On March 28, The Washington Examiner reported that a George Soros charity awarded at least $1 million in grants to the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, a vicious anti-Israel think tank that was behind the blood libel of “One child is killed or injured every 10 minutes in Gaza,” cited by World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a November 2023 speech to the UN Security Council.
The Soros grant was awarded to Al Mezan amid burgeoning antisemitic rallies across Western Europe, the US, and Canada, making it possible for local, paid pro-Hamas agitators to draw in new protesters. Throughout the past week’s encounters between US universities and pro-Hamas encampments, officials on several campuses noted that the more rowdy and violent demonstrators could not produce school ID cards (More than 200 Arrested on Campuses as Police Clear Pro-Hamas Encampments).
This past week, several right-leaning media outlets offered reports on Soros’ funding of the recent antisemitic riots.
According to the NY Post (George Soros is paying student radicals who are fueling a nationwide explosion of Israel-hating protests), George Soros and his leftist supporters are funding activists who are stoking the rise of fervent anti-Israel demonstrations on college campuses throughout the nation. These protests, sparked by student occupation of Columbia University’s Morningside Heights campus lawn recently, have rapidly spread across the country. Similar makeshift encampments have sprung up at prestigious institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, Ohio State University, and Emory University, all orchestrated by chapters of the Soros-backed Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). At some of these locations, students have engaged in confrontations with law enforcement.
The Post reported that the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) “provides up to $7,800 for its community-based fellows and between $2,880 and $3,660 for its campus-based ‘fellows’ in return for spending eight hours a week organizing ‘campaigns led by Palestinian organizations.’”
StandWithUs CEO Roz Rothstein told Fox News on Friday that “Since October 7, SJP has been extremely aggressive on far too many campuses in threatening ways, including the use of violent, genocidal rally calls which include ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ and ‘there is only one solution, Intifada revolution.'”
Only a few days following the October 7 Hamas assault on Israel, SJP issued a statement characterizing the violence as a “significant victory for the Palestinian resistance” and asserted, “This exemplifies the true essence of freeing Palestine: not merely rhetoric and demonstrations, but direct armed resistance against the oppressors.”
The MailOnline on Friday came out with a report titled, “REVEALED: George Soros is PAYING left-wing activists to head up campouts at colleges across America – as huge wads of cash they’re getting are shared (sic.)”
In Yale, Craig Birckhead-Morton, a fellow with USCPR, was apprehended for occupying Beinecke Plaza on Monday. He had been interning for Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md). Meanwhile, at Berkeley, Malak Afaneh, co-president of Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine, has been actively participating in the campus protests this week. Afaneh gained attention earlier this month for her involvement in a disruptive incident where students turned a dinner with the law school’s dean into an antisemitic demonstration.
WASHINTON POST PUSHBACK
Washington Post columnist Philip Bump suggested last Friday that “the connection between the protests and funding from Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF) is so tenuous as to be obviously contrived.”
Bump conceded that the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights is registered with the IRS as Education for Just Peace in the Middle East (EJP), and has received grants from OSF. Also, the largest Soros grant to EJP was awarded in 2018, to the tune of $300,000. However, Bump wrote, “During that fiscal year, EJP took in just over $1 million in revenue. It spent about $1.3 million, meaning it operated at a loss. In fiscal 2019, it had net assets of about $165,000 — meaning that a big chunk of that OSF grant was already spent.”
But EJP received another large grant from OSF––$150,000––in 2021, and a $250,000 grant in 2022. “The New York Post’s suggestion is that this money went to ‘paid protesters,’” wrote Bump, “But money is fungible. During those years, the organization also spent $2.4 million, at least $2 million of which wasn’t OSF money.”
In other words, the Soros charity was not the only source of funding for this antisemitic group. There were others.
Business Today on Sunday dealt with the issue of Soros’ support for anti-Israel demonstrations (Is George Soros behind anti-Israel protests in Columbia, other US universities? Here’s what we know so far).
It concluded that funding from Soros and affiliated organizations has played a pivotal role in the protests at Columbia University. Three groups—Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and Within Our Lifetime—established a tent city on the campus last Wednesday. Subsequently, similar “Liberated Zones” have emerged at other colleges, such as Harvard, Yale, Berkeley in California, Ohio State University, and Emory in Georgia. These efforts have allegedly been coordinated by student chapters of SJP, supported by Soros-backed initiatives.
In certain instances, Business Today continued, students at these replicated tent cities have engaged in clashes with law enforcement, with funding from a network of non-profit organizations supported by Soros, the billionaire who will be forever remembered for orchestrating “Black Wednesday.”
On September 16, 1992, Black Wednesday, Soros’ fund sold short more than $10 billion British pounds, nearly bringing the UK economy to its knees. Even his Washington Post apologists won’t be able to make us forget that.
