Jerusalem Institute of Justice

JIJ organizes its activities through two principal programs: the Israel Justice Clinic, which provides free legal representation and pursues strategic litigation and legislative advocacy, and the Global Justice Center, which undertakes international legal advocacy, research, and public diplomacy.[4] Its work involves Israeli courts and the Knesset as well as international institutions, including the United Nations.[4] CEO Flavia Sevald has described its mission as combining the defense of Israel’s standing among nations with the promotion of social justice and civil rights within Israel.[5]

The institute operates through entities in Israel and the United States and receives private donations.[4][6] Its listed entities are Jerusalem Institute of Justice, Ltd., registered in Israel under NPO number 513986646, and Jerusalem Institute of Justice Inc., a U.S. 501(c)(3) public charity with EIN 47-1817557.[4] Its international human-rights work includes attention to violations by the Palestinian Authority.[6]

JIJ was founded in 2004 by a small team of Jerusalem lawyers committed to the principle that access to justice should not depend on an individual’s ability to pay.[4] By the first half of 2008, it had approximately 143 open legal-defense files concerning allegations that Interior Ministry officials denied services, sought citizenship revocations, or refused immigration applications because of religious beliefs.[7] Its religious-rights clients at that time were predominantly evangelical Christians and Messianic Jews.[7]

Civil-marriage advocacy formed another part of its early public activity: in 2009, JIJ and the Women’s Lobby commissioned a Maagar Mochot survey concerning a proposal to permit civil unions only for people classified as having no religion.[8] Among Yisrael Beiteinu voters surveyed, 44 percent expressed disappointment with the proposal, 43 percent were not disappointed, and 13 percent expressed no position.[8] Research presented at a civil-marriage conference estimated that 10,800 Israelis married in civil ceremonies abroad annually, spending more than 31 million shekels each year.[8] Institute lawyer Caleb Myers argued that restrictions on marriage also imposed significant economic costs.[8]

The institute’s foreign legal internship program began in 2010, and Eli Hazan was appointed vice president for public relations that year.[6][9] By 2018, the internship program hosted dozens of participants annually from around the world, including people with academic backgrounds in international law, administration, and politics.[9] Interns contributed to research on Middle Eastern human rights from an Israeli perspective, within the institute’s stated commitment to human rights, the rule of law, and freedom of thought and conscience.[9]

On April 16, 2008, a High Court ruling followed a JIJ petition on behalf of 12 immigration applicants born to Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers.[7] The ruling held that the government could not deny status to a person eligible under the Law of Return because the person identified as a Messianic Jew, provided that the applicant was not considered Jewish under the Orthodox definition applied by the Chief Rabbinate.[7] Its protection did not extend to religious-belief discrimination in cases involving immigrants who met those Orthodox criteria for Jewish status.[7]

That same month, JIJ represented German student Barbara Ludwig after immigration police arrested her and prepared to deport her for lacking a valid student visa.[10] Ludwig and her attorneys maintained that she had repeatedly sought renewal but had been refused because the Interior Ministry considered her a Messianic Jew; ministry correspondence criticized her alleged missionary activity.[10] After a contempt-of-court hearing on March 16, 2010, the ministry granted citizenship to petitioners in accordance with an April 2008 High Court ruling protecting three Messianic Jews eligible under the Law of Return.[2]

The institute’s legal caseload included allegations of attempts to revoke citizenship and denials of welfare benefits and passports to people identified as Messianic or Christian.[2] Its accounts in 2011 included a woman informed six months after immigration that her citizenship would be revoked because of her Messianic affiliation and given 14 days to leave.[11] Two returning Israeli citizens who had left the country as minors were also reportedly denied identity cards because of their Messianic beliefs.[11] A Holocaust survivor whose residency application had been refused in May 2011 because she professed Messianic Jewish beliefs received residency on July 4, 2012.[3]

