When Rebekah Kohlhepp got a communications job at Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) in 2022, she was elated.
“This opportunity is so perfect, I can still hardly believe it’s real,” she wrote on her blog.
Kohlhepp was particularly excited to work with Andrew L. Seidel, the civil rights attorney, activist, and author who has dedicated his life to combating Christian nationalism and did communications for the nonprofit.
However, less than a few years later Kohlhepp was out of a job and posting about her disillusionment with the group, over its ongoing refusal to stand against genocide.
“Americans United for Separation of Church and State have chosen their Zionist donors over their mission of religious freedom, and it has rotted the organization to the core,” wrote Kohlhepp after departure.
The battle within AU highlights a growing tension within nonprofits over Gaza.
Drop the ADL
In September 2023, Kohlhepp helped form the nonprofit’s first union, AU Collective and in March 2025, the union ratified its first contract with management.
Kohlhepp says she didn’t have an in-depth understanding of Israel and Palestine when she first began working for AU, but by November 2023, she was becoming increasingly frustrated with the group’s silence on Gaza.
She wrote a message to her fellow union members on the issue. She told them that she didn’t believe AU would publicly back a ceasefire, but she thought they might be able to pressure the organization to take other actions.
“It’s such an obvious thing that ties into the work that nearly every social justice group does, including religious freedom, abortion rights, trans rights, and racial justice,” Kohlhepp told Mondoweiss. “It’s just such an obvious thing to acknowledge, even if you’re not going to make it part of your everyday programming.”
One of Kohlhepp’s suggestions was for AU to cut its ties with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which had sponsored the AU’s first annual conference in 2023.
Eventually, the union shared the Drop the ADL website with AU’s leadership.
For years, the Drop the ADL campaign has been pressuring progressive groups to cancel their partnerships with the ADL over the group’s long history of repressing Palestinian rights, defending Israeli atrocities, and backing surveillance efforts against activist groups.
In recent months, a number of nonprofits have faced internal tension over their connections to the ADL. In July, members of the National Education Association (NEA) voted to cut their connections with the group because it is not the “social justice educational partner it claims to be.”
AU was unmoved by the union’s demands. According to Kohlhepp, Seidel told her that AU wanted to maintain “a big tent” to defeat “common adversaries.”
To Kohlhepp, and a number of her colleagues, it didn’t make sense why an organization dedicated to religious freedom was partnering with a group dedicated to defending an ethnostate while it committed a genocide.
Union members also had a hard time with AU’s assertion that it avoided taking a stance on Gaza because it was exclusively committed to domestic issues. After all, the organization’s magazine, Church & State, regularly published articles on issues from around the world.
Annual Conference
AU leadership had been concerned about potential protests at its 2024 conference, as its keynote speaker, Rep. Jamie Raskin had recently had a speech disrupted over his support for Israel. However, it didn’t stop union members from wearing small watermelon pins in act of solidarity with Palestine.
After that event, Kohlhepp says she asked Seidel how AU could remain silent on the genocide. Seidel allegedly told her that they couldn’t take stances on the issue because it would potentially alienate donors. “Andrew has since denied saying this, telling me that my interpreting him as saying it was ‘just about donors’ was ‘disingenuous,'” she notes.
By the 2025 conference, AU had moved to crack down on any expression of pro-Palestine sentiment, modifying its dress code to prevent staff from wearing keffiyehs or anything adorned with watermelons.
Eleven people were allegedly asked to remove their watermelon pins, and one was asked to remove a small watermelon earring. One employee, who was forced to cover up her watermelon nail art, ended up resigning over the issue.
“Church-state separation is an issue platform that several managers use to stand atop
for their own gain, whether it be book sales, podcast listeners, or increased political
power,” she wrote in a Glassdoor review of the company. “I could no longer fundraise for a nonprofit that’s silencing staff dissent while outwardly speaking against authoritarianism.”
The worker, who spoke with Mondoweiss but asked to remain anonymous, said she hopes AU’s actions “shine a light on the nonprofit industrial complex” and show that many organizations “are working for their own self-interest, not their mission.”
