Anti-Israel activist hubs leading protests sympathetic to Hamas across the United States after the terror group's recent deadly attack against the Jewish state can thank an influential left-wing dark money nexus for helping to keep their lights on, documents show.
The Tides Foundation and Tides Center, two affiliated deep-pocketed nonprofit organizations that have long shaped the progressive agenda with philanthropist backers such as George Soros and Bill Gates, granted at least $1 million combined in 2022 to groups behind demonstrations pushing for an Israel-Gaza conflict ceasefire and downplaying Palestinian terror in the Middle East, according to newly filed tax forms reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
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The cash transfers, which have not been previously reported, underscore how behemoth charities with ties to some of the wealthiest liberal billionaires on the planet have continued to shovel large sums into the coffers of anti-Israel groups — many of which have celebrated or shared affiliations with Hamas, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other terror groups. Some protests in the U.S. and overseas after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel have turned violent, including one in mid-November outside the Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C.
"There are far too many progressive causes that have thrown their arms around pro-Hamas, pro-PFLF, pro-violent factions, and we are seeing the impact of it on American campuses and on the streets of major American cities," said Jonathan Schanzer, senior research vice president at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank and former Treasury Department terrorism finance analyst. "And there will need to be a reckoning. There is clearly something wrong with the ecosystem where these various foundations thrive."
The Tides Foundation and Tides Center, which share a San Francisco office and reported more than $1 billion in combined assets on 2022 tax forms, are part of a broader nexus that "has mobilized $4 billion for social change" and "supported more than 1,400 fiscally sponsored projects" since 1976, according to its website. That nexus has come under the spotlight for facilitating a dark money pass-through system in which wealthy Democrats can pump donations into initiatives housed under Tides, which moved its fiscal sponsorship services from the foundation to the center in 1996, according to the conservative Capital Research Center think tank. For instance, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, which has faced legal scrutiny for a lack of financial transparency, was notably sponsored in the past by the Tides Center, according to documents filed with the California Justice Department in 2020.
Fiscal sponsorship is an arrangement in which a charity allows a project to share its IRS tax-exempt status and receive services including donation processing, payroll, health insurance, legal oversight, and human resources. It also has the effect of obscuring sources for charitable donations to and from groups under the parent organization's umbrella, given projects do not have to file their own financial disclosures.
Newly filed 2022 tax forms show the Tides Foundation and Tides Center combined to steer more than $303,000 to Alliance for Global Justice, a charity in Arizona revealed through a Washington Examiner investigation to maintain ties to Palestinian terrorism. And those grants add to the millions of dollars that have flowed in recent years from Tides to AFGJ, which, this year alone, saw a swath of payment processors and liberal foundations cut ties with the nonprofit group.
Legal experts have accused AFGJ of providing "material support to terrorism" in violation of federal law because it sponsors the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, an Israeli-designated terror group that has shared staffers with the PFLP. Another reason is that AFGJ recently raised money for Collectif Palestine Vaincra, a Samidoun coalition member described on its website as a partner of the PFLP.
On the heels of Oct. 7, Collectif Palestine Vaincra and Samidoun have been mobilizing protesters against Israel on social media and posting event flyers. Samidoun was banned in Germany in October after its activists reportedly passed out candy to people in celebration of terror, while German authorities last week raided four properties related to Samidoun, Reuters reported.
The Tides Foundation and Tides Center also moved $132,000 in 2022 to WESPAC Foundation, a New York City-based nonprofit group sponsoring various anti-Israel projects leading demonstrations, tax forms show.
WESPAC Foundation, which has campaigned to free the long-imprisoned PFLP terror leader Ahmad Saadat, houses the Palestinian Youth Movement, "a transnational, independent, grassroots movement" that over the years on social media has celebrated PFLP leaders, including Leila Khaled, the Washington Examiner reported. Moreover, WESPAC sponsors the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, a project that calls on its website for the release of imprisoned PFLP members, including Khalida Jarrar.
