Here are facts about self-professed “I am not a Zionist” radical George Soros’ role in funding the antisemitic, anti-Israel platform, posts, policies, promotions, and resources of the group Black Lives Matter (BLM)/Movement for Black Lives (M4BL).  

Soros funds: BLM directly; so-called “racial justice” groups that demonize Israel; anti-Israel groups that wrote the anti-Israel antisemitic portion of the BLM/M4BL platform; the major anti-Israel BDS “resource” group on the BLM/M4BL platform; viciously anti-Israel members of that BDS group; the anti-Israel lawfare organization that filed a lawsuit to assist violent BLM actions and that promotes spurious BLM-anti-Israel intersectionality; the Al Haq organization run by operatives of designated terror organization PLFP, whose anti-Israel agenda is openly promoted by BLM’s tweets; and at least four Jewish organizations that have defamed and attacked ZOA for pointing out BLM’s antisemitism.

And these items may only be the “tip of the iceberg.”

I. Soros’ Newly Announced $220 MILLION (!) to Black-Led Racial Justice Groups, Including Demonizers of Israel:

Just prior to going to press with this article, Soros’ Open Society Foundations announced grants of $220 million, primarilyto a few selected Black-led “racial justice” groups. A top recipient of Soros’ multi-millions is Repairers of the Breach, whose founder and president is Israel-basher Rev. William J. Barber II. Barber was the keynote speaker for the 2018 conference of the major anti-Israel BDS group (USPCR) in the United States. During his speech (similar to his writings), Barber – who has never been to Israel – demonized Israel, Israeli Jews, Zionists, and pro-Israel Evangelicals with every imaginable falsehood, and reeled off a list of demands that amounted to Israel’s destruction. Barber also falsely claimed that Palestinians have a long history of “non-violence” – and falsely claimed that the following were all “non-violent”: The 1936-39 Arab riots (in which Palestinian-Arabs murdered hundreds of Jews in Jerusalem and elsewhere); the First Intifada (in which Palestinian-Arabs murdered or maimed over 3,000 innocent Jews); and the recent Gaza violence (in which Hamas and Gazan PIJ operatives and ordinary Gazans, armed with maps showing the routes to Israeli kindergartens, threw Molotov cocktails and bombs, aimed at breaching the border fence, so that they could “tear out Jews’ hearts and eat Jews’ livers,” as Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar put it).  

Barber also demonstrated his ignorance by falsely claiming that “the Zionist project in Palestine was a colonialist project from the beginning,” and that Theodore Herzl proposed the modern Jewish state “never just purely about righting the terrible wrongs of the Holocaust from his perspective. But for [Herzl], it was about expanding the global empire.” In fact, Herzl died approximately 40 years prior to the Holocaust, and thus could not have proposed a Jewish state to right the wrongs of the Holocaust. Nor did the Jewish people have a global empire. The re-establishment of Israel by the indigenous Jewish people was about returning to the Jewish homeland.    

The fact that Israel-demonizer Barber’s organization is a top recipient of Soros’ $220 million speaks volumes about Soros’ agenda.

II. Soros’ Open Society Funds BLM:

According to an October 2015 Open Society Report, Soros’ Open Society granted $650,000 directly to BLM group. At the October 2015 Open Society meeting, OSF also discussed how Soros’ Open Society could help link BLM “to existing [Open Society] grantees and other key actors that provide mutual strengthening.” (See “Hacked Soros Memo: $650,000 to Black Lives Matter,” by Aaron Klein, Breitbart, Aug. 16, 2016.) In addition, Soros’ Foundation to Promote Open Society granted $279,860 to “Release Leads, Ltd.,” in part, to “organize public live events featuring the Black Lives Matter movement UK.”  

Soros’ FPOS also supports numerous related groups, such as the “Racial Justice Action Center” ($200,000 reported in 2018), which partnered in a report “The Most Dangerous Thing Out Here is the Police’; and the Center for Popular Democracy ($850,000 reported in 2018), which features BLM on its homepage and demands police defunding as the only way for Black people to find real liberation.

