By Morton A. Klein, ZOA National President

Last week, I urged my alma mater, Temple University, where I also taught mathematics, to terminate Jason Wingard from his powerful position of Temple University president, to stop Wingard from potentially bringing Tides’ antisemitic, Israel-hating and Israel-demonizing mission to Temple’s programs, appointments, and community. With further research, we now see that the Tides Foundation’s record of funding anti-Israel, antisemitic groups, is far worse than previously thought.

Temple is one of the largest universities in the country, boasting 37,000 students, and numerous professional and graduate schools and programs. Until last week, Wingard was the Chairman of Tides, while Tides prominently funded, featured, elevated and provided organizational and operational support for virulently antisemitic anti-Israel, antisemitic boycott and demonization groups including: Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC); Adalah Justice Project USA (AJP), Palestine Legal and Dream Defenders, and their leaders who oppose the Jewish State of Israel’s very existence. Tides’ promotion of virulent and relentless Israel hatred is even worse than my previous article indicated, and includes Tides’ direct demonization of Israel, and Tides’ grant-making to at least 13 more of the worst anti-Israel, antisemitic, and BDS groups. BDS groups actively promotes boycotting, demonizing, and sanctioning America’s greatest ally – Israel. 

Tides’ Direct Demonization of Israel: Tides’ article, “Meet These Extraordinary Palestinian Leaders,” prominently featured in multiple places on Tides’ website, together with a picture of a Hamas-clad youth waving a Palestinian flag, begins with extraordinary demonization of Israel, in addition to endorsing anti-Israel BDS groups and leaders. The Tides’ article falsely states: “We are witnessing—in real-time—massive, ongoing state-sponsored [Israel] violence against Palestinians,” and falsely accuses Israel of“pursuing a form of apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing and settler colonialism,” and then falsely and boldly claims that these phrases“are not hyperbole but descriptions of what Palestinians actually face.” Tides’ article further accuses Israel of perpetrating“blatant human rights violations that Palestinians suffer day after day, year after year.” 

Tides never mentions the truth that Israel is a human rights-loving and human rights-protecting nation whose innocent Jewish civilians have been subjected to vile incitement and tens of thousands of Arab rocket and terror attacks, car rammings, shootings, and knifings maiming or murdering over 10,000 Jews. 

Incidentally, the fact that Wingard was Tides’ chair until last week is easily confirmed, despite some groups’ attempts to cover this up. See the “wayback” screenshot of Tides’ Board, showing that Wingard was Tides’ chair, until an initial purge of Tides’ website on June 24, 2021 (the same date as my first article); and the “wayback” screenshot showing that Wingard was still on the Tides Center Board, up until a second Tides website purge on June 28, 2021.

Tides’ Additional Support for Anti-Israel/BDS Groups: Tides Foundation’s Form 990 IRS filings for 2018 and 2019 (the only years available after Wingard joined Tides’ Board on January 1, 2018), and some other available Tides’ financial materials (examined by ZOA Director of Research Elizabeth Berney, Esq. and financial expert Richard Allen) revealed the below shocking additional Tides grants to racist anti-Israel and BDS groups. This appears to be only a partial list of the support Tides provides to anti-Israel groups through its welter of related organizations.

Note that Tides controls which groups receive grants from Tides’ donor-advised funds. IRS rules require that the 501(c)(3) organization “maintaining the funds [here, Tides] must have the ultimate authority over how the assets in the funds are invested and distributed.” Thus, if, theoretically, a donor to Tides said: “I’d like you to forward some of my donation to the Zionist Organization of America or another pro-Israel group to protect Jewish students from harassment on college campuses,” Tides can instead LEGALLY divert the donation to an anti-Israel group. Tides’ also repeatedly insists on its website that its donors and partners must be allied with Tides’ mission. And that mission is obviously to demonize and damage and harm Israel and Jews, as further indicated by the following Tides’ grantees:

• Institute for Middle East Understanding(IMEU) – $200,000.00 in 2018-19: IMEU promotes the BDS movement against Israel, and feeds a stream of anti-Israel reports to the media, with repeated malicious and false accusations that Israelis are perpetrating violence against Palestinian Arab civilians and children.  

