By Rich Calder and Matthew Sedacca
(October 28, 2023 / NYP) Far-left billionaire kingmaker George Soros has funneled more than $15 million since 2016 to groups behind this month’s pro-Palestine protests, where demonstrators openly cheered Hamas militants’ craven terrorist attacks on Israel.
A Post examination of Open Society Foundations records shows Soros’ grant-making network gave $13.7 million of the money through Tides Center, a deep-pocketed lefty advocacy group that sponsors several nonprofits who’ve justified Hamas’ bloody attacks while claiming Palestinians obsessed with the eradication of the Jewish state are the real victims.
Tides’ beneficiaries include Illinois-based Adalah Justice Project, which on the day of the Oct. 7 massacre posted a photo on Instagram of a bulldozer tearing part of Israel’s border fence down and a caption: “Israeli colonizers believed they could indefinitely trap two million people in an open-air prison… no cage goes unchallenged.”
Members of the Palestinian advocacy group occupied California Rep. Ro Khanna’s office on Oct. 20 to demand he sign a resolution calling for ceasefire in Gaza. Adalah’s members also co-sponsored a rally that same day in Bryant Park where hostile demonstrators spewed antisemitic chants and waved a sign that read “I DO NOT CONDEMN HAMAS.”
It also gave $30,000 in 2020 to Desis Rising Up and Moving, another co-sponsor of the Bryant Park protest where 139 people were arrested, financial records show.
Open Society Foundations gave $60,000 in 2018 to the Arab American Association of New York, a group co-founded by politically connected activist Linda Sarsour that helped plan a hate-filled “Flood Brooklyn for Palestine” protest in Bay Ridge on Oct. 21, where protestors called for the eradication of Israel and held a sign of the Israeli flag in a trash basket that read “Please keep the world clean!”
Open Society Foundations also awarded $1.5 million to Adalah’s founding nonprofit, Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, but only $800,000 of it was received before the legal center cut ties with the American organization in 2018. The legal center says its mission is to promote human rights in Israel.
Other Soros-backed, Palestinian advocacy groups whose members have been spewing hate at rallies since the massacre include Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now, which received $650,000 and $400,000, respectively.
Both co-sponsored the Bryant Park rally, and its members were among the protestors who converged on the US Capitol complex Oct. 18.
Jewish Voice for Peace also helped occupy Khanna’s office and has blamed Israel for the Oct. 7 attacks, writing on its website: “Israeli apartheid and occupation — and United States complicity in that oppression — are the source of all this violence.”
Dan Schneider, vice president of the conservative watchdog group Media Research Center, said Soros — a Hungarian-born Jew and a Holocaust survivor whose loyal lieutenants have scored unmatched access to President Biden’s White House — has a long history of standing against Israel and backing groups who champion terrorists.
“George Soros and his son Alex have a long history of supporting the most radical organizations across the planet, and that includes pro-Hamas organizations that support the most heinous kind of behavior,” said Schneider, who recently co-authored a letter with MRC Founder and President Brent Bozell demanding Soros cease funding to groups who’ve recently spewed pro-Hamas rhetoric.
“We’ve called on George Soros to withdraw this funding, but he seems very determined to continue supporting antisemitic organizations that want to upend western civilization,” he said.
Former City Councilman David Greenfield, a Brooklyn Democrat who now heads the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, said “the world has changed” since the Oct. 7 massacre, so Soros’ group must decide if it will be on “the side that is going to liberate Palestinians or on the side that wants to eliminate Jews.”
Open Society Foundations and related nonprofits the 93-year-old Soros founded have doled out more than $32 billion worldwide since 1984, according to its website. In June, the progressive billionaire announced he’s handing control of his empire over to his 38-year-old son Alexander.
Ari Remez, a spokesman for Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, said Open Society Foundations “has been generously supporting our work on defending the human rights of Palestinians under Israeli control for many years, and we are grateful for their immense contribution to this effort.”
The Soros family, Open Society Foundations, Tides, Adalah Justice Project and other pro-Palestinian groups that got Soros funding did not return messages.
This article was originally published in the New York Post and can be viewed here.