How billionaires fueled anti-Israel groups backing Democrats – Washington Examiner

This election cycle, a sprawling network of anti-Israel groups connected to left-wing megadonors has worked overtime to boost Democrats while amassing tens of millions of dollars in war chests, federal records show.

The sizable funding illustrates the scope of progressive-led efforts to back Vice President Kamala Harris and lawmakers who the left-wing activist groups are calling on to accuse Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza. Following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on the Jewish state, the activists have ramped up likening Israel to an “apartheid” state — hoping to pressure officials to adopt the same position.

The activists also, according to Federal Election Commission records and tax returns filed with the IRS, receive large checks from billionaire Democrats and organizations reaping their vast fortunes.

“The ascendant far-left of the Democratic Party should terrify every pro-Israel voter in America,” said Sam Markstein, the spokesman for the Republican Jewish Coalition, a group supporting former President Donald Trump and other 2024 GOP candidates.

Since Oct. 7, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has reinvigorated ideological tension within the Democratic Party, whose top brass must navigate the challenges of not alienating the majority of the country that is pro-Israel while catering to younger voters who sympathize with the Palestinian cause. Harris, for example, recently faced scrutiny for describing views from an anti-Israel protester heckling her at a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee event as “real,” though her team sought to walk back the comment soon after.

At the same time, the 2024 election has seen left-wing groups targeting Israel and funded by Democratic megadonors, such as George Soros, the Rockefellers, and other top philanthropists, raise and spend substantial sums to boost political candidates. The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

‘Actions speak louder than words’

Over the last two years, political arms of groups in a coalition called Reject the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, also known as Reject AIPAC, have raised over $20 million and spent around the same amount, according to a Washington Examiner analysis of federal filings.

Vice President Kamala Harris, Democratic presidential nominee, speaks about the killing of Hamas’s top leader, Yahya Sinwar, in a battle with Israeli forces in Gaza, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024, following a campaign rally at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Leading the pack in that coalition, according to the filings, is the Working Families Party, which calls itself “a progressive grassroots political party building a multiracial, feminist movement of working people to transform America.”

The Working Families Party is pressuring members of Congress to support a ceasefire in the Middle East conflict and, in the telling of some pro-Israel Democrats, is akin to the Democratic Socialists party. The party argues that “no military solution” exists for the conflict.

The Working Families Party has spent almost $6 million this election on independent expenditures such as TV ads boosting Democrats — including Harris. It raised $16 million between January 2023 and August of this year, $2 million of which came from a PAC created by Soros. Top funders of the anti-Israel Working Families Party included Regan Pritzker, the daughter of businessman Nicholas J. Pritzker, and Tides Advocacy, an influential dark money group in California. It also included a group called Accountable Justice Action Fund, which reportedly shares ties to Facebook co-founders Dustin Moskovitz and Mark Zuckerberg.

Both Soros and Moskovitz are major top campaign funders, the Washington Examiner reported.

The Reject AIPAC Coalition calls on lawmakers to pledge to refuse funding from AIPAC or any aligned pro-Israel PACs due to AIPAC’s support for Israel, the coalition’s website says. The coalition has a self-disclosure in the right-hand corner of its website that says it is “paid for by IfNotNow Movement.”

IfNotNow, similar to the Working Families Party, is listed on the Reject AIPAC website as part of the coalition.

IfNotNow, which receives some of its funding from the Soros-backed Foundation to Promote Open Society, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Tides Foundation, is one of the main anti-Israel activist hubs behind violent protests after Oct. 7.

Tax forms show that it has also filled its coffers with tens of thousands of dollars from the Harris-aligned Sixteen Thirty Fund dark money group in Washington, D.C.

IfNotNow often helps organize pro-Palestinian protests with Reject AIPAC Coalition member Jewish Voice for Peace. JVP’s political arm backed Democrats this election, including Reps. Summer Lee (D-PA) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), who lost in his primary, federal records show.

George Soros
George Soros, founder of Soros Fund Management, is captured before the Session “An insight, an idea with George Soros” at the Annual Meeting 2013 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 26, 2013. Credit: World Economic Forum. (Photo by Mirko Ries)

Based in Berkeley, California, JVP supports the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. JVP operates thanks in part to grants from the philanthropy of Soros, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Firedoll Foundation, formed by left-wing activists Sandor and Faye Straus, according to tax forms.

The Strauses, a married couple who “funds organizations which agree that the people of Palestine and Israel have the right to share their ancient homeland in peace and security,” have made about $3.5 million combined in political donations to Democratic-aligned candidates and PACs. Some of their largest giving this election was reserved for the League of Conservation Voters, a key Harris backer funded by Soros, Michael Bloomberg, film producer Eric Laufer, and other Democratic donors.

