Published: 19 March 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
THE KOHELET POLICY FORUM is headed by Moshe Koppel, a professor in the computer science department at Bar-Ilan University. It is he who runs the show, even though he’s largely unknown to the general public. He’s the conceptualiser and the creator, but he’s not alone.
There are two other individuals, whose names are being revealed here for the for the first time, who have provided the forum with the oxygen it needed from the outset in the form of funding for an unprecedented platform to disseminate very specific ideas.
They are the organization’s two principal financial backers, Jewish American billionaires who zealously guard their privacy. Only by following the serpentine path of the cash that ends up in the Kohelet treasury will one arrive at them.
The organisation’s headquarters take up a full floor of a large office building in the business district of Jerusalem’s Givat Shaul neighbourhood, not far from the Knesset and the Supreme Court. Walking distance, really. The size of its research staff is comparable to that of the largest academic college in Israel, but in contrast to the academic world, the Kohelet staff is not engaged in research for its own sake. They want to wield influence. They want to transform the country from the ground up.
That goal is hinted at in the organisation’s self-description on its official website (English-language version): “The Kohelet Policy Forum strives to secure Israel’s future as the nation-state of the Jewish people, to strengthen representative democracy, and to broaden individual liberty and free-market principles in Israel.”
FULL STORY The US billionaires secretly funding the right-wing effort to reshape Israel (Haaretz)
Photo: Moshe Koppel, Kohelet’s chairman (Olivier Fitoussi)