Sources of Funding Information for Items III Through VII:

(1)  2016 FPOS Tax Form 990-PF (“FPOS” is Soros’ Foundation to Promote Open Society,” one of Soros’ major grant-making foundations)

(2)  2018 FPOS Tax Form 990-PF  

(3)  Soros’ Open Society Foundations past (through 2018) Awarded Grants database

(4)  NGO Monitor’s Summary of the FPOS Grants Database

(5)  August 6, 2015 OSF document leaked by DC Leaks, listing Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF)’s grants to anti-Israel NGOs through OSF’s “Arab Regional Office (ARO) – Palestinian Citizens of Israel” department (reprinted by NGO Monitor) 

III. Soros’ FPOS Funds Organizations That Wrote BLM/M4BL’s Antisemitic Platform: 

A major Soros grant-making vehicle, the Foundation to Promote Open Society (FPOS), contributes heavily to the following “Organizations Currently Working on Policy” that authored the anti-Israel, pro-BDS, antisemitic policies of the BLM/M4BL official platform:

• Adalah: $3,688,561 to approx. $4 milliontotal for 2001-2017 ($400,000 in 2017; $400,000 in 2016; NIS 756,000 in 2015; and 14 grants from 2001 to August 2015 amounting to $2,688,561).  Adalah is a virulent anti-Israel BDS group.

• Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI):$270,000 ($150,000 in 2018, plus $120,000 in 2017. Possible additional previous amounts.) BAJI holds anti-Israel demonstrations.

• Dream Defenders: est. $275,000($250,000 to Borealis Philanthropy’s “Black Led Movement Fund” (BLMF) in 2018. BLMF advances “black liberation” and funds Dream Defenders and BLM-Memphis. FPOS also gave $25,000 to the Tides Foundation in 2017 to give to Dream Defenders.) A report by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs reveals that Dream Defenders is intertwined with foreign designated terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).  Dream Defenders demonstrates against Israel; brings BLM to joint visits to PFLP strongholds; etc.

• Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU): $150,000in 2016.  Possible additional previous amounts. IMEU promotes AOC’s anti-Israel letter; attacks the Jewish Nation Fund as causing “ethnic cleansing,” promotes calling Israel’s creation the “Nakba” (catastrophe), and other vicious anti-Israel demonization.  

IV. Soros Funds BDS “Resource” Organization on BLM/M4BL’s Antisemitic Platform:  

Soros also funds the BLM/M4BL antisemitic platform’s BDS “resource organization,” the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation. Specifically:

• The U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation: $300,000 grant in 2018 from Soros’ FPOS.The U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation, recently renamed the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), is the major anti-Israel BDS group and coalition in the United States. Soros’ FPOS funded the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation via its acknowledged alias, “Education for Just Peace in the Middle East.

Soros appears to be also sending additional funds to USCPR indirectly. For instance, Soros’ FPOS gave $750,000 to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in 2017, and the Rockefeller Fund gave $155,000 to USCPR (also via the alias “Education for Just Peace in the Middle East”).

In addition, Soros also funds USCPR member groups. For instance, in 2017, Soros’ FPOS gave $300,000 to the viciously anti-Israel “Jewish Voice for Peace,” a member organization of USCPR. 

Further, Soros foundations help coordinate and spend millions of dollars funding a web of additional anti-Israel organizations (in addition to Adalah and others that co-authored the BLM anti-Israel platform). These groups’ relentless demonization of Israel strengthens Soros-supported BLM-resource USPCR. Such additional Israel- demonization groups and Soros foundations’ contributions to them include: Mossawa ($370,000 in 2006-2017); B’tselem ($150,000 in 2018; $300,000 in 2017; NIS 497,406 in 2015-2016); Breaking the Silence ($275,000 in 2016-2017 and NIS 330,990 in 2015); ACRI-Association for Civil Rights in Israel ($220,000 in 2016-2018; and NIS 88,500 in 2015; Gisha ($360,000 in 2016-2018); Ir Amim ($280,000 in 2016-2018 and NIS 66,500 in 2015); Euromed Rights ($2,550,016 in 2016-208); Mada al-Carmel ($235,000 in 2016-2017 and $707,000 in 2003-2015); Kayan Feminist Organization ($765,000 in 2006-2018) (Kayan’s “feminism” consists of promoting women’s awareness of the “Nakba” – the claim that Israel’s creation is a catastrophe, and relentlessly accusing Israel of harming Palestinian-Arab women). Sadly, there are many more such Soros-supported groups! See NGO Monitor’s Profile of Soros’ Open Society Foundations, Apr. 2020, and other sources listed above.