• Jewish Voice for Peace(JVP) – $175,500.00 in 2018-19: BDS and anti-Israel demonization-group JVP’s vicious, antisemitic “Deadly Exchange” campaign seeks to hold Jews responsible for state violence. JVP falsely accuses Israel of teaching “worst practices” to American police forces, including extrajudicial executions, shoot-to-kill policies, police murders, racial profiling, massive spying, deportations, detention, and attacks on human rights defenders. JVP was repeatedly on The Anti-Defamation League’s ( ADL) “Top 10 Anti-Israel Groups” list. Even the left wing Forward national Jewish weekly called JVP “the fringe anti-Israel group that supports the boycott of Israel.”

• Code Pink– $105,400.00 in 2018-19: Code Pink was also on ADL’s “Top 10 Anti-Israel Groups” list. Code Pink promotes anti-Israel BDS and falsely accuses Israel of “human rights violations” and “occupation,” etc; absurdly calls for holding Israel and Israeli officials accountable for “war crimes” and “breaches of international law”—after Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad launch thousands of rockets at Israel; opposes aid to Israel; confronted U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley to hold Israel “accountable” for defending herself; and launched a campaign in 2019 to free Khalida Jarrar—the top PFLP (designated terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) responsible for PFLP’s terror activities in Judea/Samaria; etc. ZOA led the singing of “Am Yisrael Chai” to counter Code Pink, when screaming Code Pink leaders broke into and disrupted a speech by Holocaust survivor and Nobel Ppeace Prize winner Elie Weisel shortly before Wiesel’s death. Prof. Weisel, in frail health, was trying to urge the Senate to oppose the catastrophic Iran deal, because it furthers Iran’s genocidal ambitions. They also disrupted a Congressional panel discussion led by Senator Ted Cruz and Eli Wiesel, discussing peace hopes in the Mideast. They ran to the front of the room screaming uncontrollably at Wiesel, Cruz, and the audience. (I was sitting in the front row with my wife Rita, urging the Code Pink women to please stop – the picture appeared in the NY Times.)

• Bend the Arc– $160,000.00 in 2018-19: Last week, Bend the Arc tweeted “solidarity” with and “we will continue to rise with you” to Ilhan Omar—after another round of Omar’s antisemitic, Israel-hating statements. Bend the Arc collaborates with If Not Now’s anti-Israel protest actions.

• Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Philadelphia, PA, and Arizona – $60,000.00 in 2019: Hamas-affiliated CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial for funneling millions of dollars to the terrorist Hamas. CAIR officials were sentenced to prison for funneling $12 million to Hamas. CAIR also slanders U.S. pro-Israel groups as “hate groups,” and defends Hamas and Hezbollah as “resistance movements.” Top CAIR officials have promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories and blood libels, including that Jews murder Palestinians to steal their organs.

• National Lawyers Guild (NLG) – $1,030,500.00 (!) in 2018-19: NLG is a Marxist lawfare organization that provides legal support for BDS movements and Arab terrorists. NLG also supports JVP’s “Deadly Exchange” campaign falsely and maliciously accusing American Jewish groups of funding exchanges in which Israelis teach American police to murder Black Americans. In addition, NLGendorsed and supported Tides-supported Arab Resource & Organizing Committee (AROC)’s “Block the Boat” BDS actions to violently prevent Israeli-based shipper ZIM from unloading medical and other supplies needed by Americans at U.S. ports around the country. 

NLG continues to honor NLG terrorist defending lawyer Lynne Stewart’s memory. Stewart was convicted for illegally carrying messages between terror groups and imprisoned “blind sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman, the mastermind of the deadly 1993 World Trade Center bombing (6 dead, over 1,000 wounded). After Stewart carried a message from the Sheikh to Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, that terror group massacred 60 people, including tourists, in Luxor, Egypt.

