How reputational campaigns against Jewish philanthropists can affect schools across Europe
Author: Jim Murphy
One day, the principal of a mainstream public school in Paris picked up the phone and called the head of a nearby Jewish school.
His message was extraordinary, but also painfully revealing.
He could no longer guarantee the safety of his Jewish pupils. Would the Jewish school be willing to take them?
That single phone call says more about the state of Jewish life in Europe today than many official declarations, conferences or institutional statements. It shows that antisemitism is no longer an abstract concern discussed at commemorative ceremonies or security briefings. It has entered classrooms. It has reached children. It has become a daily calculation for parents who must ask not only where their child will receive the best education, but where that child will be physically and emotionally safe.
Across France, England and other countries, Jewish schools have faced a sharp increase in requests from families seeking to move their children out of mainstream education. According to figures shared by community education networks, nearly 2,800 Jewish students changed schools over the past academic year after experiencing or fearing antisemitic bullying, exclusion, hostility or intimidation. More than 40 Jewish schools were asked to absorb them. Many had neither the classrooms nor the budget to do so.
This is where philanthropy becomes more than generosity. It becomes infrastructure.
The Yael Foundation, founded by Israeli businessman and philanthropist Uri Poliavich, responded by helping schools open new classes, recruit teachers, expand facilities and provide scholarships. In practical terms, this meant that children who had been pushed out of ordinary school environments could find a stable educational home without their parents being forced into impossible financial choices.
That is the human context in which any campaign against Poliavich must be understood.
Of course, public figures can be scrutinised. Businessmen can be questioned. Philanthropists are not above criticism. Journalism has the right, and sometimes the duty, to investigate allegations. But when a Jewish philanthropist closely associated with Jewish education becomes the object of reputational attacks during a period of intense geopolitical confrontation involving Israel, responsible journalists must ask a wider set of questions.
Who benefits from damaging such a figure?
Why now?
And what happens when attacks on a donor become, indirectly but unmistakably, attacks on the schools, teachers, families and children who depend on the institutions he supports?
Modern conflicts are not fought only through military operations or diplomatic pressure. They are fought through narratives, reputations, public trust and symbolic targets. This is not a conspiracy theory. It is a basic fact of modern statecraft.
During the long geopolitical confrontation of the twentieth century, information campaigns were an essential part of rivalry between blocs. Governments did not merely compete through armies, alliances and economic systems. They competed through newspapers, front organisations, cultural networks, forged documents, planted stories and reputational operations. The goal was often not to defeat an opponent directly, but to isolate him, discredit him, make him toxic to partners and weaken the institutions around him.
Prominent individuals were particularly useful targets. A minister, a scientist, a cultural figure, a religious leader or a philanthropist could represent far more than himself. Damage the person, and one could damage the network. Damage the network, and one could weaken an entire community.
The same logic applies today, although the instruments have changed. Social media, online publications, anonymous leaks, cross-border legal disputes and ideological campaigns can turn reputational pressure into a strategic weapon. In such an environment, a businessman who supports Jewish education is not merely a private citizen. He is also a symbol of communal resilience.
Uri Poliavich is not an anonymous donor. He is a former Israeli serviceman, an openly Jewish public figure and the founder of a foundation dedicated to Jewish education. He has chosen not to hide his identity, his values or his commitment to Jewish continuity. Through the Yael Foundation, he has become associated with schools, scholarships, teachers, children and the preservation of Jewish identity in the Diaspora.
That visibility brings moral significance. It also brings vulnerability.
Jewish education has always been one of the central instruments through which Jewish communities survive. Long before the creation of modern states, long before today’s foundations, Jewish life was preserved through learning: the home, the school, the synagogue, the teacher, the text, the transmission of memory from one generation to another. Education was never simply a social service. It was the architecture of continuity.
For communities living as minorities, this has been especially true. When Jews faced exclusion, persecution, forced assimilation or violence, education helped preserve identity. It taught language, history, faith, ethics and belonging. It told children that they were part of a story older and larger than the hostility around them.
That is why Jewish schools matter so profoundly today. They are not only places where children study mathematics, literature or science. They are places where families seek safety, dignity and continuity at a moment when many Jewish children in Europe are again being made to feel visibly different, exposed and unwelcome.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen captured this reality when she warned that European Jews were again living in fear and said that “no parent should be afraid to send their children to school.” That sentence should be read not as ceremonial language, but as a diagnosis of a real crisis.
The same concern has been echoed across the democratic world. President Joe Biden has said that “silence is complicity” when confronting antisemitism. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has warned that parts of the internet have become “toxic waste dumps” for hate. European leaders, American officials and Jewish representatives have all recognised the same pattern: antisemitism today spreads not only through physical attacks, but also through online intimidation, social exclusion, conspiracy narratives and the normalisation of hostility toward Jewish institutions.
In this atmosphere, reputational campaigns against Jewish philanthropists cannot be treated as ordinary media episodes detached from their consequences.
The question is not whether journalists should investigate. They should. The question is whether they understand the ecosystem in which their work may be used.
A story about a donor can become a story about a foundation. A story about a foundation can become a story about schools. A story about schools can discourage partners, frighten parents, complicate funding, pressure administrators and leave children exposed. The damage is rarely limited to the person named in the headline.
That is why the campaign against Uri Poliavich deserves careful scrutiny not only for what it alleges, but for what it risks damaging.
