George Soros seems to have developed a special dislike of the State of Israel. He has rewritten Middle Eastern history to better jibe with his idea of the “poignant and difficult case” of “victims turning perpetrators.” Soros, much like the virulent anti-Semitic graphic daily propaganda in Arab, Palestinian, and Iranian newspapers, has been comparing Israel’s self-defense against repeated attempts of annihilation by Islamist/Arab terrorists to Nazi atrocities. The successful defense against terrorism, especially preemptive actions, is never appropriate in Soros’ book.
His history of how Israel fought for its independence could have been written by Noam Chomsky or Yasser Arafat: “After the war [World War II], Jews resorted to terrorism against the British in Palestine to secure a homeland in Israel,” Soros writes in his book, The Bubble of American Supremacy. “Subsequently, after being attacked by Arab nations, Israel occupied additional territory and expelled many of the inhabitants. Eventually, the Arab victims also turned perpetrators, and Israel started suffering terrorist attacks.”
This Soros interpretation denies the number of Arab invasions and the brutal tactics that led Israel to occupy the lands these attacks were launched from in the first place. As for the “expulsions,” many left because the surrounding Arab nations ordered them to leave. The Arab plan was to kill all the Jews as soon as possible and move back. For defending themselves, the Jews are getting what they deserve, in Soros’ mind. By surviving Arab/Muslim violence all these years, and by defending themselves, the Jews in Israel and elsewhere bear the responsibility for rising anti-Semitism and anti-Israel activities.
In November 2003, as Operation Iraqi Freedom was underway and anti-American and anti-Israeli/anti-Semitic demonstrations spread throughout Europe, Soros for the first time appeared at a meeting of the Jewish Funders Network in New York, making these remarks: “The policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon administration contribute”…to the rise of anti-Semitism. He assured his audience that once Bush and Sharon were removed from office, the world would go back to not hating Jews. “If we change that direction, then anti-Semitism also will diminish. I can’t see how one could confront it directly,” he said. The wide and sharp denouncement of Soros’s statements’ as “biased, bigoted [and] absolutely obscene” did not affect his determination to “hold Israel accountable,” as displayed in 2016 in leaked Open Society Foundations (OSF) documents.
The 2016 DC Leaks revealed that OSF’s “progressive national security policies” included plans to “hold Israel accountable” for alleged breaches of international law. This plan entailed generous donations to Palestinian, pro-Palestinian, and anti-Zionist Israeli and Arab “human rights” NGOs in Israel, which aim to undermine the country’s democracy within and to lobby the U.S. Congress, the European Parliament, the United Nations, and other international and foreign governments and organizations and media in efforts to delegitimize the Jewish State of Israel.
From 2001 to 2015, OSF and other Soros-related foundations funneled nearly $10 million to various liberal Jewish and Palestinian groups to intensify anti-Israel propaganda. In 2010, for example, the OSF pledged $100 million over 10 years to Human Rights Watch (HRW), whose funding was dwindling following a scandal concerning its Saudi fundraising activities in 2009. The HRW is a powerful organization that for decades has been promoting the Palestinian cause, including support of the BDS, while demonizing Israel.
The OSF has also been funding organizations known for supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, including virulent anti-Israel, pro-BDS individuals and groups affiliated with known Palestinian terrorist groups, especially the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terrorist organization designated as such by the U.S. EU, Canada, and Israel. The Israeli government’s February 2019 report Terrorists in Suits, provides detailed information on “…the ties between NGOs promoting BDS and terror organizations.”
Expert testimony before Congress in 2017 has documented that one of the oldest Palestinian terror organizations controls important elements of the international operations of the unincorporated entity (the BDS movement) under which the U.S. Domestic Terror Affiliates operate.
Some examples of OSF’s terrorist-linked Palestinian NGOs include the Gaza-based NGO Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), which claims to be “Dedicated to protecting human rights, promoting the rule of law, and upholding democratic principles in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.” In reality, the PCHR is a major actor in the Palestinian efforts to delegitimize Israel, spreading outlandish ‘war-crimes’ allegations against Israel, and employing Lawfare to “galvanize international pressure and punitive measures against Israel in the legal realm” The PCHR “has multiple links” to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PCHR’s 2017 annual report lists Foundation Open Society as a contributor, with at least $650,000.
Other Palestinian NGOs linked with the PFLP, Adalah, and Al-Haq, have also received funding from OSF. Despite denials, OSF did not stop funding these and similar groups. According to the OSF’s grant database, in 2011 and 2012, the organization gave al-Haq $100,000 each year. In 2014, al Haq received $309,000 from OSF; $400,000 in 2016, and two grants totaling $891,630 in 2017.
Adalah, an Israeli NGO with branches in the U.S., conducts “legal warfare (Lawfare) campaigns against Israel in international courts and other legal forums, presents Israel as a racist and undemocratic state,” and has working relations with the PFLP.
