The unprovoked October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas Palestinian terrorists from Gaza against unarmed Israelis was the worst disaster befalling Jews since the Holocaust. The invasion of Israel, which killed about 1,200 Jews, kidnapped around 250 more, and launched at least 4,300 rockets, triggered rapid and lethal retaliation by the Israeli Defense Forces. Civilian suffering in Gaza is real and often terrible. But it is the result of Hamas aggression. Left-leaning supporters believe otherwise. They insist Israel, an “apartheid state,” is to blame. Ironically, many such critics run or work for American nonprofit groups with an avowed Jewish mission. And philanthropies are bankrolling these latter entities, especially the George Soros-funded Open Society Foundations, with its $25 billion in assets.
The Hungarian-born Soros, now 94, long has harbored hostility toward the nation-state as an institution. He has a deep suspicion of patriotism – that is, the instinctive defense of one’s own country. The antidote, he believes, is a world in which national, ethnic, linguistic and historic identities dissolve into a prejudice-free condition of peace, democracy and open borders. That the opposite of such things usually happens with attempts at this idealized condition does not faze him or the many beneficiaries of OSF. His aversion to the idea that nation-states have unique interests extends to the Jewish state of Israel. While opposing anti-Semitism, Soros rejects suggestions that Israel is a haven from it. Though nominally Jewish, he is quick to accuse that country of a multitude of injustices, even as he is reluctant to criticize its regional enemies.
George Soros often puts his thoughts in writing. According to emails hacked in 2016, he emphasized that a prime objective of the Open Society Foundations is “challenging Israel’s racist and anti-democratic policies.” He also has expressed the view that Hamas must be included in peace negotiations with Israel. “Neither Hamas nor Hezbollah can be treated merely as targets in the war on terror because both have deep roots in their societies,” Soros years earlier wrote in an editorial. “AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] must bear its share of responsibility for aiding and abetting policies such as Israel’s heavy-handed response to Hezbollah last summer and its insistence on treating Hamas only as a terrorist organization.”
Soros, who became a multibillionaire via his hedge fund, uses philanthropy to advance such convictions. An investigation by the New York Post published on October 28, 2023, three weeks after the Hamas atrocity, revealed that since 2016 the Open Society Foundations had routed more than $15 million to organizations involved in the latest round of pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Many of the groups, such as the Adalah Justice Project, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Arab-American Association of New York, represent Arab and/or Muslim causes. Others are generic Leftist groups who see Palestinian Arabs as part of a larger war for social justice. Yet seemingly inexplicably, some recipients are explicitly Jewish. Three stand out: IfNotNow, Jewish Voice for Peace, and J Street.
The close relationship between Soros and certain Jewish nonprofits springs from a mutual distaste for, or at least an ambivalence toward, Israel. Though occasionally affecting neutrality, they aim almost all their criticism at Israel. Eva Borgwardt, political director of IfNotNow, provided a slice of this moral equivalence at a rally on Capitol Hill in October 2023, in the wake of Israel’s retaliation. “Stopping this war feels like the biggest test of our lifetimes,” she remarked. “We understand how we got here, and that to end this nightmare and achieve true safety for Palestinians, Israelis and Jews, we need to end decades of occupation and apartheid, and fight for equality, justice and a thriving future for all.” As if Hamas cared about their victims’ “thriving future” just before murdering, raping and kidnapping them! Around this time, Jewish Voice for Peace wrote on its website, “Israeli apartheid and occupation – and United States complicity in that oppression – are the source of all this violence.” And the ostensibly pro-Israel J Street, at the beginning of November 2024, anticipating Donald Trump’s election, recommended that the U.S. government impose an arms embargo against Israel if that country fails to make “good faith” efforts to end the war. J Street seems to forget who started the war.