JVP, meanwhile, has received funding from the Tides Foundation.

The Tides Foundation, which has also helped orchestrate anti-Israel protests after Oct. 7, is a massive left-wing grantmaker in San Francisco. It boasts backers such as Zuckerberg, Soros, Moskovitz, and Sequoia Capital investor Michael Moritz — among other wealthy left-wing donors.

Bill Gates, who made a staggering $50 million Harris donation, is another Tides Foundation backer.

The Tides Foundation sends checks to an anti-Israel environmental group called Sunrise, the political arm of which spent tens of thousands of dollars this election cycle backing Bowman and Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO). Bush also lost her primary.

The ousters of Bowman and Bush were in large part thanks to spending from AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups.

“Come January, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman are going to be scanning the Help Wanted pages,” said Jon Reinish, a veteran Democratic strategist who was also involved in successful efforts to oust the anti-Israel lawmakers. “That’s because their own voters, across many demographic groups, finally got tired of their unhinged radicalism, and by massive margins handed two of the Democratic Party’s most clownish and unserious members pink slips.”

To Reinish, the “Squad” ousters show that organizations funding anti-Israel lawmakers “are finding themselves increasingly marginalized” in the Democratic Party — and rightfully so.

Jack Pandol, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, sees things differently.

“Actions speak louder than words: House Democratic leadership endorsed and campaigned for these antisemitic radicals, and the House Democratic caucus has repeatedly resisted denouncing their antisemitic vitriol,” Pandol told the Washington Examiner. “The Democratic base is the anti-Israel base. Taking credit for right-leaning groups taking out Democrats’s trash doesn’t pass the smell test.”

‘Both sides of their mouth’

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), from left, speaks alongside Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), and other lawmakers during a vigil with state legislators and faith leaders currently on hunger strike outside the White House to demand that President Joe Biden call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, Nov. 29, 2023. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard)

Another PAC that has raised and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars this election cycle boosting Democrats is Emgage, an anti-Israel group promoting the BDS movement, federal records show.

Emgage, whose staffers have visited the White House under President Joe Biden at least 60 times since 2021, has received funding on its nonprofit side from the Tides Foundation and the Ford Foundation, a major Democratic-aligned grantmaker that helped shape policies in the Biden-Harris administration.

Emgage has also received funding from the philanthropy of Soros, whose Fund for Policy Reform has, since 2020, shuffled $165 million to Soros’s Democracy PAC, according to filings.

Democracy PAC, in turn, sent $10 million to Future Forward, a super PAC working to get Harris elected.

Future Forward’s largest funders include the likes of Bloomberg, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and Moskovitz, the Washington Examiner reported.

One of Future Forward’s donors, to the tune of $1.6 million in June, was former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. His private foundation, along with other left-wing grantmakers, previously funded Alliance for Global Justice, a charity revealed through a Washington Examiner investigation to share ties to Palestinian terrorism. Alliance for Global Justice has long housed a project called the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, which the Treasury Department sanctioned earlier this month for being a “sham charity” fundraising for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP is a U.S.-designated terrorist faction.

Pro-Palestinian activists protest at Lafayette Park across from the White House to mark the approaching one-year anniversary of the Israel-Hamas war, Saturday, Oct. 5, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

“Kamala Harris and the Democrats are talking out of both sides of their mouth on an issue of critical concern to the American Jewish community,” said Markstein, the Republican Jewish Coalition spokesman.

Markstein pointed to Harris’s recent walked-back agreement with the anti-Israel protester at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on the idea that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

To Markstein, a strong example of an active election spender that is left-wing and anti-Israel is J Street.

The organization has come under fire over the years from pro-Israel activists for sympathizing with pro-Palestinian protesters and being a staunch critic of the Israeli government. The Republican Jewish Coalition and others in the Jewish community previously took aim in 2020 at J Street’s leader, Jeremy Ben-Ami, for embracing Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas.

J Street has dropped almost $13 million this election cycle, including large transfers to Harris Victory Fund, federal records show. The group’s independent expenditure arm counts its largest single donor as Democracy PAC, the Soros-backed group, which cut J Street a million-dollar check in 2022. Tax forms show that Soros’s Open Society Policy Center routed $600,000 in 2022 to J Street, which also raked in grants from the Tides Foundation.

Days before the Oct. 7 attacks, J Street announced it was welcoming a new board member, Jon Greenwald, a Biden-Harris commission appointee who helped lead a think tank called International Crisis Group. That think tank, as the Washington Examiner reported, was revealed to be connected to an Iranian government-controlled influence network.

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Greenwald’s fortune has helped boost J Street this election cycle — to the tune of more than a million dollars in gifts. However, federal records show that the money wasn’t technically set aside for the group.

Rather, it was earmarked for someone else: the Harris campaign.

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