V. Soros Funds Anti-Israel PFLP-Run “Al Haq” BDS Group Promoted by BLM:

• Al Haq: $1,291,630($891,630 in 2017; 400,000 in 2016, from FPOS.) In addition, Soros’ FPOS funded an $8,886 Al Haq internship in 2017. 

BLM promotes Soros-funded Al Haq and its vicious BDS agenda and demonization of Israel. On June 28, 2020, BLM-UK tweeted “FREE PALESTINE”; falsely accused Israel of “settler colonial pursuits”; and “On the eve of Israel’s planned formal annexation of Palestinian land, we stand with Palestinian civil society in calling for targeted sanctions in line with international law against Israel’s colonial, apartheid regime,” along with an Al Haq list of four anti-Israel actions called for by Al Haq, including ending trade agreements, boycotts, ending military cooperation with Israel, and bringing Israelis to “justice” for their “war crimes.” The Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs report “Terrorists in Suits: The Ties Between NGOs and Promoting BDS and Terrorist Organizations” documents that Al Haq is headed and run by designated terror group PFLP operatives and convicted terrorists.  

VI. Soros Funds Anti-Israel Lawfare Organization That Files Lawsuits to Assist Violent BLM Actions and Promotes BLM-Anti-Israel “Intersectionality”:

Soros’ FPOS also gave $1,280,000 ($750,000 in 2018 and $530,000 in 2016) to the “Center for Constitutional Rights” (CCR), a far-left, anti-Israel “Palestinian solidarity” lawfare organization that organizes BLM conferences, including the “The Art of Protest #BlackLivesMatter: Community Lawyering and Movement Building”; files lawsuits on BLM’s behalf, including a lawsuit against the FBI and U.S. Department of Homeland Security to curtail surveillance of the too-often-violent M4BL (BLM) demonstrations; and promotes spurious BLM-anti-Israel intersectionality. 

On November 29, 2017, Soros-supported CCR, Soros-supported Adalah (see above), BLM group Black Youth Project 100, and Addameer (an affiliate of and front group for designated terror organization PFLP-Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) co-organized a conference titled “The Criminalization of Home: Organizing to Protect Communities from NYC to Palestine,” claiming that “state violence [by Israel and the U.S.] enforces a system of racialized dispossession, whether through eviction, deportation, incarceration, or colonization and ethnic cleansing,” featuring the Addameer’s general director. This anti-Israel-BLM intersectionality conference was deliberately scheduled on the 70^th Anniversary of the UN resolution affirming Britain’s imminent evacuation of the Jewish homeland and Israel’s re-establishment.

Also, in February 2018, CCR participated in a panel at Yale University titled “Ferguson to Palestine: Lawyering for Liberation” which sought to draw “parallels of occupation … the IDF response to movements for Palestinian liberation, the for-profit prison detention of people of color, and systemic apartheid,” featuring Hassan Jabareen, founder and executive director of Soros-supported Adalah.

VII. Soros Funds Groups that Attacked ZOA for Criticizing BLM’s Antisemitism:

Soros’ FPOS also funds several groups that attacked ZOA and/or ZOA’s president as “racist,” “Islamophobic,” or promoting “hate,” because ZOA criticized BLM’s antisemitism. These Soros-funded groups include:

• New Israel Fund (NIF):$837,500 from 2002 to 2015 (See article on DC Leaks of Soros documents; and “Target Israel: George Soros-Funded Groups Leading BDS War on Jewish State,” by Aaron Klein, Breitbart, Jan. 21, 2019.)

• National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW): $200,000from Soros’ FPOS in 2018. 

• J Street: Approx. $500,000 per yearfrom Soros, according to J Street’s leader’s statement to ZOA. In addition, Soros’ Open Society Foundations fund Ploughshares, which in turn gave J Street the largest grant ($576,000) to promote the Iran deal. Soros’ Open Society Policy Center Inc. also gave J Street another $25,000 in 2017. Notably, from 2008 to 2010, J Street lied about (falsely denied) George Soros’ and the Soros children’s first $750,000 contribution to J Street – until the Washington Examiner got ahold of an unredacted tax form showing the Soros contributions to J Street, and J Street was finally forced to admit the truth. See ZOA Report: “J Street Sides With Israel’s Enemies & Works to Destroy Support for Israel,” pages 1-2. 

• T’ruah: $25,000 in 2017. (T’ruah leader Jill Jacobs also spoke at a recent Open Society anti-Israel book launch.)