A U.S.-based Jewish educational nonprofit, Tikvah, helped fund the publication in Israel of Benjamin Netanyahu’s hagiographic autobiography “Bibi – My Story,” which was rushed to print just weeks before the 2022 election returned Netanyahu to the prime ministership.
The revelation this weekend of an American Jewish nonprofit’s involvement in promoting an Israeli politician in the throes of an election campaign comes after years of attacks by Netanyahu on liberal leaning foreign nonprofits promoting civil society in Israel.
The Marker, an Israeli financial daily, first posted the revelation on Friday. This reporter has been working on the story for a number of weeks.
The book was a bestseller in Israel as was the English language version published by Simon & Schuster’s conservative imprint, Threshold Editions.
Tikva’s CEO, Eric Cohen, in an email to this reporter last month, said Tikvah spent $110,000 “to help translate, edit, produce, publish, and distribute” the Hebrew version of the autobiography. (Promoting the book in 2022, the Israeli publisher said that Netanyahu wrote both versions of the book, in Hebrew and in English, in longhand.)
Cohen said his group helped publish the book “to advance understanding about Israeli history, to advance understanding about the practice of statesmanship, and to expand awareness and sales for the entire Shibboleth library of books.”
Tikvah’s investment in the book, among more than 40 books that Tikvah helped Shibboleth, a conservative imprint, publish, was not connected to Netanyahu’s campaign, Cohen told The Marker. He said Tikvah did not contribute any further funds to the book’s promotion.
Tikvah’s chairman, Elliott Abrams, last year said Shibboleth was among the entities “launched and developed” in Israel by Tikvah. Abrams, a senior foreign policy official in a number of Republican administrations, made the claim In an announcement that Tikvah was spinning off some of its Israeli operations to a new think tank, Herut.
Cohen said Tikvah invested the money in the book in “late 2022.” Elections were called that year on June 30.
Netanyahu claims no knowledge of Tikvah’s involvement, although the nonprofit’s relationship with Shibboleth was common knowledge in conservative circles in Israel.
Netanyahu and his allies have long decried liberal NGOs for allegedly interfering in Israeli politics. His animus fueled his infamous claim on the day of the 2015 election that "Arab voters are coming in droves to the ballot boxes. Left-wing NGOs bring them in buses."
More recently, Netanyahu’s government has sought to pass bills that would place severe restrictions on nongovernmental organizations that receive the majority of their money from foreign governments. The bills’ defenders say they want to limit foreign influence in Israel’s political system.
The autobiography, originally scheduled to be published on Nov. 22, 2022, was rushed out on Oct. 18, 2022, exactly two weeks before the Nov. 1 election, which Netanyahu won narrowly. It places Netanyahu and his family at the heroic center of much of Israel’s history and settles scores with rivals and critics.
Once the new publication date was announced and it was clear the book’s sales would coincide with the campaign – and not post-date it – Netanyahu’s Likud Party told Netanyahu it could no longer promote the book, The Marker reported. Doing so would violate laws against a candidate profiting personally from a campaign.
It’s not clear if Tikvah pulled back from its involvement after the new publication date was announced. “We remain grateful that this book, written by one of the most significant leaders of the Jewish people, is now available in the Jewish people’s language,” Cohen told The Marker.
Why Netanyahu would need a nonprofit to sink money into the preparation and publication of his autobiography is a puzzle. Autobiographies by major public figures are virtually guaranteed to be best-sellers.
Netanyahu’s office told The Marker that his contract with Sella Meir Press, an affiliate of Shibboleth, did not mention Tikvah and that he had no idea the fund was involved. Tikvah’s relationship with Shibboleth has long been a matter of public record. Ha’aretz reported on the relationship in 2019.
Direct contributions to Israeli political campaigns by incorporated bodies, foreign or domestic, are forbidden, but indirect assistance is permitted.
An expert on Israeli nonprofits, Arnie Draiman, said Tikvah’s contributions likely were legal but raised ethical questions for an American non-profit with an Israeli affiliate.
“Campaigns are short-term and partisan; nonprofits should aim for lasting, systemic change across political shifts,” Draiman said. Additionally, “Involvement in politics may pressure staff or clients to conform, especially when essential services are involved,” he said.
In August 2022 – after elections were called – Simon & Schuster’s Jonathan Karp bought the world rights to the book from Gary Ginsberg, a lawyer with extensive ties with Democrats and the pro-Israel community. Multiple officials at Simon & Schuster involved in the book’s publication did not return or declined requests to comment on how many books were sold and who got the money.
Cohen declined The Marker’s request to explain an $9 million spike recorded in its 2023 tax filing in spending for “education programs, content creation and publishing aimed at fostering and enhancing Jewish culture, religion, history, economics, law and social policy.” That item soared from about $6 million a year from 2019-2022 to nearly $15 million in 2023.
Tikvah offered a summer course on the book in 2023. The pitch for the $75 course did not mention Tikvah’s involvement in the book’s publication. Tikvah also promoted the book on its podcasts.
The Netanyahu book is not the first time Tikvah, which bills itself as “advancing Jewish excellence and Western civilization through education and ideas,” has been involved in Israeli politics. Alumni of Tikvah’s educational programs in 2023 urged the fund to cut off ties with Kohelet, the think tank that shaped the Netanyahu government’s proposals to radically restructure the judiciary, a push that sparked months of mass protests.
A number of reviewers panned “My Story,” a New York Times bestseller, for being unselfaware and reductive. The Washington Post called the book “a self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing narrative.”
Conservatives loved the book, likening Netanyahu – in more than one review – both to Winston Churchill and a character worthy of a movie star treatment.
One such assessment said the book was akin to “a Tom Clancy novel written for a Tom Cruise movie adaptation.”
That appeared in Mosaic, a publication funded by Tikvah.
CLARIFICATION: This article has been updated to show that a bill in the Knesset would restrict NGOs that rely on most of their funding from foreign governments.
Tikvah does much to further Jewish continuity and Bibi’s memoirs were indeed a great read