‘Britain can stop this’: The East Jerusalem yeshiva taking UK charity money and planning expansion
Oscar Rickett reports in Middle East Eye on 21 September 2026:
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At the end of the music video there is a message: “Thousands of Jewish students are seeing the light. Will you?”
But where are they going home to? The music video is a promotional piece for Ohr Somayach, an ultra-Orthodox network of yeshivas for men – often from the US or other western countries – from less observant Jewish backgrounds. It has a prominent campus in Maalot Dafna, an Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem, on land previously overseen by the UN and regarded under international law as occupied territory seized by Israel in 1967. The traditional, male-only religious education institution’s plans stretch beyond this Jewish area of East Jerusalem, where in January Israel seized and demolished UNRWA’s Jerusalem headquarters.
In 2013, Ohr Somayach began the process of obtaining planning approval for a massive new site in Sheikh Jarrah, the Palestinian neighbourhood that has for decades been a target for Israeli state-backed settlers.
On 20 April 2026, after over 12 years of delays and disputes, as the locals of Sheikh Jarrah and their allies fought the project, the Jerusalem District Planning Committee approved a plan from Ohr Somayach to construct an 11-storey – eight above ground and three below ground – building on land currently used as a carpark. This building, located on a plot of land opposite a mosque that was originally designated for local public services, would contain both classrooms and dormitories for hundreds of the yeshiva’s students and teachers, and would include an underground basketball court.
Middle East Eye can now exclusively reveal that since Ohr Somayach submitted plans for its expansion, it has received funding from two charities registered in the UK, and that a third British charity facilitates donations to it.