Major left-of-center charitable foundations and dark money groups have sent millions in donations to groups espousing pro-Hamas and anti-Israel sentiments following the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel.
Foundations controlling billions of dollars given to them by left-wing donors and liberal financiers like George Soros have poured large sums into the anti-Israel movement, at times even providing vital services to groups with Hamas sympathies. ActBlue, the payment processing platform favored by Democratic politicians, meanwhile, processes donations for several pro-Palestinian groups, including some that praised Hamas’ terrorist attacks.
“The disturbing reality is that Hamas’s allies in the U.S. have a significant foothold in the non-profit sector,” Ryan Mauro, a national security analyst at the Capital Research Center, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Major left-wing organizations are funding Hamas’s sympathizers and those who indirectly help Hamas by waging a political war against Israel.”
The Tides Center, part of a network of liberal nonprofits that collectively raised more than $1.5 billion in 2020, provides fiscal sponsorship to groups that praised Hamas. Groups sponsored by the Tides Center that praised Hamas or otherwise downplayed their attacks include the Adalah Justice Project, Palestine Legal, The Arab Resource and Organizing Center and The Catalyst Project.
Fiscal sponsorship is an arrangement that allows an established nonprofit like the Tides Center to process tax-deductible donations for allied groups without those groups themselves needing to register with the IRS, according to the American Bar Association. (RELATED: US Approved More Than $80 Million For Promoting Peace And Democracy In Palestine Before War)
“Israeli colonizers believed they could indefinitely trap two million people in an open-air prison … no cage goes unchallenged,” the Adalah Justice Project, one of the Tides Center’s projects, posted to Instagram alongside an image of a bulldozer breaching Israel’s border wall on the day terrorists attacked Israel.
The group also retweeted a post calling Hamas terrorists “freedom fighters.”
Adalah also occupied Democratic California Rep. Ro Khanna’s office on Oct. 20, demanding that he support a ceasefire resolution.
The Tides Foundation, the Tides Center’s sister organization, gave millions to liberal groups like the Black Lives Matter Foundation, the National Network of Abortion Funds, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, the Southern Poverty Law Center and various chapters of Planned Parenthood in 2021, according to tax forms.
The Tides Foundation also poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into funding organizations that accuse Israel of ethnic cleansing or genocide.
The Tides Center, meanwhile, fiscally sponsors an array of organizations that push for things like expanded access to abortion, racial equity in grant-making organizations and the Biden administration’s climate agenda.
Similarly, funds within a network of left-of-center nonprofits managed by consulting firm Arabella Advisors have also donated to groups expressing anti-Israel sentiments. However, Arabella maintains its grants were not used for any activities related to the current conflict in Israel.
Arabella provides a variety of management services to a network of nonprofits that provide fiscal sponsorship services and direct funding to left-of-center groups across the United States. Arabella’s network raised $1.67 billion and spent $1.26 billion, including $869 million in grants primarily to other liberal nonprofits, in 2020.
Groups supported by Arabella’s network have advocated for D.C. statehood, supported abolishing the Electoral College and called to expand the Supreme Court to appoint new liberal justices.
“Grants provided by Arabella’s nonprofit clients to the referenced organizations were used for projects and purposes that have nothing to do with the Israel-Palestine conflict,” a spokesperson for Arabella Advisors told the DCNF. “Claims otherwise are as false as they are reprehensible.”
The Sixteen Thirty Fund, a fund managed by Arabella, gave $62,000 to the IfNotNow Movement, a group that has organized pro-Palestinian demonstrations across the country. The group has accused Israel of genocide and occupied the offices of senators demanding that they support a ceasefire.
The Arizona chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which shared a template instructing people how to criticize their employers for releasing statements in support of Israel, received $40,000 from the New Venture Fund, which is part of Arabella’s network of nonprofits.
“One of the effects of this left-wing support is that it mainstreams Hamas and its propaganda,” Mauro told the DCNF. “A recent poll showed that the younger generation is more favorable to Hamas than to Israel. That’s a frightening statistic that means we should expect antisemitism and pro-terrorist sentiment to increase as the next generation takes the reins,” he continued.
The Windward Fund and New Venture Fund, funds within the Arabella-managed network, gave $473,000 to the Alliance for Global Justice between 2020 and 2021; Alliance for Global Justice funded Samidoun, an Israeli-designated terror organization, according to tax forms.
Both organizations discontinued support for the Alliance for Global Justice following reporting on its ties.
“The Windward Fund is no longer providing grants for organizations that are sponsored by the Alliance for Global Justice. Our organization does not support terrorism in any form and strongly denounce any violence against civilians,” the Windward Fund told the DCNF.
