Democratic dark money giant pushes $1.5 million to black ‘solidarity’ magazine boosting Hamas

A key cog in the largest Democratic dark money network in the United States granted major cash to a digital “black politics and culture magazine” justifying and downplaying the recent Hamas-led terrorist attack against Israel, tax forms show.

Hammer & Hope, “a project rooted in the power of solidarity” that purports to be “inspired by the courageous black Communists in Alabama” in the 1930s and 1940s, is promoting Hamas-allied talking points on social media and publishing anti-Israel content on its website in the wake of the Oct. 7 terror attack in Israel, which resulted in more than 1,200 deaths in the Jewish state. The magazine’s publisher, a little-known organization in New York called the Black Radical Project, raked in more than $1.5 million in 2022 from New Venture Fund, an influential liberal nonprofit group managed by the anonymous donor-backed Arabella Advisors consultancy, according to newly released financial disclosures.

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The cash transfer, which has not been reported, is a window into how deep-pocketed charities shaping the Democratic Party’s agenda continue to bankroll far-left initiatives taking aim at Israel as an “apartheid state” and lambasting the country for defending itself against terrorism. New Venture Fund President Lee Bodner recently said his group condemns “terrorism and violence against civilians in all forms and do not support any projects or provide any grants to organizations that fund terrorism” after it announced in October it would no longer fund Alliance for Global Justice, an Arizona-based charity revealed through a Washington Examiner investigation to share Palestinian terrorism ties.

New Venture Fund, which raised $735 million and donated nearly $800 million to liberal causes in 2022, is being investigated by District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb, a Democrat, over whether it may have abused its tax-exempt status to promote political causes. Prosecutors are also looking into the broader Arabella Advisors network and related financial mismanagement allegations, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

The Black Radical Project was formed under New Venture Fund’s dark money umbrella, though the Arabella group listed a separate tax number for the publisher on 2022 tax forms filed in November. The tax number does not appear to be listed in the IRS database, and the Washington Examiner contacted Hammer & Hope to request copies of its own financial disclosures.

On the heels of the Oct. 7 attack, Hammer & Hope has reposted pro-ceasefire content on social media from groups such as the People’s Forum, a Chinese Communist Party-allied group helping to organize Hamas-friendly protests, and the Palestinian Youth Movement, an activist hub that has celebrated terrorists, including the late Leila Khaled from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S.-designated terrorist group. When President Joe Biden defended Israel’s raid of Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, which, according to reports, is used as a Hamas military base, Hammer & Hope posted on X in November, “Silly stuff.”

Graeme Jennings/Washington Examiner

Hammer & Hope‘s latest winter magazine edition includes an article titled “This is America’s War on Palestinians as Much as Israel’s,” which featured interviews with Palestine Legal attorney Radhika Sainath and Palestinian Youth Movement organizer Mohammed Nabulsi, who has called for “intifada violence” against Israel. Nabulsi notably wrote an article in 2015 in another publication asserting that “groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” which are all designated as terrorist groups in the United States, “remain steadfast … in their commitment to anti-colonial struggle.”

The 2023 article did not include one mention of Hamas and used the word “terrorist” only once, though it directed the words “genocide” and “apartheid” at Israel a combined 16 times.

Meanwhile, on Oct. 30, Hammer & Hope published a graphic on X declaring its endorsement for the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, noting that the magazine is participating in a “boycott of complicit Israeli cultural and academic institutions [and] not a blanket boycott of individuals.” PACBI was removed from the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue in September and is housed under Alliance for Global Justice. Weeks later, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) requested that the FBI and Treasury Department investigate ActBlue for allowing PACBI to use its services in the first place, the Washington Examiner reported.

News of the Arabella-linked grant to the Black Radical Project comes after a Dec. 1 Washington Examiner report detailed how the Tides Foundation and the Tides Center, two major liberal grantmakers, sent at least $1 million in 2022 to anti-Israel groups behind recent protests sympathetic to Hamas. Many groups behind the protests have opaque dark money funding structures and, in some cases, share ties to terrorist factions.

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While the Black Radical Project was listed as a 501(c)(3) charity on New Venture Fund’s tax forms, the Ford Foundation reported on its latest disclosures that it funneled $750,000 to the Arabella group for Hammer & Hope.

New Venture Fund did not return a request for comment.