British Friends of ZAKA

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UK fundraising trust for ZAKA, Israel's volunteer rescue and body-recovery organisation

British Friends of ZAKA

Logo ZAKA armoured ambulance.jpg
A ZAKA armoured ambulance and utility vehicle. The trust granted £255,000 directly to ZAKA in Israel in FY2025
Type Other
Founded 2003-09-24 (registered)
Registration ID Registered charity 1099639
Headquarters London NW7
Area served Israel
Website www.zakauk.org


British Friends of ZAKA ("Chessed Shel Emet") was established by trust deed of 5 March 2002 and registered on 24 September 2003; its only register area is Israel.[1] It raises UK donations "to support the charitable work of Zaka in Israel", described as "Israel's dominant non-governmental rescue and recovery organization" with more than 3,000 volunteers (PDF p.3). Its trustees are Flora Frank and Carroll Raphael; the principal address in the accounts is First Floor, Winston House, 349 Regents Park Road – the office of its independent examiner (PDF p.4).[2] Income was £67,117 in the year to 1 October 2023, £787,759 in the year to 1 October 2024 and £213,684 in the year to 30 September 2025, when £255,000 (2024: £585,000) was "granted directly to ZAKA in Israel" (PDF p.4).[1][2]

Objects and activities

The charity's registered objects read: "FOR THE BENEFITS OF THE PUBLIC BY THE PROVISION OF SUPPORT FINANCIAL AND OTHERWISE AND EQUIPMENT TO THE EMERGENCY SERVICE KNOWN IN ISRAEL AS ZAKA, WHOSE PURPOSE IS TO PROVIDE RELIEF FOR VICTIMS, SURVIVORS AND THEIR FAMILIES OF NATURAL AND UNNATURAL DISASTERS BY THE PROVISION OF EMERGENCY FIRST AID CARE, TRAINING, AND SUPPORT FOR SICK AND INJURED FAMILIES, COUNSELLING AND, WHERE REQUIRED, RECOVERY OF SUCH VICTIMS."[1]

The register describes its activities as: "Making grants to those institutions and charities falling within the charity's objects."[1]

Register classifications: Education/training, The Advancement Of Health Or Saving Of Lives, Religious Activities.[1]

Areas of operation recorded on the register: Israel.[1]

Trustees

Current trustees, with other charities on which the same register trustee ID appears:[1]

Trustees of British Friends of ZAKA (register, October 2026)
Trustee Appointed Chair Other trusteeships
Flora Frank 2002-03-05 —
Carroll Raphael 2017-11-29 —

Historical trustees (UK Government Web Archive)

Trustees shown in archived register pages
Capture date Trustees listed Source
2018-01-04 J Wahnon; Flora Frank [3]
2021-07-07 Carroll Raphael (from 29 November 2017); Flora Frank (from 05 March 2002) [4]

Finances

Income and expenditure, five most recent reported years
Financial year end Income Expenditure
2021-10-01 £135,925 £115,957
2022-10-01 £97,405 £78,233
2023-10-01 £67,117 £93,394
2024-10-01 £787,759 £629,090
2025-10-01 £213,684 £297,562

Source: register annual-return history.[1]

Archived accounts

Accounts no longer on the live register were found in the UK Government Web Archive:

  • Accounts for the year ended 30/09/2014[5]
  • Accounts for the year ended 30/09/2015[6]
  • Accounts for the year ended 30/09/2016[7]
  • Accounts for the year ended 30/09/2017[8]
  • Accounts for the year ended 01/10/2018[9]

Funding in Israel

  • FY2025: £255,000 to ZAKA in Israel (2024: £585,000); raising funds £24,500, other charitable activities £18,062 (PDF p.4, 7).[2]

Israeli partners

ZAKA (Zihuy Korbanot Ason), Israel; the accounts give no address or regional unit.[2]

Activity beyond the Green Line and support for the IDF

Findings are graded by confidence. "Partner" findings concern the Israeli recipient organisation, not proven use of UK funds.

