By Jon Levine
(DECEMBER 2, 2023 / NYP) Pro-Palestinian groups such as those who spread hate at the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting this week, have been lavishly funded by the Rockefeller family’s main charitable arm.
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund has links to two groups the Israeli government designated “terrorist organizations,” a review of public records by The Post shows.
Founded in 1940, the famous clan’s $1.3 billion fund — where Justin, Wyatt and David Rockefeller Jr. sit on the board of trustees — has shelled out more than $2.6 million since 2018 directly or indirectly to at least six anti-Israel organizations, several of which openly celebrated Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack on the Jewish state.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, whose logo was affixed to an ad promoting Wednesday’s rally, is a “fiscally sponsored project” of the nonprofit Alliance for Global Justice.
In August 2022, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave the Alliance $100,000.
Israel designated Samidoun a terrorist organization in February 2021 and Germany banned it last month.
Samidoun, founded in 2011, condemned the United Kingdom in 2021 for classifying Hamas a terrorist organization, and cheered the Oct. 7 terrorist incursion:
“The resistance is rising throughout occupied Palestine . . . confronting the occupier by land and air, taking control of Palestinian land, seizing occupation settlers and soldiers and launching thousands of missiles as Palestinian resistance forces fight to advance return and the liberation of Palestine,” Samidoun said on the day Hamas terrorists massacred more than 1,200 Israeli civilians.
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund has awarded at least $215,000 to Defence For Children International-Palestine, according to their website and IRS tax forms.
The Israeli government declared the group a terrorist organization in October 2021.
Undeterred, the fund issued a new $50,000 grant to the organization in 2022.
“This is unfortunately a case of reaping what one sows. They were probably fine with these rabid, lefty groups, protesting other people,” said City Councilman Joe Borelli (R-Staten Island). “The lesson we all can take from this is that the woke left isn’t our friend.”
The fund gave at least $490,000 for “general support” to the Jewish Voice for Peace, according to public grant disclosures on their website since 2019.
Despite its name, the group is a notorious anti-Israel organization and a front for mainstreaming antisemitic ideas, critics say.
A Grand Central demonstration organized by the group in October led to more than 300 arrests.
“Jewish Voice for Peace is a radical anti-Israel and anti-Zionist activist group that advocates for the boycott of Israel and eradication of Zionism. JVP does not represent the mainstream Jewish community, which it views as bigoted for its association with Israel,” according to the Anti-Defamation League.
The group has been banned by Columbia University for repeatedly holding “threatening” campus events, the school said last month.
The fund has also donated at least $515,000 to the The Tides Center, earmarked specifically to support Palestine Legal, a pro-Palestinian advocacy group, records show. The nonprofit trumpeted the Oct. 7 attacks as “one of the most significant acts of Palestinian resistance.”
“There is no equivalence – moral or otherwise – between Israel’s nearly eight decades of ceaseless colonial violence, and the resistance that it has engendered,” Palestine Legal said on Oct. 10.
“It’s the height of irony that the Rockefeller Foundation supports the anti-Israel, Soros-funded Tides Foundation and many other antisemitic Israel-bashing groups, that are now holding ugly, disgusting, vile Jew-hating displays at the Christmas Tree event at the Rockefeller Center,” said Mort Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America. “Just desserts I say.”
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund also sent at least $710,000 to the Adalah Justice Project and $605,000 to the Middle East Policy Network (also known as Al-Shabaka).
Both organizations celebrated Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks in public statements.
The fund defended the grants and noted that it donated to more mainstream Israel groups as well, such as J-Street and the The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.
“We categorically reject any claim that our grantee organizations support, materially or ideologically, acts of terrorism,” said spokeswoman Sarah Edkins “Advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion for people of all races, ethnicities, and genders is critical to our mission, and RBF is deeply concerned about indications of growing antisemitism.”
Edkins added, “The Fund’s only relationship with Alliance for Global Justice is as the fiscal sponsor for one grantee of our Sustainable Development program, South Bronx Unite.”
This article was originally published in the New York Post and can be viewed here.