JIJ’s accounts across 2011–2014 described continued citizenship and service difficulties involving child registration, social benefits, identity cards, and passports, including cases in which immigrants admitted under the Law of Return as Jews were subsequently identified as holding Messianic or Christian beliefs.[11][12] Similar allegations appeared in 2013, including delays as well as outright denials.[13] In 2015, prospective immigrants were questioned about religious beliefs when their citizenship eligibility was assessed, and JIJ’s complaints included citizenship denials affecting self-identified Messianic Jews on grounds of Jewish status under Israeli law and Supreme Court rulings, alongside delays or denials involving family unification.[14]

The institute’s religious-minority work also encompasses litigation over tax-exempt status for minority religious organizations, threatened evictions involving 22 African churches in south Tel Aviv, and an interfaith family’s immigration case.[15] Its 2008 accounts included an increase in crimes and violent assaults against members of congregations it represented, in a context of hostility toward missionary activity and conversion.[10] In 2011, institute attorneys and representatives of affected communities alleged that Yad L’Achim pressured landlords, employers, and Interior Ministry officials in campaigns against groups it considered “dangerous cults.”[11] That year, an anonymous group distributed flyers in Mevaseret Zion identifying 10 people as Messianic Jews and displaying photographs and home addresses.[11]

In 2011, JIJ joined other civil-rights and social-justice organizations in challenging a municipal property-tax amendment that provided synagogues with a 100-percent exemption.[16] The petition sought either an instruction requiring local authorities to apply the exemption to all places of worship or an instruction directing the Knesset to extend it to other religious groups’ properties.[16] In August 2012, following a JIJ petition, the Knesset amended municipal and property-tax law to give religious institutions a full exemption when their premises were not used commercially; the exemption had previously applied only to synagogues under the 2010 amendment.[3] An August 2 legislative amendment also applied exemptions equally to all places of religious instruction.[3]

On February 10, 2011, JIJ separately petitioned the High Court against a 2010 civil-registration law available only to couples whose two partners were recognized as having “no religion.”[16] It sought repeal, amendment, or extension of the law to all citizens regardless of religious belief.[16] No developments in that case were recorded by the end of 2011.[16]

Project NOA, whose name stands for “Not Objects Anymore,” advocates against prostitution and human trafficking and for services supporting people leaving prostitution.[17] The Prohibition on Consuming Prostitution Act was passed on December 31, 2018, and took effect in January 2021.[17] The law describes consuming prostitution as a civil offense carrying a 2,000-shekel first-offense fine and a 4,000-shekel repeat-offense fine, with repeat offenders potentially facing indictment and fines of up to 70,000 shekels, alongside reporting and educational provisions.[17]

JIJ lawyers assist trafficking survivors with testimony against traffickers, legal immigration status in Israel, and debt relief.[18] One case involved a survivor identified by the protective pseudonym Yana, who accumulated 100,000 shekels in state debt while exploited in street prostitution.[18] The institute’s intervention secured cancellation of that debt.[18] Before October 7, 2023, its broader assistance included free civil-rights representation for minorities and legal and humanitarian aid for Holocaust survivors, new immigrants, and lone soldiers.[5]

After October 7, the institute established pop-up legal clinics in hotels accommodating evacuees and survivors.[5] By September 2024, those clinics had provided free legal care to more than 150 families and Israel Defense Forces personnel.[5] Its organizational figures for 2024 record free legal aid to 2,733 people, with listed categories including 40 trafficking survivors, 17 survivors of the October 7 attacks, 68 families seeking citizenship or residency, 112 refugees from Ukraine, Russia, and Eritrea, and 120 Israeli families displaced from communities near the Gaza and Lebanon borders.[19]

In 2025, JIJ joined Lo Mafkirim Ptzuim Bashetach and Forum Yahalei Krav in a volunteer collaboration supporting combatants injured in the war that began on October 7 as they sought Ministry of Defense recognition.[20] A fighter entering the process could receive an institute lawyer from the outset, alongside emotional support coordinated with partner care staff.[20] The initiative aimed to help applicants navigate the recognition process and submit better-organized cases.[20]

