From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Who’s Behind the Judicial Overhaul Now Dividing Israel? Two New Yorkers.   
   By David Segal and Isabel Kershner, March 20, 2023, NY Times   
   As part of a recent “national day of resistance,” a group of army   
   reservists wearing masks converged at the Jerusalem office of a think tank and   
   blocked its front door with sandbags and coils of barbed wire. Outside,   
   protesters led a noisy rally on    
   the street, waving dozens of placards and sharing a microphone for a series of   
   furious speeches.   
      
   “The Kohelet Policy Forum has been hiding in the shadows,” shouted one   
   speaker, standing atop a car. “But we are onto them and we will not let them   
   win!”   
      
   For years, Kohelet quietly churned out position papers, trying to nudge   
   government policy in a more libertarian direction. Then, starting in January,   
   it became more widely known as one of the principal architects of the judicial   
   overhaul proposal that    
   has plunged Israel into a crisis over the future of its democracy.   
      
   If the plan succeeds, it would be a stunning victory not only for the think   
   tank, but also for the people behind it: two guys from Queens.   
      
   The first is Moshe Koppel, a 66-year-old mathematics Ph.D. who grew up in New   
   York City and moved to Israel in 1980. He founded Kohelet in 2012 and has been   
   drafting laws and producing conservative and libertarian policy papers with a   
   roster of full- and    
   part-time scholars that now numbers 160.   
      
   “I don’t want to sound arrogant,” he told Ami, the Orthodox Jewish   
   magazine, in 2019, “but in some sense we’re the brains of the Israeli   
   right wing.”   
      
   Kohelet is not required to disclose the names of individual donors, and for   
   years Mr. Koppel has artfully deflected questions about funding.   
      
   But one source of money is a second New Yorker: Arthur Dantchik, a 65-year-old   
   multibillionaire who has donated millions to Kohelet, according to people   
   familiar with his philanthropic giving. Mr. Dantchik did not return a call for   
   comment.   
      
   American money and ideas, from the left and the right, have played a perennial   
   role in Israeli politics. Today, American consultants are a regular feature of   
   election campaigns, and the American-backed Israel Hayom, a free daily, is the   
   country’s most    
   widely read newspaper.   
      
   Until recently, though, few knew that the nation-rattling judicial proposals   
   were largely an American production.   
      
   The plan, which has spurred hundreds of thousands of Israelis to weekly   
   protests, would give the government far greater control over the selection of   
   judges and would make it harder for the Supreme Court to strike down laws   
   passed by legislators.   
      
   Negotiations — which included Kohelet — for a scaled-back version of the   
   judicial overhaul that would satisfy a broader swath of the Israeli public   
   appear to be on hold for now. The government is determined to push at least   
   some of its proposals    
   through Parliament by early April.   
      
   Opponents of the overhaul say the courts are all that prevent Israel from   
   devolving into a country with no checks on government power and no protection   
   for minorities. Mr. Koppel and his allies believe that the real threat to   
   Israeli democracy is    
   activist judges, who, he says, now operate virtually without constraint.   
      
   While prominent in Israel’s conservative political circles for years, Mr.   
   Koppel has long worked to maintain the lowest possible profile.   
      
   “I discovered that you get an awful lot more done,” he said during a rare   
   interview at Kohelet’s headquarters, “if you let others get the credit   
   than if you insist on announcing your contribution.”   
      
   Mr. Dantchik has for decades remained about as invisible as a man with his   
   fortune can be. (With an estimated net worth of $7.2 billion, he ranks higher   
   on the Forbes 400 list than marquee tycoons like Mark Cuban and George Soros.)   
   He is a co-founder of    
   Susquehanna International Group, a privately held financial powerhouse based   
   in a sprawling campus in a suburb of Philadelphia, with offices around the   
   world. The company has never taken outside investors, limiting what it is   
   required to publicly    
   disclose about the markets in which it operates — options, equities,   
   cryptocurrency and sports betting.   
      
   “They are as quiet as a church mouse,” said Paul Rowady of Alphacution, a   
   research group that specializes in proprietary trading firms. “These guys   
   don’t like to talk, and they don’t want anyone in their business.”   
      
   Mr. Dantchik’s connection to Kohelet was first published in an article in   
   the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, based on reporting by the Democratic Bloc, a   
   nonprofit in Israel that largely monitors right-wing groups.   
      
   “We spent months searching for a clue that would lead us back to the origins   
   of the money,” said Ran Cohen, the Democratic Bloc’s director. “It was a   
   maze of nontransparent U.S. companies and charities.”   
      
   The group’s research found that funds to Kohelet came through a 501(c)(3)   
   called the American Friends of Kohelet Policy Forum, which was originally   
   based in Bala Cynwyd, the same suburb as Susquehanna. Two of the nonprofit’s   
   directors are siblings of    
   Mr. Koppel’s wife. The third, Amir Goldman, works at Susquehanna Growth   
   Equity, a private equity arm of Susquehanna International.   
      
   After Haaretz published its feature in March 2021, the Democratic Bloc found   
   that the primary conduit for funds to Kohelet changed.   
      
   A financial disclosure report filed in Israel by the think tank in April of   
   that year showed that more than 90 percent of its $7.2 million in income came   
   from the Central Fund of Israel, a family-run nonprofit that gave $55 million   
   to more than 500    
   Israel-related causes in 2021, according to its website.   
      
   In previous reporting on Kohelet’s funding, Mr. Dantchik was cited as a key   
   donor along with Jeff Yass. Mr. Yass is a fellow co-founder of Susquehanna and   
   a prolific conservative political donor in the United States, whose net worth   
   has been estimated    
   by Forbes at $28.5 billion.   
      
   But people familiar with giving by both men say that Mr. Yass has never been a   
   Kohelet donor. He declined to comment for this article.   
      
   Should some form of the Kohelet-backed overhaul go through, Mr. Koppel would   
   become an improbable godfather of a refashioned Israeli judiciary.   
      
      
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