Backed by OSF, these groups have the means to propagate such opinions to a large audience. During 2017-23, the Open Society Foundations disbursed a combined $4,583,888 in grants, scholarships and fellowships to the three organizations and affiliates. Here’s the breakdown: IfNotNow ($683,888); Jewish Voice for Peace ($1,175,000); and J Street ($2,725,000). What are the recipients doing with the money? Pro-Palestinian radicals aren’t complaining that much.
IfNotNow. Founded in 2014, this Web-based activist group derives its name from the words of the ancient Hebrew prophet Hillel: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” If Hillel were alive today he’d probably sue this outfit for misrepresentation. While IfNotNow promotes a Jewish cultural identity, it also devotes enormous energy to pressuring pro-Israel countries and private organizations (especially AIPAC) into making concessions to Palestinian militants. The group is shameless. Upon receiving news of the Hamas terror attacks of October 7, 2023, IfNotNow responded: “We cannot and will not say today’s actions by Palestinian militants are unprovoked. Every day under Israel’s apartheid system is a provocation.”
Guerrilla theater is a specialty of theirs. It was IfNotNow, partnering with Jewish Voice for Peace, who organized the highly-publicized and illegal October 18, 2023 mass occupation of the U.S. Capitol rotunda by Jewish teens and young adults, and allies, sporting message-emblazoned black T-shirts, who demanded that Congress force Israel into a ceasefire. Hundreds were arrested. This was not IfNotNow’s first impromptu visit to Capitol Hill. In February 2017, several members interrupted the Senate confirmation hearing of President Trump’s nominee for (eventually approved) U.S. ambassador to Israel, David M. Friedman. One activist blew a shofar, a ram’s horn used by traditional Jews as a call to ritual. Three arrests resulted. Needless to say, loathing Donald Trump and his “racist” campaigning is a virtual requirement for membership.
Jewish Voice for Peace. This organization’s advocacy of peace rests on the conviction that Israel is a barrier to it. Founded in 1996 by three female undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley, the nonprofit by the end of last year had grown to around 32,000 dues-paying members. Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), among other things, supports the immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops from the West Bank and Gaza, and the worldwide Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.
If an organization can be best judged by the words of its leaders, JVP’s current executive director, Stefanie Fox, doesn’t impress. She regularly equates Zionism with racism, apartheid, imperialism, Islamophobia and other injustices. An equally determined Jewish Voice for Peace activist is Alissa Wise, a Reconstructionist rabbi who headed the JVC Rabbinical Council for a long stretch before leaving in 2021. In her farewell statement, she recalled her decision to become a rabbi: “…I really felt that living in Palestinian communities and learning from anti-Zionist Israelis would prepare me for the rabbinate I was to go on to hold…I wanted to be a rabbi who wanted to be about welcoming – with wide open arms – tens of thousands of American Jews into solidarity with Palestine.”
An even more provocative Jewish Voice for Peace activist is Rabbi Brant Rosen. A co-founder of the JVC Rabbinical Council, Rosen has served as regional director for the far-Left, Quaker-affiliated American Friends Service Committee. He also co-founded Tzedek Chicago, “the first anti-Zionist temple,” whose physical location is apparently a post office lockbox. His rabbinical credentials may be in doubt, but his support for Hamas terrorism (“armed resistance”) isn’t. Following the 10/7/23 Hamas massacre and kidnappings, he remarked, “When I heard initial reports of Hamas’ attacks on Israel this past Saturday, I will be completely honest – my first reaction was ‘good for them.’”
As Trump and the rest of the far-right escalate their crackdown on the Palestine solidarity movement, we are refusing to comply.On March 13, a few days after DHS agents abducted student activist Mahmoud Khalil, hundreds of anti-Zionist Jews and allies held a sit-in at Trump Tower in New York City to demand Mahmoud’s release. Clad in red T-shirts with the messages “Not in our Names,” and “Stop arming Israel,” protesters took over the building’s lobby, carrying signs that read “Fight Nazis, not students,” “Free Mahmoud, Free Palestine,” and “You can’t deport a movement.”Police arrested at least 100 people — including Jewish elders, descendants of Holocaust survivors, and students, dragging them out of Trump Tower by their arms and legs.
