Simon Cowell scolded for $150,000 donation to Israeli army charity

Simon Cowell has been criticized on social media by pro-Palestinian activists after it was learned that he donated $150,000 to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) at a fundraiser last year.

FIDF, established by Holocaust survivors in 1981, says on its website that it offers Israeli soldiers "love, support and care in an effort to ease the burden they carry on behalf of the Jewish community worldwide."

The Beverly Hills fundraiser, hosted by TV mogul Haim Saban, raised a total of more than $20million for the FIDF from among its 1,000 guests.

The X Factor media tycoon has been barraged with graphic images of dead Palestinian children by campaigners who charge him with sponsoring the Israeli assault on Gaza.

Below an image of four dead Palestinian children on stretchers, one Tweeter –under the name Leema – told Cowell: “You have blood on ur hands.”

Another, by the name kiks, sent him an image of a father clutching his dead baby and wrote: “u donated money to israel to do this. Now imagine this was ur child.”

A third, tmrottweiler, said: “Well at least Simon Cowell doesn’t have to go to Israel to see how the money he raised 4 the idf is being spent he just has 2 watch the news.”

Other messages indicated the TV star was part of a “Zionist” plot and indicted him with submitting to orders from his “masters in Tel Aviv.”

Since July 8 – when Israel started its campaign in retaliation to Palestinian rockets- at least 550 Palestinians and 27 Israelis have died.

The United Nations, which has demanded an immediate ceasefire, said at least 1,370 homes have been obliterated in Gaza and more than 100,000 displaced.

The news comes amid fears of mounting anti-Semitism across Europe as hostilities between Israel and Hamas intensify.

Jewish people are being assaulted and abused in Germany as though the country had stepped back to 1938, political and religious figures warned on Monday.

Slogans dating back to the time of Hitler have been chanted at pro-Palestinian marches across Europe. Jewish-owned shops were mobbed and burned in riots in France at the weekend.

The Israeli ambassador to Germany, Yakov Hadas-Handelsman, said: “They pursue the Jews in the streets of Berlin… as if we were in 1938.”