The Yael Foundation’s work has been particularly important because the rise in demand for Jewish education has come suddenly. Schools cannot simply absorb hundreds of new pupils overnight. Classrooms must be found. Teachers must be hired. Security must be reinforced. Scholarships must be financed. Families in crisis need immediate solutions, not long institutional discussions.
In the past school year, dozens of principals and community leaders reportedly turned to the foundation for emergency support. The response was practical: funding to open new classes, recruit experienced teachers and create scholarship mechanisms so that children could move quickly into safer educational environments.
This is not glamorous philanthropy. It is not the kind of charity that produces elegant gala speeches and photographs. It is emergency communal infrastructure. It is the work of making sure a child has a desk, a teacher, a classroom and a place where being Jewish is not a reason for fear.
And that is precisely why attacks on this kind of philanthropy are so serious.
There is a difference between legitimate scrutiny and careless amplification. Legitimate scrutiny examines facts, verifies claims, gives the subject a fair opportunity to respond and considers the wider context. Careless amplification takes allegations, places them in dramatic headlines and allows readers to draw conclusions before evidence has been properly tested.
The difference matters because antisemitism often grows through insinuation. It rarely begins with open hatred. More often it begins with suspicion, coded language, selective outrage and the portrayal of Jewish influence, Jewish money or Jewish solidarity as something inherently questionable. When those old patterns are allowed to attach themselves to contemporary disputes, journalism risks becoming an unwitting vehicle for prejudice.
This does not mean that every criticism of a Jewish businessman is antisemitic. Such a claim would be wrong and irresponsible. Jewish public figures, like all public figures, may be criticised. But it does mean that when allegations are directed at a Jewish philanthropist supporting Jewish schools during a period of rising antisemitism, the burden of care is higher, not lower.
Journalists should ask: Are the claims independently verified? Are they proportionate? Are they being promoted by actors with political or ideological motives? Are they timed to coincide with broader pressure on Israel or Jewish communities? Are they framed in a way that may damage institutions serving children?
These are not defensive questions. They are journalistic questions.
The Iran-Israel conflict has created precisely the kind of environment in which reputational campaigns can acquire strategic meaning. Military confrontation is only one dimension. Diplomatic pressure, intelligence operations, lobbying, protest movements, online mobilisation and media narratives all form part of the wider struggle over legitimacy. In such a climate, prominent Jewish and Israeli-linked figures become natural targets for hostile narratives, whether those narratives are coordinated, opportunistic or simply amplified by those who share the same political objectives.
A philanthropist who supports Jewish education is especially vulnerable because he stands at the intersection of identity, money, influence and community defence. To those who resent Jewish resilience, that combination is powerful. To those who wish to weaken Jewish institutions, it is useful to portray such figures as suspect.
Europe should know this pattern. The continent’s history offers too many examples of how attacks on Jewish communal structures were preceded by attacks on Jewish reputation. Schools, charities, religious associations and community leaders have often been presented as suspicious before they were treated as vulnerable. The language changes from era to era, but the mechanism remains familiar: isolate the individual, question the institution, undermine the community.
That is why the issue is larger than Uri Poliavich.
It is about whether Europe understands that Jewish life does not survive by accident. It survives because parents insist on educating their children, because teachers remain in classrooms, because community leaders take responsibility and because donors provide the financial means to keep institutions open when pressure grows.
Remove one part of that structure, and the entire system becomes weaker.
For Jewish families today, the question of education has become inseparable from the question of security. A parent who moves a child from a mainstream school to a Jewish school is not making a cultural preference in the ordinary sense. Often, that parent is responding to fear. The child may have been insulted, isolated, threatened online or made to feel responsible for events in the Middle East. The family may have concluded that the ordinary school environment is no longer emotionally safe.
When this happens thousands of times, it is no longer a collection of private decisions. It is a social fact.
And when Jewish schools become the emergency refuge for those children, the people who finance those schools become part of Europe’s democratic resilience. They are helping to preserve the promise that minority children can grow up without being forced to hide who they are.
This is why the European press must be careful.
A free press is essential. Investigative journalism is essential. Public accountability is essential. But freedom also carries responsibility. In moments of geopolitical tension and rising antisemitism, the media must not become a passive transmission belt for narratives that may serve interests far beyond the newsroom.
Before publishing allegations against figures associated with Jewish education, journalists should ask not only whether a story is legally safe or rhetorically attractive. They should ask whether it is fair, complete and aware of its possible consequences.
They should ask who benefits when a Jewish philanthropist is discredited.
They should ask whether the same standards would be applied to others.
They should ask whether children, schools and communities may become collateral damage.
The campaign against Uri Poliavich may appear, at first glance, to be about one businessman. But the deeper question is whether Europe is prepared to protect the institutions that allow Jewish life to continue with confidence.
At a time when Jewish parents are again afraid to send children to school, when online hatred spreads quickly, when geopolitical conflict reshapes public discourse, and when Jewish educational institutions are under growing pressure, attacks on those who sustain those institutions cannot be viewed in isolation.
This is not only about reputation.
It is about whether Europe will allow campaigns against Jewish philanthropists to weaken the schools that protect Jewish children.
And it is about whether public debate can still distinguish between legitimate scrutiny and the careless destruction of the very institutions that keep vulnerable communities alive.