Another WESPAC sponsor is Students for Justice in Palestine, a decentralized coalition of pro-Palestinian activists on U.S. college campuses who have glorified terror against Jews and supported Hamas, the PFLP, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a 2017 report by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs think tank found. The Palestinian Youth Movement, the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, and Students for Justice in Palestine, for instance, were all original co-leaders of the Nov. 4 pro-Palestinian national march in Washington that saw antisemitic graffiti and at least one arrest, flyers show.
The Tides-linked funding to these groups raises questions about the original sources behind "propaganda and intimidation, and often violent attacks in the U.S. against Jews," said Gerald Steinberg, president of the Israeli watchdog group NGO Monitor.
"We've seen a number of reports which appear to be entirely credible of foreign governments providing funding to American 501(c)(3)s and related organizations, for example, the revelation that Qatar reportedly provided $3.75 million to Human Rights Watch in 2018," said Steinberg, emeritus political studies professor at Israel's Bar Ilan University.
Code Pink, a left-wing antiwar group that issued a statement on Oct. 8 calling Palestinian resistance against Israel a human right, received a $104,000 check in 2022 from the Tides Foundation, tax forms show.
Since the Middle East conflict initiated by Hamas attacking Israel, where more than 1,200 people have been killed, Code Pink has been hosting pro-Palestinian rallies and downplaying violence against Jews, according to a Washington Examiner review of its statements and social media activity. Code Pink also boosted the falsehood pushed by Hamas in October that Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza and killed hundreds of people, despite the U.S. and Israel reviewing intelligence showing the blast was caused by a failed Palestinian rocket and occurred in a parking lot, not a hospital.
In 2022, the Tides Foundation also granted $41,000 to If Not Now and $61,000 to Jewish Voices for Peace, two anti-Israel organizations that co-sponsored the violent November protest outside the DNC. If Not Now blamed Israel for the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, declaring in a statement, "We cannot and will not say today's actions by Palestinian militants are unprovoked," while Jewish Voices for Peace said that same fatal day, "Israeli apartheid and occupation — and United States complicity in that oppression — are the source of all this violence."
Then there's Sunrise Movement, a group "building a movement of young people to stop climate change" and demanding a Middle East conflict ceasefire. The group also endorsed the Nov. 4 national march in Washington. Sunrise Movement Education Fund, a charity, pocketed $335,000 in 2022 from the Tides Foundation, tax forms show.
Sunrise Movement reposted If Not Now's Oct. 7 statement on social media blaming Israel for the Hamas-led attack, and it regularly accuses Israel of genocide for defending itself against Hamas. The nonprofit group is circulating a "Showing up for Palestine" toolkit that instructs the public to contact their representatives and email the New York Times editorial board to demand an Israel-Gaza ceasefire.
The toolkit includes links to other anti-Israel petitions and resources posted on social media by Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestinian Youth Movement, If Not Now, and other groups, according to a Washington Examiner review.
"The protests and disruptions we have been seeing, funded by Tides, are very clearly pro-Hamas, and they are the furthest thing from grassroots," said Parker Thayer, an investigative researcher for Capital Research Center. "They are funded and coordinated from a national organizing hub that is designed to obscure the sources of funding. It’s reprehensible."
As for other donations, the Tides Center sent $35,000 in 2022 to the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has been accused of sharing ties to Hamas and, on Oct. 9, blamed the "Israeli government’s apartheid policies" for the attack initiated two days earlier.
Tides Advocacy, another dark money group affiliated with the Tides nexus, pumped $300,000 into Emgage Action, tax forms show.
Emgage Action claims Israel is an "apartheid state" and its CEO, Wa'el N. Alzayat, attended a Nov. 15 Biden administration meeting with "national Muslim, Arab, and Sikh organization leaders" on "the alarming rise of Islamophobia and anti-Arab hate in schools and colleges," according to the Education Department.
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Joining Alzayat was Lina Assi, advocacy manager for the anti-Israel group Palestine Legal and a longtime celebrator of Hamas-led acts of terror against Israel, the Washington Examiner reported.
The Tides Foundation and Tides Center did not reply to requests for comment.