“We condemn terrorism and violence against civilians in all forms and do not support any projects or provide any grants to organizations that fund terrorism. New Venture Fund is discontinuing grants to any projects hosted by Alliance for Global Justice,” New Venture Fund President Lee Bodner told the DCNF.
George Soros and his web of grant-making foundations are also major financiers of the American anti-Israel movement. The Open Society Foundations, founded and funded by Soros, poured $13.7 million to anti-Israel organizations through the Tides Center, which sponsors several of the organizations, according to the New York Post.
Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow, which have been organizing pro-Palestinian protests across the country, received a combined $1,050,000 from the Open Society Foundations, according to the nonprofit’s grant database. IfNotNow also received $45,000 from the Tides Foundation during the 2021 fiscal year.
Members of Adalah, Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow collaborated to hold a rally in New York where 139 people were arrested and a sign that said “I DO NOT CONDEMN HAMAS,” was waived, according to the New York Post.
The Arab American Association of New York, another Soros-funded group, held a rally in New York City on Oct. 21 where protestors demanded the destruction of Israel, according to the New York Post.
Soros-backed organizations spent millions to support a relationship between Bard College, an American institution, and Al-Quds University, an institution in the West Bank that praised Hamas terrorists as “martyrs.”
Mainstream liberal involvement in the pro-Hamas movement extends beyond fiscal sponsorships and grants.
ActBlue, the preferred fundraising platform of Democratic politicians, process donations for Hamas apologists.
Meanwhile, ActBlue processed $3.5 billion in donations for Democratic candidates and an array of left-of-center nonprofits from 7.4 million unique donors during the 2022 electoral cycle alone.
ActBlue processes the donations of the US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN). On Oct. 7, the day Hamas began its invasion of Israel and ultimately killed over 1,400 civilians, USPCN released a statement characterizing the terrorist attacks as “self-defense operations” that were a “legitimate response to unending violence from Israel’s extreme right-wing, racist, white supremacist, zionist [sic] government.”
Hamas terrorists raped women and kidnapped children during their raids on Israeli neighborhoods and gatherings.
Other groups that praised Hamas and have their donations processed by ActBlue include Black Lives Matter Grassroots, chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America, Palestine Legal and the Movement for Black Lives.
The Movement For Black Lives retweeted statements from Al-Haq, an Israeli-designated terrorist organization.
Black Lives Matter Grassroots said Hamas “must not be condemned, but understood as a desperate act of self-defense,” and the San Francisco DSA said that “socialists support the Palestinian people’s, and all people’s, right to resist and fight for their own liberation … this weekend’s events are no different.”
Palestine Legal, which is both a fiscally sponsored project of the Tides Center and has its donations processed by ActBlue, called Hamas’ attacks “one of the most significant acts of Palestinian resistance to Israel’s nearly eight decade long settler colonial project in Palestine.”
Some less well-known nonprofits have also emerged as serious players in the anti-Israel movement.
The Westchester People’s Action Coalition Foundation (WESPAC) fiscally sponsors at least six groups, including USPCN, that organized more than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrations between Oct. 7 and Oct. 29. Groups fiscally sponsored by WESPAC are helping to organize what some said could have been “the largest Palestine solidarity march in US history” to take place in Washington, D.C., this Saturday.
WESPAC itself organized transportation to the protests. Other organizations transported people to D.C. from as far away as New Mexico and Puerto Rico.
One group involved in organizing the demonstration said it was “expected to draw tens of thousands of passionate individuals.”
The Palestinian Youth Movement, which was involved in Saturday’s protest and is a fiscally sponsored project of WESPAC, organized dozens of other protests across the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
“As the walls of the torturous Zionist occupation begin to fall, we remind the world of the meaning of Palestinian sumud, or steadfastness … every Martyr that falls, another will rise,” one of the Palestinian Youth Movement’s social media posts from the day of the attacks reads.
The Palestinian Youth Movement did not hesitate to start planning protests as Hamas’ rapes, murders and kidnappings were being reported. The group announced a protest on the day of the attacks on social media, saying that “it is our duty to echo the calls for liberation of our homeland and our people, from the river to the sea.”
Some, including the American Jewish Committee, say “from the river to the sea” is a call for the elimination of Israel.
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WESPAC supports a campaign to free Ahmad Sa’adat, the imprisoned secretary general of the PFLP, from detention in Israel.
Chapters of the National Students for Justice in Palestine, another one of WESPAC’s fiscally sponsored projects, were recently banned in Florida’s public universities for allegedly supporting terrorists after releasing pro-Hamas statements, Reuters reported.
Organizations funded by Soros and the Tides Foundation, as well as those sponsored by WESPAC, have staged pro-Palestinian protests across the country, including high-profile incidents where activists occupied parts of the White House compound and a congressional building.
Every group mentioned above was contacted by the DCNF for comment.
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