WHAT HAPPENS AT JFNA STAYS AT JFNA

Josh Nathan-Kazis writing in The Forward has disclosed what happens in the darkness in his article disclosing that an obscure Israeli psy-ops group reached out offering its clandestine services to disrupt and attack, even physically, those in the BDS "business." https://forward.com/news/national/411798/israeli-spy-firm-that-approached-trump-first-proposed-dirty-tricks-against/

We had written about the institutional protectionism at 25 Broadway as JFNA claimed a false "confidentiality" about a $1 million consultancy the purpose of which JFNA refused to disclose to me, thus:

"We have already written of the strange case of the 'confidentiality' attached to a $1,000,000 conduit through JFNA to the SS+K firm, identified on the 990 as an 'Independent Contractor,' in Shepardson Stern and Kaminsky LLC -- Who Are These Guys? The question remains after JFNA asserted 'confidentiality' as to the contract between a secret donor and SS+K for a secret project. And JFNA lay leadership has apparently supported the claimed confidentiality."

A connection between Nathan-Kazis' revelations and JFNA's hidden $1 million conduit of a secret donor's funds to a public relations firm for an undisclosed purpose? We'll never know unless an investigative reporter like Nathan-Kazis or Haaretz's brilliant Uri Blau or the New York Attorney General's Charities Division pries open the door of non-disclosure, the secrets hidden behind the false claims of  an ad hoc "confidentiality."

Anyone who believes that there is nothing wrong with hiding the people's business from the people merely need look at the public scandals impacting multiple Federation-supported Jewish agencies in New York City over the past decade; or the deployment of charitable dollars to Canary Mission and others while federation folks either looked the other way or just lacked the will to inquire. 

What federation leaders must know is that the Federation qua Federation suffers the ultimate consequences of agency corruption. For Federation is viewed as the ultimate steward of communal funds. When trust in the "system" breaks down, it is Federation that pays the ultimate price; and trust is not easily rebuilt, if it can be rebuilt at all.

Here's the trend that must be arrested -- and arrested now, not tomorrow, today -- it is the trend in community after community of lay leaders exhibiting a willingness to "just let the professional do it." It is the leadership philosophy clearly articulated by Richard Sandler even before he took office as JFNA Board Chair, one that he lived by while the Chair of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and continued during his three years in that seat at JFNA -- ending only with his late realization that a new CEO was vital to any success that JFNA might achieve. 

Sandler came to his leadership philosophy in good faith, I have no doubt. But it has led to three years of no professional accountability. It has led to a sense of entitlement among JFNA's most senior professionals that has seen, among other things: the implementation of the JFNA-JCPA  Israel Action Network as an almost total professional effort with only a lay chair (the IAN website links to its "Leadership and Staff" and then conflates the two -- just staff); or, with neither process nor thought, directing a community to "just write off" a 7 figure debt owed JAFI, JDC and WorldORT with no lay authorization (and no understanding that the debt was really the property of, owned by, JAFI, JDC and WorldORT). 

Secrecy is so dangerous, my friends. It was Justice Louis Brandeis who observed: "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman." If our organizations continue to demand darkness, a policeman may soon appear.

We can no longer permit the blinds to be drawn and the doors locked.

Rwexler