Evidence of activity beyond the 1949 armistice line
Finding Confidence
ZAKA operates nationally; the accounts do not say where UK funds were used.[2] Not established

Support for the IDF: No direct IDF funding is stated. The accounts say ZAKA "works in close cooperation with all the emergency services and security forces" and provides a framework for haredi volunteers "who do not typically serve in the military" (PDF p.3).[2] Haaretz reported that ZAKA collected bodies after 7 October "while the IDF sidelined soldiers trained to retrieve remains".[10]

Controversies and regulatory action

  • No Charity Commission inquiry, Official Warning or Gazette insolvency notice naming this charity was found, and its register entry shows no regulatory alert;[11] it is not among the charities named in the Commission's cheque-cashing class-inquiry announcements (May, September and December 2025) or in the September 2026 statement of results.[12][13][14][15] The charities in the Commission's settlements class inquiry (opened August 2026) have not been named, so it is not known whether this charity is among them.[16]
  • Surge after 7 October. Income rose more than elevenfold, from £67,117 to £787,759, in the financial year covering the October 2023 Hamas attack, then fell to £213,684; the charity had no formal reserves policy (PDF p.4).[1][2]
  • ZAKA testimony about 7 October. In December 2023 Middle East Eye, reporting a Haaretz investigation, said accounts given by a ZAKA volunteer – including 20 burned bodies of teenagers in Kfar Aza and 20 in Be'eri, and a pregnant woman killed in Be'eri – did not match the records of those killed; ZAKA said its volunteers may have "misinterpreted what they saw" and "are not pathology experts".[17] A January 2024 Haaretz investigation, "Death and Donations", reported "cases of negligence, misinformation and a fundraising campaign that used the dead as props".[10] The UK charity's accounts do not refer to these reports.

Other registers and records

Scotland and Northern Ireland

No entry was found on the Scottish Charity Register for this charity (register export dated 14 October 2026, searched by name).[18] No entry was found on the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland register (API name searches returned zero results).[19]

The Gazette

Searches of The Gazette notice feeds (all notices, insolvency and company) for the charity's name found no insolvency, winding-up or strike-off notice.[20]

Grants recorded by 360Giving

No grants received or made by this charity are recorded in 360Giving data.[21]

Sanctions screening

The charity's name, its current register trustees, trustees named on archived register pages, trustees and officers named in the accounts read for this profile and (for charitable companies) its Companies House officers were screened against the UK Sanctions List and the OFSI Consolidated List. No match was found. Viatcheslav Moshe Kantor (UK sanctions ID RUS1127) does not appear among this charity's trustees or officers.[22]

Land and property

The register records that the charity does not own or lease land or property.[1] No title registers were purchased; the HM Land Registry interactive search blocked automated access.[23]

US counterparts (ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer)

Organisation EIN Latest filing year Revenue (US$) Expenses (US$)
Zaka Rescue & Recovery Inc[24] 451140282 2023 60,907 42,419

These US organisations share the name or beneficiary of the UK charity; no financial flows between them and the UK charity were established.

Parliament

Selected Hansard references
Date House Member Debate
2023-12-04 Commons Andrew Percy Antisemitism[25]

Hansard exact-phrase searches for "British Friends of ZAKA", "ZAKA" returned 2 contributions in total; those not listed above were not established to concern this charity.[25]

Web archive

  • zakauk.org: 7 yearly captures, first 2016-01-02, last 2025-07-15.[26]

The UK Government Web Archive holds 2 archived Charity Commission register pages used in this profile (cited in the sections above). The 2021 archived full print showed the status "Charity reporting is up to date (on time)" and "Other regulators: No information available".[4]