J Street. Compared to IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace, J Street, a 501(c)(4), Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group, established in 2007, comes off as a beacon of common sense. But that’s like saying Bill Clinton is preferable to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The four organizations in the J Street network – J Street, J Street PAC, J Street Education Fund, and J Street U (for students) – eschew radical melodrama in favor of policymaking. Founder and Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami, in fact, served as White House deputy domestic policy advisor under President Clinton.
J Street, to its credit, opposes the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement and refrains from accusing Israel of “apartheid.” But it also relentlessly pushes that never-say-die chimera, a “two-state solution,” that would create a Palestinian Arab state adjacent to Israel; the current ruling Palestinian Authority is merely an interim step. The two sides agreed to this arrangement on principle in Oslo back in 1993, but it was rhetoric, not reality. The consistent non-negotiable Palestinian demand in the ensuing 32 years has been a “right of return” that would grant all descendants of Arabs who fled the country during Israel’s war for independence in 1948 an automatic right to resettle in Israel. Demographically, this would be a disaster for Israel’s Jews. Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority and chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, emphasizes that the only acceptable “two-state solution” is one that gives Arabs full control over the West Bank and Gaza, and creates a de facto Arab state out of Israel by becoming that country’s majority population. This is a blueprint for war, not peace. The Israelis will never agree to this. They know national suicide when they see it.
All of this to some extent is the handiwork of George Soros. That the Open Society Foundations donated more than $4.5 million to these three organizations in a relatively short period is disturbing enough. More disturbing that the actual total is likely far higher. And that’s not even taking into account the as-yet released IRS Form 990 donation figures for 2024, when menacing street and campus anti-Israel demonstrations were cresting. There are two main explanations.
First, while many organizations that receive OSF money focus on a wide range of issues, they often integrate Arab and Muslim radicalism into their mission. They see fighting “Israeli imperialism” as part of a global struggle for social equality and democracy, a means of expressing solidarity with blacks, Hispanic migrants, gays, transgendered and other “marginalized” people. Related to this, they work with Jewish groups. While the added dollar value of such partnerships is almost impossible to quantify, there can be no doubt this coalition is mutually beneficial. Soros-funded groups are part of a network of true believers. They blend.
IfNotNow, for example, explicitly states that it works closely with Muslim and Palestinian groups, along with other Jewish groups, to oppose Israel. Several of these organizations, such as Adalah, Breaking the Silence, B’tselem, and Gisha, are Soros-funded. Probes by Canary Mission have exposed how IfNotNow and American Muslims for Palestine plan rallies, share information, and train activists.
Here’s a detailed look at a generic Leftist American group that promotes Palestinian radicalism, the Alliance for Global Justice. This Tucson, Ariz.-based nonprofit, like others in the Soros network, Jewish or not, is dedicated to putting the Third World first and America last. The Alliance received $250,000 from the Open Society Foundations in 2020, its only reported OSF payment through 2023. Yet some of that money, if unspent at the time of the Hamas terror attacks, likely has been used to pressure Israel into making concessions. This July, the Alliance endorsed an agreement worked out in The Hague that committed the dozen signatory nations to punish American and Israel with arms embargoes, public contract revocations, and “war crimes” tribunals.
Significantly, the Alliance for Global Justice is the official fiscal sponsor of Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, a Vancouver, British Columbia-based nonprofit that grew out of a prison hunger strike in Israel over a decade earlier conducted by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PFLP is a longtime rival of Fatah, the principal faction of the Palestinian Authority, which controls Israel’s West Bank. Using its charitable organization status, Samidoun promotes Palestinian aggression across the world. The Israeli and Canadian governments in recent years declared the group to be terrorist; the U.S. and Germany have restricted or banned its fundraising.
