elad and protected by private security and Israeli police. The "City of David" is the name Elad gives to a portion of that neighborhood, a name that does not appear on any pre-1986 map, because the foundation that coined it did not exist until then. 

Elad is a private foundation, incorporated in 1986, that performs three overlapping functions in Silwan: it operates the archaeological tourism site, it acquires Palestinian homes for settlement by Jewish families, and it conducts archaeological excavation under the surrounding neighborhood. These are not separate enterprises that happen to share a sponsor, they are integrated by design, and Elad's own people have said so on the record. Shahar Shilo told the BBC in 2020 that the foundation's strategy is to use tourism "to create a different political reality in the City of David." What that political reality looks like has been defined by David Be'eri, Elad's founder, has been similarly direct in court testimony: "We are a foundation whose goals are to house Jewish families in the City of David. These are the foundation's stated objectives with the Registrar of Associations for which we receive donations."

Elad acquires homes through three mechanisms: purchase from Palestinian owners, seizure under Israel's Absentee Property Law, and what residents and Israeli archaeologists describe as the deliberate use of underground excavation to render homes structurally unsafe. The Absentee Property Law authorizes the Israeli state to take possession of property belonging to Palestinians determined to have left or fled during conflict. The pattern produces decades-long legal battles in which Palestinian families fight to remain in homes their ancestors built, against opponents whose litigation costs are against opponents whose litigation costs Elad has committed to paying. 

Elad operates as a private foundation funded by donations. On September 22, 2020, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project reported that Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich was the ultimate beneficial owner of three British Virgin Islands shell companies, and in control of a fourth, that had together donated more than $100 million to Elad. The four companies were responsible for nearly half of the foundation's donations between 2005 and 2018. From 2008 to 2015, Abramovich's contributions amounted to more than half of Elad's operating funds. Abramovich has since been sanctioned by the United Kingdom and the European Union following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and his finances have been the subject of repeated international investigation.

The OCCRP investigation was published less than four months before Ambassador Friedman and Chairman Packer's January 2021 ceremony. The relationship between Elad and a Russian oligarch, channeled through offshore shell companies, was already a matter of international public record when the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad presented its plaque of recognition. There is no public record of the Commission having addressed the question. There is no public record of any due diligence having been performed.

This is the organization that the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad recognized in January 2021. The Commission's stated purpose is to preserve the heritage of communities who can no longer preserve it themselves, communities erased by displacement, by genocide, by the forced movement of peoples from their homes.

What Congress Can Do

The report accompanying the Fiscal Year 2027 National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs appropriations bill directs the Secretary of State to consult with the Committees on Appropriations on plans to fund and implement initiatives like Elad’s at not less than the prior year level, citing the Commission’s support. 

The Commission's statutory mandate is to preserve historic sites in Eastern and Central Europe associated with the heritage of U.S. citizens, sites endangered by the Holocaust, by Communist-era neglect, and by the slow erasure of communities that no longer exist to preserve their own past. Elad's mission, in the words of its founder and former marketing director, is to use archaeology and tourism to change the political reality of an occupied Palestinian neighborhood. These are not adjacent purposes. They are opposites.

If this Commission is to continue receiving federal appropriations, three forms of accountability should be conditioned on that funding. First, full disclosure of donations received by the Commission and of any financial relationships with entities operationally tied to commission-recognized projects. Second, direct congressional oversight of any project located outside the Commission's statutory geographic mandate, with formal documentation submitted to the Committees on Appropriations explaining the project's relationship to the agency's authorizing statute. Third, public reporting on every project the Commission is currently undertaking with the State of Israel or with Israeli-based NGOs, including the agreements under which such projects operate. The Commission's own website lists the Israel project as concluded. Yet, the appropriations report directs continued funding for such initiatives. These two things cannot both be true. Either the project has ended and the appropriations language is authorizing something undisclosed, or the project is continuing and the Commission's public reporting is incomplete. In either case, Congress and the public are entitled to an answer.

Bibliography:

 Al Jazeera Staff, “Israeli Settlers Take Over Home in Jerusalem’s Silwan,” Al Jazeera, October 7, 2021, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/7/settlers-take-over-home-in-jerusalems-silwan.

 JNS Staff, “US Embassy in Jerusalem Recognizes City’s Link to America’s Founding Values,” Jewish News Syndicate, January 18, 2021, https://www.jns.org/u.s.-news/us-embassy-in-jerusalem-recognizes-citys-link-to-americas-founding-values

U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, “About,” accessed May 5, 2026, https://www.heritageabroad.gov/about.

US Embassy in Jerusalem Recognizes City’s Link to America’s Founding Values,” Jewish News Syndicate, July 4, 2019, https://www.jns.org/u.s.-news/us-embassy-in-jerusalem-recognizes-citys-link-to-americas-founding-values

 Mersiha Gadzo, “How Archaeological Settlements Are Destroying Palestinian Homes,” Al Jazeera, July 8, 2019, https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2019/7/8/how-archaeological-settlements-are-destroying-palestinian-homes.

Oliver Holmes, “Palestinians Claim Israel Is Using Tourism to ‘Legitimise’ Settlements,” The Guardian, February 1, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/01/israel-settlements-jerusalem-tourism-un.

Al-Haq, “Al-Haq Launches New Report: Finding David: Unlawful Settlement Tourism in Jerusalem’s So-Called ‘City of David,’” November 16, 2022, https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/20872.html.

Emek Shaveh, “Elad’s Settlement in Silwan,” September 10, 2013, https://emekshaveh.org/en/settlers/.

Nir Hasson, “Israeli Archaeological Dig Forces E. Jerusalem Residents to Evacuate,” Haaretz, April 9, 2017, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2017-04-09/ty-article/.premium/israeli-archaeological-dig-forces-e-jerusalem-residents-to-evacuate/0000017f-db4f-d3ff-a7ff-fbef775b0000.

Norwegian Refugee Council, “The Absentee Property Law and its Implementation in East Jerusalem,” February 2011, https://www.nrc.no/globalassets/pdf/legal-opinions/absentee_law_memo.pdf.

Times of Israel Staff, “Top Court Rules Against Booting E. Jerusalem Palestinian Family After 32-Year Battle,” The Times of Israel, April 15, 2019, https://www.timesofisrael.com/top-court-rules-against-booting-e-jerusalem-palestinian-family-after-32-year-battle/.

Uri Blau and Simon Bowers, “FinCEN Files Show Roman Abramovich Helped Fund Israeli Settlement,” OCCRP, September 21, 2020, https://www.occrp.org/en/project/the-fincen-files/fincen-files-show-roman-abramovich-helped-fund-israeli-settlement.