See also

External links

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 Charity Commission for England and Wales, Register of Charities public extract (tables charity, charity_trustee, charity_annual_return_history, charity_area_of_operation, charity_classification), extract dated 14 October 2026.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Charity Commission, British Friends of ZAKA (1099639): accounts and annual returns Register of Charities; latest accounts downloaded 15 October 2026 ("PDF p." = page of the PDF file).
  3. ↑ Register entry 1099639, contact and trustees (capture of 20180104) UK Government Web Archive.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Register entry 1099639, full print (capture of 20210707) UK Government Web Archive.
  5. ↑ British Friends of ZAKA accounts, year ended 2014-09-30 UK Government Web Archive (capture of 20200108).
  6. ↑ British Friends of ZAKA accounts, year ended 2015-09-30 UK Government Web Archive (capture of 20200108).
  7. ↑ British Friends of ZAKA accounts, year ended 2016-09-30 UK Government Web Archive (capture of 20200108).
  8. ↑ British Friends of ZAKA accounts, year ended 2017-09-30 UK Government Web Archive (capture of 20200108).
  9. ↑ British Friends of ZAKA accounts, year ended 2018-10-01 UK Government Web Archive (capture of 20200108).
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Haaretz, Death and Donations: Did the Israeli Volunteer Group Handling the Dead of October 7 Exploit Its Role? 31 January 2024, Wayback Machine capture of 23 February 2024, retrieved 15 October 2026 (headline and standfirst only; the article body is behind a paywall).
  11. ↑ Charity Commission, Register of Charities, charity overview page (register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/en/charity-search/-/charity-details/ followed by the organisation number) for each of the 25 batch-12 charities, all retrieved successfully on 15 October 2026 and checked for a "Regulatory alerts" section; none was shown for any of them. The pages showed reporting status – "Charity reporting is up to date (on time)" for 22 charities, "Removed charity" for Mifal Tzedukas and Keren Yaacov Limited, and "Charity reporting is up to date (256 days late)" for Friends of Eidah Chareidis Orthodox Council of Jerusalem.
  12. ↑ Charity Commission, Serious concerns over use of £22 million triggers investigation by charity regulator GOV.UK, 14 May 2025.
  13. ↑ Charity Commission, Regulator opens next phase of investigation into 105 charities connected to company cashing cheques GOV.UK, 1 September 2025.
  14. ↑ Charity Commission, Regulator announces next charities to be investigated as part of inquiry connected to company cashing cheques GOV.UK, 4 December 2025.
  15. ↑ Charity Commission, Regulator concludes investigation into 4 charities as class inquiry continues GOV.UK, 9 September 2026, with Statement of the results of a class inquiry (same date), both retrieved 15 October 2026.
  16. ↑ Charity Commission, Charity regulator opens inquiry into charities working in illegal Israeli settlements GOV.UK, 5 August 2026, retrieved 15 October 2026 (a fact-finding statutory class inquiry initially involving 8 charities which "are not being publicly named at this time").
  17. ↑ MEE staff, Israel-Palestine war: Israeli personnel gave false information about 7 October attack crimes - report Middle East Eye, 3 December 2023, retrieved 15 October 2026.
  18. ↑ Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, Scottish Charity Register download OSCR, export dated 14 October 2026, downloaded October 2026; keyword search of the 25 batch-12 charity names found no matching Scottish registration (the only hits were unrelated names: Madrasatul Imam Mohammad Zakariya and Harris Kaufman Trust).
  19. ↑ Charity Commission for Northern Ireland, Register of charities search API CCNI, searched 15 October 2026 (keyword searches for each of the 25 batch-12 charity names returned zero results).
  20. ↑ The Gazette: notices matching 'ZAKA' The Gazette, searched 15 October 2026.
  21. ↑ 360Giving API: grants received by GB-CHC-1099639 360Giving, queried 15 October 2026.
  22. ↑ Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, UK Sanctions List (CSV); Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation, Consolidated List of Financial Sanctions Targets (ConList.csv). Batch-12 screening covered 390 name strings: the 25 charity names, current register trustees, trustees named on archived register pages and archived accounts (UK Government Web Archive), Companies House officers of the six charitable companies and of related companies named in the accounts (Millage Limited, International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (United Kingdom) Limited and Ezer Bekovoid Limited), and trustees, examiners, donors and grant recipients named in the accounts read for this batch; matching on surname plus forename tokens, reviewed manually. No forename-and-surname match for any person was found; the only token matches were generic words in organisation names ("Trust", "Limited", "Foundation", "Society", "International") and surname-only coincidences (Green, Anderson, Weiss, Frank, Grace, Friedman, Fox, Ward); lists downloaded October 2026.
  23. ↑ HM Land Registry, Search for land and property information GOV.UK – the service returned HTTP 403 (bot protection) to automated access in October 2026; no titles were looked up or purchased. Candidate title numbers below come from the free CCOD / OCOD datasets (October 2026 release), not from paid title registers.
  24. ↑ Zaka Rescue & Recovery Inc – Nonprofit Explorer ProPublica, viewed 15 October 2026.
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 UK Parliament, Hansard search API: contributions matching the exact phrase "ZAKA" Hansard, queried 15 October 2026 (Spoken and Written endpoints; quoted-phrase search).
  26. ↑ Internet Archive CDX index for zakauk.org Wayback Machine, queried 15 October 2026.
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