JIJ and Forum Yahalei Krav subsequently petitioned the High Court concerning Almoz Committee recommendations on service-related injury and bereaved families.[21] A hearing took place on May 25, 2026, after which the court deferred its decision.[21] An August 2026 article written by institute lawyer Guy Akoka described the petition as addressing recognition of discharged soldiers who died by suicide following service-related trauma and reported that it had been rejected.[22] Akoka’s account stated that the court directed the issue toward legislative consideration and made a broader statement that psychological injury was no less serious than physical injury.[22]

JIJ’s international activity includes Special Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, providing opportunities to participate in UN events, submit written and oral statements, organize side events, and contribute information and analysis.[23] Its Global Justice Center presents research, forensic evidence, and survivor testimony in international forums as part of a mission to counter what the institute characterizes as anti-Israel bias.[24] On December 5, 2023, it arranged a delegation of first responders to meet senior UN officials in Geneva, and it subsequently convened diplomats from 40 countries for survivor testimony and legal analysis.[24]

Its research publications include “YAHYA SINWAR – HAMAS’ NEW MAN,” dated June 21, 2017, cited in connection with an account of Majd, Hamas’s internal security force within the Qassam Brigades, and its efforts to identify Israeli spies among Hamas members and Palestinian civilians.[25] In 2018, JIJ asked the International Criminal Court to investigate Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.[26] The submission alleged military use of children under 15 and accused Haniyeh of using children as human shields; the organization also advanced a figure of 17,000 Arab children allegedly abused since 2016.[26]

The Survivors Seeking Justice project collected evidence relating to October 7 for intended presentation to the ICC.[5] By September 2024, Uri Morad and his team had spent nine months interviewing survivors and documenting their experiences.[5] In June 2026, JIJ advanced a separate legal argument that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ missile and drone campaign against Israel and other states should be examined as a potential series of war crimes.[1]

At the UN Human Rights Council’s 63rd regular session in Geneva, an address by former Gaza hostage Eli Sharabi was played during JIJ’s speaking time in a general debate on racism and related intolerance, rather than a dedicated discussion of Israel or hostages.[27] Sharabi presented findings from a September 2026 institute report that argued that starvation, isolation, physical violence, threats, and psychological abuse experienced by hostages amounted to torture under international law.[27] The research assembled 6,971 data points concerning 251 hostage profiles, drew on 23 confidential interviews and other material, and identified at least 78 released hostages showing signs of starvation or severe malnutrition.[27]

The 2012 extension of religious property-tax exemptions represents a legislative outcome associated with JIJ’s litigation, broadening an exemption previously limited to synagogues to qualifying religious institutions.[3] Its legal work also connects individual representation with wider policy questions, including Law of Return eligibility, civil registration, religious-minority rights, and recognition of service-related injuries.[7][21]

The institute’s own cumulative impact figures credit it with free legal aid to more than 30,000 individuals and families, 25 victories before Israel’s Supreme Court, and $17 million in benefits and judgments secured for clients.[4] Its two-program structure links domestic legal assistance and efforts at systemic change with international research and advocacy on Israel’s behalf.[4]

JIJ’s immigration and religious-services allegations concern disputed administrative treatment and the relationship between religious identity and legal eligibility; the 2008 Law of Return ruling applied to a defined category of applicants rather than all people identifying as Messianic Jews.[7] Its accusations concerning Haniyeh and the IRGC campaign are legal submissions or advocacy conclusions, not judicial determinations.[1][26] The hostage-treatment assessment likewise remained an institute legal conclusion: no court or international tribunal had ruled on it in the October 2026 coverage.[27]

In the Almoz Committee litigation, the petitioners alleged discriminatory treatment concerning physical and psychological injuries and challenged the committee’s composition, a proposed civilian funeral with military elements, and a two-year response limit.[21] The state disputed those claims, maintaining that the statutory causal-link requirement applied equally to physical and psychological injury and that military-burial eligibility was limited by law.[21]