The group’s leader, Charlotte Lynn Kates, a New Jersey native and a Rutgers graduate, is a real prize. Married to Samidoun founder Khaled Barakat, she was arrested at a rally in Vancouver in April 2024 after leading a chant, “Long Live October 7,” and referring to various designated terrorist organizations as heroic. That August she traveled to Iran to accept the Islamic Human Rights and Human Dignity Award. Hamas and Hezbollah, she insists, are engaged in a “national liberation struggle,” not terrorism. As for her husband, he was deported from the U.S. back in 2003 for his prominent role in the PFLP. No doubt she saw that as a plus.
Second, much Open Society Foundations financial aid passes through donor-advised nonprofit clearinghouses who in turn forward it to the intended beneficiaries. As sponsors, these intermediaries are exempt from revealing the original source of the funds. Identification thus becomes extra difficult. As an article in the congressional newspaper The Hill explained last year: “Tracking the flow of money through donor-advised funds is akin to tracing its path through a washing machine. It is virtually impossible to follow the money that flows from start to finish with publicly available information.” Yet the task is doable.
Consider the San Francisco-based Tides Center and two affiliates, the Tides Foundation and Tides Advocacy. They are the far Left’s premiere middlemen for donor-advised transactions in addition to being a large original source for donations. The Soros network has greatly benefited, as NLPC explained in April. During 2016-23, the Open Society Foundations provided Tides organizations with a combined $75,362,628 representing over 150 separate payments. Many if not all of these disbursements were donor-advised.
A New York Post investigation revealed that many of the Open Societies Foundations donations to radical nonprofits during 2016-21 used Tides organizations as conduits. The Post’s October 28, 2023 online edition noted that Tides forwarded $13.7 million worth of OSF donations to Palestinian support groups such as the Adalah Justice Project, Desis Rising Up and Moving – along with IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace, whose disbursements are included in the 2017-23 period dollar figures cited earlier.
Given that shilling for Palestinian terrorism can and does shift public opinion, especially among young adults, a brief rebuttal is in order. For the murders and kidnappings carried out by Hamas almost two years ago weren’t simply an atrocity. They also were a recruiting tool by Palestinian supporters, Muslim or not, to expand the war to other countries – like ours. Israel, and Jews generally, are the villains in this morality play. Whether acting alone or as part of a group, violent radicals, especially those embedded in America’s fast-growing Muslim population, are doing real damage.
Here are a couple of reminders. On May 21 of this year, a keffiyeh-clad gunman, Elias Rodriguez, murdered a young, soon-to-be-engaged Jewish couple, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, outside a Jewish museum in Washington, D.C.; Lischinsky, an Israeli, and Milgrim, an American, each worked at the Israeli embassy. Upon his arrest, Rodriguez declared, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza!” Eleven days later, an Egyptian illegal immigrant (he’d overstayed a tourist visa issued by the Biden administration), Mohamed Sabry Soliman, was arrested on multiple charges related to his aiming a makeshift flamethrower at peaceful demonstrators in Boulder, Colorado calling for the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. Eight innocent persons were injured in the attack. During his blitz, Soliman shouted, “Free Palestine!”
Terrorist acts, thankfully, haven’t always gone according to plan. On May 28, Hassan Chokr, a resident of Dearborn, Mich., pleaded guilty to a felony firearms charge related to his attempted purchases at a gun shop. Chokr, a Muslim, in December 2022 had terrorized Jewish parents and children at a preschool morning drop-off at a synagogue in suburban Bloomfield Hills, Mich. Following this incident, he inquired about his background check to a store employee, expressing a desire to “even the score” and carry out “God’s wrath.” His intentions were all too obvious.