“I was under the illusion that [AU] was open to new ideas. They used to really focus on church and state, but they became a little bit grander than that,” she continued. “They’ve called out white, Christian nationalism because it was the right thing to do. However, when we think about religious nationalism, it’s egregiously being weaponized to commit a genocide in Palestine.”
Kohlhepp arrived at the conference in a Palestinian keffiyeh and was informed by Seidel that she’d either have to remove the traditional scarf or leave the event.
Kohlhepp refused and spent the rest of the conference sitting in the lobby. She was suspended for a week over the incident, but filed a grievance in response.
Immediately after the suspension, AU’s management proposed dress code and Zoom background policies that prohibited “advocacy messaging” and “global causes.”
After a frustrating suspension meeting, AU leadership came back to Kohlhepp with a deal. According to Kohlhepp, AU offered to pay her 8 weeks of salary and mutually agreed to part ways if she promised to refrain from criticizing the organization and remain silent about the agreement.
Instead, she turned down the offer and published a lengthy blog post breaking down the connections between high-profile AU donors and Israel. This includes names like Eddie Tabash, an AU board member and former Democrats for Israel Los Angeles co-president who has donated at least $1,125,000 to the organization.
Ian Watson, a former intern with the organization, told Mondoweiss that after her departure, AU leadership “painted Rebekah as a child throwing a tantrum for not getting what she wanted.”
He says that they also continued to ignore the issue of Gaza, despite continued pressure from union members, and that Seidel made reference to Watson’s pro-Palestine office decorations during a Slack huddle.
“I’m assuming you did some reading over the weekend,” Seidel allegedly told Watson, referring to Kohlhepp’s blog post. Watson believes the moment was an “attempt at policing solidarity.”
Kohlhepp says her situation has led her to a deeper skepticism toward the wider nonprofit world.
“It’s not just a disillusionment with Americans United, but the realization that none of these social justice jobs are going to be as as good as I’d hoped because they all rely on foundation money.”
Mondoweiss contacted Americans United for Separation of Church for comment on Kohlhepp’s departure but received no response.
Let’s not forget that donations to AIPAC (a de facto foreign lobbying organization) are tax-deductible under current US tax law. This is how a foreign country (Israel) uses large sums of money to pressure US politicians to tow the pro-Israel line at all times.
Look at the recent cowardice by Representative Katherine Clark (MA), the #2 in the House Democratic leadership. “Gaza Genocide” are two words she is afraid to utter because AIPAC won’t allow it.
““Americans United for Separation of Church and State have chosen their Zionist donors over their mission of religious freedom, and it has rotted the organization to the core,” wrote Kohlhepp after departure.” This is a lovely example of how the term “Zionist” is used as a code word for “Jewish” in these spaces. Her statement also plays into the anti-Semitic stereotype of rich, sinister Jews lurking behind the scenes to use their money in harmful ways. This becomes clear in the other statement she’s quoted as making: “It’s not just a disillusionment with Americans United, but the realization that none of these social justice jobs are going to be as as good as I’d hoped because they all rely on foundation money.” Perhaps this woman would feel more at home in the Aryan Resistance or some similar white nationalist organization that would espouse a similar opinion (one may want to ask where else they’d raise money, but never mind).
Did it ever occur to this woman to ask herself why any person, a rich Jew, a poor Gentile or anyone in between, should offer financial support to people who hate and want to kill them? Did she ever stop to ask herself if maybe they might have friends or family members in Israel whose lives or safety would be endangered if Americans United moved in the direction she wants it go? Did she ever consider the hypocrisy of supposedly being an atheist and believing in a secular and religiously neutral government and yet supporting people driven by murderous and hateful religious fanaticism?These are really rhetorical questions, aren’t they (so’s that one!)? And here’s another, equally rhetorical one: Have such considerations ever arisen in the minds of any of Mondoweiss’ contributors or commenters?
And here’s a non-rhetorical one: “Ian Watson, a former intern with the organization, told Mondoweiss that after her departure, AU leadership “painted Rebekah as a child throwing a tantrum for not getting what she wanted.”” What’s incorrect about that picture that they painted?