• NLG also closely collaborates with the Tides-supported lawfare groups “Palestine Legal” and the “Center for Constitutional Rights”(CCR) in promoting BDS and anti-Israel actions. In recent years, the Tides Center Rockefeller Bros. Fund gave $425,000.00 to Palestine Legal, including $150,000 last month. Tides Foundation gave $90,893.00 to CCR in 2018-19.  

As my previous article noted, Palestine Legal, which is featured and elevated on Tides’ website, promotes “mock eviction” campaigns to terrorize Jewish students on college campuses; mounts numerous anti-Israel “lawfare” campaigns; defends hate groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP); advocates against anti-BDS laws; and participates in anti-Israel “Days of Rage” in U.S. cities.

• The Tides Center Rockefeller Bros. Fund also recently granted $410,000.00 to the Adalah Justice ProjectUSA (AJP). As my prior article noted, AJP is a leading anti-Israel demonization and BDS organization intertwined with Adalah in Israel, which defends terrorists. Adalah USA also lobbies for sanctions against Israel; falsely claims that Israel is mistreating Palestinian “children” when Israel arrests 17-year-old Arabs who murder innocent Israelis; falsely likens Israelis to police who murder black Americans; and falsely accuses Israel of “indiscriminate war crimes” and similar demonization. Adalah and Tides collaborator, Dream Defenders, co-authored the M4BL platform that falsely defames Israel as a genocidal, apartheid state and promotes anti-Israel BDS.

• The same Tides Center Rockefeller Bros. fund granted $40,000.00 to the Solidaire Network, which holds events maligning Israel and discussing “bringing Palestinian rights into the broader progressive agenda.” Solidaire is fiscally sponsored by the Tides Foundation.

• If Not Now (INN) – $45,000 in 2018-19. If Not Now openly calls itself a “movement to end the American Jewish community’s support for the occupation.” INN specializes in sit-ins in the offices of Jewish organizations; anti-Birthright (which brings Jewish students to Israel) campaign; campaigns to infiltrate Jewish summer camps to promote Israel-hatred; infiltration of Birthright trips to divert participants to anti-Israel “breaking the silence” trips; false accusations that Israel is “indiscriminately bombing” Gaza; demands to lift the weapons blockade of Gaza (to enable Hamas to import more rockets into Israel with which to attack Israelis); demands to defund Israel; and public events in which hateful INN members say Kaddish and mourn for Hamas and Palestinian Arab Islamic Jihad terrorists.

• Other Tides-funded endorsers of Tides-supported AROC’s “Block the Boat” BDS campaign to violently prevent an Israeli-based shipper from unloading her cargo include “Causa Justa”- $60,000.00 in 2018-19; and “Kehillah Community Synagogue”—the home of the extremist “Chavurah for a Free Palestine of Kehilla Synagogue” in Piedmont, CA – $80,000.00 in 2018-19.

• The Tides Foundation gave grants to still more anti-Israel groups in 2018-19, includingJ Street; the Arab American Institute Foundation; the Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition Inc. (which calls Jews “illegal Israel settlers” and calls Jerusalem “occupied,” etc.); and the “Coalition for Peace with Justice” which recently merged into the antisemitic BDS group “Voices for Justice in Palestine” (VJP). VJP promotes anti-Israel libels such as: “Police Brutality from the U.S. to Palestine”; “Israeli Human Rights Abuses”; and “Israelis Troops Kill Peaceful Protestors”; and protested against Knesset members speaking in the U.S.

This man, Jason Wingard, as Chair of the Tides Foundation, oversaw funding this large and influential array of antisemitic, Israel-bashing racist haters, and surely shared many if not all of these hateful, antisemitic views, and should never be president of any university, let alone a major urban research university.

The Zionist Organization of America urges Temple University to correct this egregious mistake by terminating Jason Wingard, chosen after Chairman Mitchell Morgan’s poorly vetted, misguided, misinformed, and possibly dangerous selection of Wingard to be president of Temple University.