The 2016 DCLeaks of OSF documents revealed that from 2001 to 2016, Adalah received “$2,688,561 in 14 grants” from the OSF. In 2016, Adalah was granted $400,000 from OSF, and about $218,000 in 2017 (NIS -$756,000), a total of $3,306,561 million.
Adalah established branches in the U.S. through the Adalah Justice Project” (AJP), with branches in Illinois, Boston, and New York. According to NGO Monitor: “Adalah is a member of the UN-OCHA “Legal Task Force, led by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). The task force coordinates legal responses by 14 Palestinian, Israeli, and international NGOs, including those with ties to the PLFP.
The OSF and other Soros-related charities frequently use Tides Center, which serves as a pass-through distribution center for a large number of foundations. In 2016, for example, Tides received $4.53 million from the “George Soros Foundation to Promote Open Society,” (where his son Jonathan Soros serves as vice-chairman, and his heir Alexander Soros is a board member).Tides is “a public charity, which, through donor-advised funds, acts as a fiscal sponsor to smaller charities.”
Tides regularly passes funds from Soros’s various foundations, not only to organizations promoting progressive/socialist causes in the U.S. but also to groups such as Dream Defenders, “which Tides lists on its website as “Social Venture” partner.
Dream Defenders was ‘initially formed “to protest “Stand Your Ground’ laws,” in 2012 in Florida. Soon after, it was “repurposed to serve the anti-Israel BDS movement.” Dream Defenders openly “support and promote the mission of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a U.S.-designated terror organization. The PFLP has used bombings, shootings, and plane hijackings to achieve its political goals.” Dream Defenders and its members endorsed the PFLP and espoused its tactics by backing PFLP terrorists on social media and at various public events. It brings people to the Middle East to meet with PFLP members and PFLP-affiliated organizations. In March 2016, Dream Defenders put together an alternative school curriculum that includes the PFLP as one of nine “heroes” that should be used to teach “rebellion” strategies and tactics. On its website, Dream Defenders offers the BLACK OUT: History, Rebellion Curriculum Toolkit, “grades 6-11 (common core compatible)” saying: “the curriculum toolkit was created by traditional and radical educators in Dream Defenders membership body. Rebellion features nine organizations including; Left Roots, FRELIMO, Brown Berets, Sandinistas, Young Lords, Zapatistas, South African Student Movement, Black Panther Party and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.” Just like the Dream Defenders, the group identifies with the PFLP’s struggle, stating: “They [the PFLP] want to be free from global imperialism. They want liberation. They want equal rights.”
Another major U.S. charity that also supports many Palestinian groups, including BDS activists with ties to the PFLP, is the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which in June 2018, authorized Tides Center to give a $160,000 grant to AJP.
The anti-Israel activities of the Dream Defenders, al Haq, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, and Adalah are no secret. They have been publicizing them for years. And the OSF often hypes these groups on its “Grantee Spotlight” page.
While the OSF denies supporting BDS groups directly or indirectly, the evidence shows that the OSF disregards the proof that these groups promote the BDS and have close ties to the PFLP, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) — all U.S.-designated terrorist groups.
A feeble attempt at plausible deniability was made by Soros spokesperson Michael Vachon who in April 2019, while denying Soros’ organizations’ support of BDS groups, admitted that at times they simply don’t know how their support is used: “The foundation cannot track every project connected to every organization that it has supported over the decades” he stated.
But Soros, a well-known micromanager, has made it perfectly clear, “I run one of the largest foundations in the world and I am personally, deeply involved.” (emphasis added).
Transparify — the only global transparency rating group for think tanks — surveyed the major “200 think tanks in 47 countries worldwide.” Their 2016 analysis rated Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF) as “highly opaque,” with the rating of “0.” “Additionally, it was the only think tank in the United States to score so low.” Yet, the OSF still operates as a charity, receiving and also disbursing funding from the U.S. government, the EU, and other international bodies, often without acknowledging such collaboration.
The OSF’s flagrant funding of groups known for their support of Palestinian efforts to eliminate Israel and collaboration with Palestinians terrorist groups and individuals shows that the OSF and other Soros foundations as well as the organizations they use to pass funds to terror-affiliated groups disregard their fiduciary responsibilities, launder money, and violate the spirit of U.S. laws banning support of terrorists. Since financial assets are fungible, and BDS groups with links to the PFLP are known to collaborate financially while contributions have been made using laundered money, violating U.S. laws banning support of terrorists either financially or in kind.
Because of the veneer of advocacy of “human rights,” environmentalism, and other popular causes, NGO support of terrorist groups is particularly pernicious. Professionals, businesses, and financial institutions can be and are attacked as succumbing to simple “greed.” Not so the NGOs. Never has adherence to the admonition caveat emptor been more widely ignored.
*This article was first published by American Thinker, March 22, 2020