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by aranchelk 28 days ago
The fact that the organization is Jewish is stated prominently in the article, but I’m not entirely sure why that’s relevant. Many charities in the US have religious affiliations.

The adult matchmaking etc, that deviates substantially from their advertising.

5 comments

It's relevant because the fact that it's religious organization was an important fact in the judge's ruling. From the article:

> If Kars4Kids resumes advertising, [Judge Apkarian] wrote, its ads must contain “an express, audible disclosure of its religious affiliation and the geographic location of its primary beneficiaries and the age of the beneficiaries, specifying whether they aim for children or families, or both.”

Having to audibly name the religion/ethnicity of beneficiaries of charities is a pretty wild requirement for a US charity.

That may have been the judge’s framing, but it seems off from what I typically expect from mainstream US news.

It would depend on what the precise federal/state law regulating charities is - it sounds, to me, (I'm a Kiwi, but heard one of their ads on the radio today in an Uber in SF) like they need to be more specific about what charity they're raising money for - the after just said "for charity".

I'm sure you'd agree that if I was advertising in the name of kids to raise money for a charity, and it happened to be that the particular charity I was raising money for had determines it should give Hamas money to help those kids, that potential donors would prefer to know where exactly their money was going to.

It's not at all wild if the charity presents itself as non-discriminatory (ostensibly to deceive "outsiders" into misguided donations) while specifically benefiting the ethno-religious group of its administration.

It's clearly deceptive and exploitative.

The religious disclosure requirement feels like it may be a 1st amendment violation. Also perhaps even the rest of it as “compelled speech” (why does the judge decide how they fix their ads?) is it typical for charities to disclose exactly how they use their funds in ads? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that.

I agree the ads shouldn’t be misleading of course.

Next you’ll tell me that UNICEF isn’t exclusively saving starving orphans in Africa.

To clarify the last sentence: the article says:

> Kars4Kids primarily funds a New Jersey-based Jewish organization, Oorah, which provides programs, including an adult matchmaking service, trips to Israel for teens and summer camps in New York, the judge wrote. The only program in California that Kars4Kids sponsored was a promotional giveaway of Kars4Kids-branded backpacks, she found.

It’s still not relevant.

The charity is giving almost no money to kids. Thats the relevant part.

Doesn’t matter if it Catholic, Jewish, Scientologist, or Zoroastrian.

The law wasn’t faith based. The decision wasn’t faith based.

So why does the faith matter?

Both "giving almost no money to kids" and that the recipients (mostly adults) it did benefit were "based on religious affiliation" seem fairly surprising to me. If I donated a car, I would feel mislead by both.
Normally if you're donating to something like Catholic Charities, you kind of have a bit of a hint what they do (though AFAIK they don't specifically target only Catholics) https://www.catholiccharitiesusa.org/ways-to-give/donate-a-v...
The identity and entity matters. It's not a random group who did a random thing for a random reason, it's a specific group who did a thing for a specific reason.

No one else made them behave in the way that got them called out. There is no religious persecution going on here. It's not a case of "But why does it matter he's black?". The act was specifically performd by a religious group, specifically for the benefit of that religious group only, under false pretenses of being neutral.

The people you are implying are being prejudged, are in fact the ones who commited the prejudice and discrimination.

... 1-800-kars-for-scientologist-kids, donate your kar today ...

I mean if they promise to write your car was worth 50% more than KBB, maybe???

Look up "Epstein".
> I'm not entirely sure why that's relevant

Because they are funding young people to visit Israel and this gives it context.

Why does Israel matter?

All that matters is very little money is going to the stated goal of helping poor kids.

Religious angles of what they’re doing instead doesn’t seem to have mattered in the ruling.

It’s a factual statement on how they misused the funds.

Please just state directly why you find the inclusion objectionable.

Because it's not obvious at all from their commercials, and that's how most people come to know about this shady org.

In CharityWatch’s view, the Kars4Kids ads deceive potential donors by failing to inform them that donated cars will benefit a Jewish organization and kids of Jewish faith. Furthermore, the youth programs Kars4Kids supports promote an Orthodox Jewish lifestyle, which CharityWatch believes compounds the deception perpetrated by the Kars4Kids ads

https://blog.charitywatch.org/costly-and-continuous-kars4kid...

I'm not sure I understand why it matters which precise flavor of Judaism a charity supports?
The answer is further down in the article, just gotta read.
Let's assume the charity was Catholic and didn't inform people: do you think that wouldn't be mentioned? What about Muslim, Hindu, Satanic?

People have very strong feelings about their money going to religious organizations, especially if the organization doesn't state that they're religious in nature.

Let's do this: What are you implying? Because it seems that you're implying special treatment because this organization is Jewish, and that's not likely the case here in most people's eyes, but explain why you might think that is if that's what you believe.