Montgomery County cut funding for the Maryland Israel Development Center after a coordinated campaign that included Marxist and BDS-aligned groups. The council that did it was elected by a fraction of the electorate it governs.
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
Montgomery County has quietly ended its funding relationship with the Maryland Israel Development Center (MIDC) — a nonprofit that has spent 34 years brokering trade between Maryland and Israeli companies, including firms tied to Iron Dome radar and missile-defense components. The move followed a campaign that delivered more than 50,000 letters to county and state officials, organized jointly by the Islamic Maryland Action Network (IMAN), CAIR Maryland, and a coalition that included two chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America, two Our Revolution chapters, and Peace Action Montgomery — groups whose own campaign materials describe MIDC’s partners as “merchants of death” and accuse Israel of “genocide.”
Thirty-four years of economic partnership, ended by a $47,000 line item, in a county where the government making that call was chosen by a sliver of the people it represents.
The dollar amount at stake was $45,831 to $47,206, depending on the fiscal year cited — a rounding error in the county’s $7.9 billion budget. MIDC’s own economic impact study puts total Israeli-linked investment across the entire state at $315.1 million and 987 jobs in 2024. The county’s contribution was never remotely close to what sustained that relationship — but it was the fight the coalition chose, and it won.
The campaign’s public face was the 50,000-letter drive. Less visible is that the outcome may have been locked in well before those letters arrived. In email exchanges with former Delegate Saqib Ali — a BDS-movement activist who has led the anti-MIDC push since at least 2025 — Councilmember Will Jawando’s chief of staff wrote plainly: “Will has committed to vote against any future funding for this organization.” Jawando, now the certified Democratic nominee for county executive, later put his own reasoning on the record:
“We should never use Montgomery County tax dollars to support the development or production of offensive weapons, whether that’s bombs or munitions or anything else. For me, that’s a nonstarter, and I will always oppose it.”
That commitment predates this year’s letter campaign and arrived as Jawando was courting the same progressive primary electorate that decided his race for county executive with 52,738 votes. The coalition’s pressure campaign may have supplied cover and volume — but the vote itself may have been secured through ordinary primary politics, not persuasion.
The campaign’s public face was the 50,000-letter drive. Less visible is that the outcome may have been locked in well before those letters arrived.
A Government Elected By 5 Percent
This is the same Montgomery County Council MDBayNews profiled last week over the Income Tax Offset Credit fight — eleven Democrats, zero Republicans, sitting alongside an incoming county executive chosen in a Democratic primary that decided the race with 52,738 votes: about 7.7 percent of the county’s 683,515 registered voters, and roughly 5 percent of a county of more than a million residents. The county’s second-largest voting bloc, 170,306 unaffiliated voters, got no ballot in the election that actually mattered.
That’s the same structural point that applies to the ITOC cut: a council insulated from most of the electorate it governs made a consequential call with almost no accountability mechanism standing between it and the activist coalition that organized against MIDC.
A council insulated from most of the electorate it governs made a consequential call with almost no accountability mechanism standing between it and the activist coalition that organized against MIDC.
What The County Funds Instead
The same budget cycle that found $47,000 unaffordable to sustain a three-decade defense-sector trade relationship includes $151,610 for the CASA Rapid Response Hotline — which, per County Executive Marc Elrich’s own budget transmittal, “facilitates real time community reporting of Federal immigration action, connects impacted individuals and families with emergency support, and links callers to critical resources” — a hotline that serves immigrant residents regardless of legal status — plus a separate $500,000 through the county’s FY27 Cost Sharing grant program to the same organization. Whether that trade-off reflects the county’s real priorities is something readers can judge for themselves. But it is happening in the same budget, in the same year, decided by the same council.
Whether that trade-off reflects the county’s real priorities is something readers can judge for themselves.
A Familiar Name, With History
Readers weighing Zainab Chaudry’s current statements on MIDC should know both halves of that record.
CAIR Maryland Director Zainab Chaudry, quoted celebrating the county’s decision as “a meaningful victory for every Marylander,” has her own record with Maryland’s government over exactly this conflict. In October 2023, Attorney General Anthony Brown appointed Chaudry to the newly formed Maryland Commission on Hate Crime Response and Prevention. Weeks later, following Hamas’s October 7 attack, Chaudry posted comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany and referred to the attackers as “freedom fighters” on social media — posts that led Brown to suspend her from the commission on November 21, 2023. Fifteen days later, Brown reinstated her, saying his office’s review found the law creating the commission gave him no authority to remove or suspend a sitting member mid-term — not a reversal on the merits of what she’d posted, but a concession that he lacked the legal tool to act on it.
The episode didn’t end there. State delegates introduced legislation in 2024 specifically to remove Chaudry and CAIR’s institutional seat from the commission; Governor Wes Moore signed a law restructuring the panel entirely, and when it took effect on June 1, 2024, every sitting member — Chaudry included — was removed along with the old structure. She did not seek reappointment under the new commission, saying she believed its new communications policy would be used to suppress advocacy for Palestinian human rights. She has not sat on the commission since. Readers weighing her current statements on MIDC should know both halves of that record — not just that a sitting state commissioner was suspended for anti-Israel posts and reinstated on a technicality, but that the seat itself no longer exists in the form she held it, and hasn’t for two years.
The Bottom Line
The coalition that pushed for it is now demanding the state follow suit.
Thirty-four years of economic partnership, ended by a $47,000 line item, in a county where the government making that call was chosen by a sliver of the people it represents. The coalition that pushed for it is now demanding the state follow suit. Whether Annapolis will is the next fight.
Sources: CAIR Maryland press release, July 2026; Islamic Maryland Action Network / Justice For All press releases; Montgomery Perspective, “Will MoCo Keep Funding the Maryland Israel Development Center?” and “On MoCo, Israel and the Palestinians, Part One”; The Associated/Maryland Israel Development Center 2024 economic impact study; Montgomery County Council FY27 budget reconciliation records; Maryland Matters, “Is Gaza a sleeper issue in the Maryland midterms?”; Jewish Insider, Montgomery County executive race coverage; Maryland Office of the Attorney General press release (Dec. 6, 2023); Washington Post and Patch coverage of Chaudry’s suspension and reinstatement (Nov.–Dec. 2023); Baltimore Sun and Daily Record coverage of 2024 Hate Crimes Commission restructuring legislation; MDBayNews, “A County of a Million, Decided by 52,738 Votes” and “A Government Chosen By 5 Percent Is Taxing The Other 95” (both July 16, 2026); Montgomery County Board of Elections certified 2026 primary results; Maryland State Board of Elections voter registration statistics; ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer (MIDC IRS 990).
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