Anti-Jewish incidents of all varieties have been rapidly escalating in the U.S. and elsewhere. Writing in the current (July-August 2025) issue of Commentary magazine, American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Danielle Pletka offers evidence:
In the United States alone since October 7 (2023), there have been more than 10,000 reported anti-Semitic incidents, a rise of nearly 300 percent, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Those attacks have included murder, maiming, desecration of religious sites, and harassment of Jews in the streets, in schools, restaurants, places in worship, and at peaceful demonstrations. In Canada, it’s been even worse, with a recorded 562 percent in anti-Semitic incidents, a quarter of which were violent. The United Kingdom experienced a 450 percent increase, with nearly 2,000 incidents in the first half of 2024. Pro-Hamas and violent anti‑Israel and anti-Jewish demonstrations have become a staple in the UK, where Jews report they feel unsafe in the streets. Metropolitan police have been recorded taking the side of Islamists and supporters of Hamas. France, Germany, and much of Europe; Australia, South Africa, Brazil and Chile – all have reported astronomical escalations in attacks on Jews.
Radical Jews who hop aboard the anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian bandwagon in the name of human rights and “compassion” are oblivious to such realities. The truth is that they don’t want Israel to prevail, whether through war or diplomacy. That’s why they didn’t demand a Gaza ceasefire until after Israel fought back. Their implicit purpose is to lend credibility to the Palestinian cause.
It is important to add that while IfNotNow, Jewish Voice for Peace and J Street claim popular support, their views do not represent the majority of Americans or American Jews in particular. Gallup Poll results during 2001-25 repeatedly have confirmed this. In a survey taken during February 3-16 of this year, 46 percent of all respondents stated that their main sympathies were with the Israelis, whereas only 33 percent said their sympathies were more with the Palestinians – and that was an all-time high for the latter. A survey conducted by the Jewish Federation of North America during February 23-March 11, 2024 showed that only 28 percent of all respondents supported an immediate unconditional ceasefire for both sides, though up from 20 percent from an earlier poll. Jewish and non-Jewish respondents alike stated that their top condition for ending the war would be for Hamas to release all remaining Israeli hostages.
Those who downplay the dangers of Hamas – and that includes anyone managing or working for a Soros organization – are living in a fantasy world. Hamas, an amalgam of Palestinian nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism, came into being during 1987-88 as the First Intifada was erupting. The group’s charter, established in 1988, explicitly called for the destruction of Israel and its replacement with a Palestinian state. It also advocated violence against Jewish civilians, imposition of Islamic Sharia law, and rejection of negotiation with Israel, which had seized the Gaza territory from Egypt in 1967 as a defensive measure following its victory in the Six Day War. Israel ceded Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005 (dismantling Jewish settlements there as part of the deal), but in June 2007 Hamas asserted control over that 141-square-mile strip of land. From that point on, Hamas (not to mention Fatah, Army of Islam, Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups) saw a blank check to make life miserable for Israel. With financial and military backing from Iran, it escalated missile attacks on Jewish neighborhoods in Israel, and with increasing range. Homes in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and even Haifa often doubled as bomb shelters. Despite Israel’s superb Iron Dome air strike interception system, the attacks killed a few dozen Israelis and injured a couple thousand more. When Hamas updated its charter in 2017 to delete references to eradicating Jews, observers possessed of political realism knew it was a ruse. The events of October 7, 2023 were evidence enough.
Hamas and allied NGOs aren’t concerned about polls. Their goal is driving Israel out of existence; driving the Israeli Defense Forces out of Gaza is but the first step. The Israelis know this. They’ve been warding off Palestinian rocket and mortar assaults for many years. The IDF doesn’t get any pleasure out of blockading Gaza, deploying troops there, or locking down its residents. But as long as Hamas refuses to surrender, and continues to use the remaining roughly 20 Israeli hostages as bargaining chips, the IDF will stay. The situation remains a tinderbox. Aided by sympathetic news outlets and nonprofits, Hamas could buy extra time to regroup and resume targeting Israeli civilians.
It is appalling that Jewish nonprofit groups are pushing the Palestinian narrative of Israeli “atrocities,” and even more appalling that a principal paymaster is the Open Society Foundations. These people are playing a dangerous game. The fruits of their labor may be a war more deadly than what occurred in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is not a scenario into which America should be dragged.
Carl F. Horowitz is a senior fellow at NLPC.
