With tent cities springing up across American campuses, filled with antisemitic activists who are openly supporting U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations, you could be forgiven for suspecting that this activism was not wholly organic. And you would be right.
Fingerprints of Further Funding
Take the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Columbia University, where “students sleep in tents apparently ordered from Amazon and enjoy delivery pizza, coffee from Dunkin’, free sandwiches worth $12.50 from Pret a Manger, organic tortilla chips, and $10 rotisserie chickens,” according to the New York Post. That is not the sort of event a campus student association organizes on its semesterly stipend—certainly not the sort of event a student association could sustain for now more than a week.
It’s not just Columbia University. These tent encampments—with an odd near-uniformity to their pup tents—have popped up at dozens of campuses all across the country. Dozens, scores, and hundreds of students have walked out of classes only weeks before finals, and they are glamping on the lawn instead of cramming in the library. Who is behind all this?
Paid Activists
The Post discovered that at least some encampments appear to be coordinated by paid activists. A left-wing activist coalition called the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights sponsors a “Youth Organizing Fellowship” that offers college students an unheard-of $24-$28/hour wage to organize supposedly “local campaigns,” which are really backed by the training, mentorship, and ongoing support of this extremely well-funded activist network.
In 2023, USCPR hired eight youth fellows, three of which have recently appeared at pro-Hamas encampments at UC Berkeley, Yale, and UT Austin, according to photographs sleuthed out by the Post.
Those who visit the USCPR website today will not find any youth fellows listed. The activist group “has just begun a new class of 2024 youth fellows,” it conveniently claims. Instead, it suggests repeatedly, “Check back for more information,” which innocently suggests to viewers it hasn’t time to update its website yet. However, according to its advertisement, applications for the position closed on April 3, just over two weeks before the recent mayhem on university campuses began.
On one hand, this could be mere coincidence. On the other hand, it could be that USCPR youth fellows (nothing said they had to only hire eight this year) have played a major role in organizing these campus encampments, at least the more influential ones. If that is the case, then USCPR deliberately timed its hiring so that its website would reveal no information about its youth fellows until after their encampment campaign—perhaps even after the semester.
Given the presence of former USCPR youth fellows—who, presumably, are no longer on its payroll—at these protests, it seems likely that its current youth fellows would also be involved, simply due to running in the same circles of protest culture.
The USCPR Network
The USCPR coalition includes Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, CODEPINK, National Lawyers Guild, and the Westchester Peace Action Committee, among many other groups. In 2021, USCPR had a total income of $1.5 million and total expenses of $1 million.
USCPR’s official name is Education for Just Peace in the Middle East. Under that name, USCPR received $355,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund between 2018-2023, and it received $700,000 from the Soros family’s Open Society Foundations between 2018-2022 (the most recent years for which data is available).
In 2018, Tablet Magazine reported that USCPR was “the fiscal sponsor of a group called the Palestinian BDS [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions] National Committee (BNC),” which in turn was linked to Palestinian terrorist groups.
One of BNC’s members, listed on its website, is the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine. Five members of PNIF are U.S.-designated terrorist organizations: Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad the Palestine Liberation Front, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Popular Front – General Command.
For those like me who have never run across the term before, fiscal sponsorship is where one nonprofit receives and administers donations intended for another organization that lacks nonprofit status. (The National Council of Nonprofits argues that the practice does have a place in helping new charities get started, but to the uninitiated outsider this arrangement also looks like a legal way to launder money.) Remember this term, because it will reoccur below.
Local chapters of USCPR affiliate SJP organized many of the Gaza encampments, including those at Columbia, Harvard, Yale, UC Berkeley, Ohio State, and Emory. Also involved in the Columbia occupation is Jewish Voice for Peace, another USCPR affiliate that co-organized an October 2023 protest in which demonstrators illegally entered a House office building and were arrested.
However, USCPR is not the only source of funding for organizations within its orbit organizing campus occupations. From 2017-2022, Soros’ Open Society contributed $775,000 directly to Jewish Voice for Peace, while the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave the group $490,000 from 2019-2023.
Financial information on Students for Justice in Palestine is harder to obtain because the organization is not registered as a nonprofit. Another USCPR member, the Westchester Peace Action Committee, serves as SJP’s fiscal sponsor.
It makes sense that SJP, which declared Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack to be “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance,” would wish to conceal its funding streams. It also makes sense that SJP would not wish to register as a nonprofit organization, since that designation might be justly removed based on its activities and statements. Hence, its secretive funding mechanisms.
Headquartered in White Plains, New York, in Westchester County, the Westchester Peace Action Committee seems like a small, local nonprofit—at first. Nevertheless, WESPAC plays an inconspicuous but important role in supporting the national anti-Israel movement. It does this by allowing itself to be used as a fiscal sponsor to fringe extremist groups that might otherwise lose their tax-exempt status.
According to the left-leaning Anti-Defamation League, WESPAC has fiscally sponsored 22 organizations since 2000, but 15 of those organizations were anti-Israel or pro-Palestine, with no more than one organization in any other category
Due to the lack of reporting requirements, it is unknown how much money WESPAC has funneled to SJP. What is known is that the organization’s revenue nearly quadrupled over four years, from $636,000 in 2021 to nearly $2.4 million in 2023. The sources of most of that revenue are not known.
Tip of the Iceberg
The organization of pro-Hamas campus encampments suggest they are being bankrolled by someone with deep pockets. The lavish supplies expended on the encampments suggest they are being bankrolled by someone with deep pockets. The high compensation paid activists receive to coordinate these encampments suggest they are being bankrolled by someone with deep pockets.
According to open-source data gathering, at least two left-wing grant-making organizations with deep pockets—the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations—are known to have made significant past donations to several of the groups involved in these protests.
However, the activist groups already mentioned are not the only members of the left-wing coalition organizing antisemitic direct action on and off university campuses, nor are they the only ones rolling in left-wing donations. Other radical groups have cooperated in staging antisemitic demonstrations:
- If Not Now received $400,000 from Open Society in 2019-2021.
- Adalah Justice Project received $550,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (passed through the left-wing Tides Center) in 2020-2023.
- The Arab American Association of New York received $60,000 from Open Society in 2018.
- Desis Rising Up and Moving received $30,000 from Open Society in 2020.
All these groups have participated in anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protests.
For those keeping track, the organizations sponsoring campus encampments and other antisemitic protests have received at least $3.36 million since 2016 from just two left-wing organizations. Meanwhile, the funding sources for other groups, such as the hyper-active SJP and Within Our Lifetime, are not known. This is based upon previously reported data that does not even account for funding these organizations may have received since Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack—when the lawlessness began in earnest.
Campus protesters like to romanticize their misbehavior by comparing it to the protests of the late-1960s. But today’s protesters have access to more funding than their comrades of another era—perhaps “professors” would be a more efficient word—could have dreamed of. There are likely many deluded campuses today who deeply believe in their confused and perverted vision of the world.
Yet the amount of money involved suggests the campus occupation movement may not be as widespread a grassroots uprising as the left-wing media is laboring to make it appear. Millions, even hundreds of thousands of dollars, can buy significant cooperation from one of the most notoriously penniless segments of society. This is perhaps especially true when the money enables agitators to utter college students’ two favorite words: “free food.”
The Left seems to believe rowdy, disruptive chanting can drive any policy change—so long as the rioters yell loud enough and long enough—and powerful progressive organizations have pulled out their pocketbooks to put that theory to the most rigorous test.
Originally published by The Washington Stand
The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.
Reprinted with permission from The Daily Signal by Joshua Arnold.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
On top of all that, where did all the money and aid go that was given to the Palestinians over the years?
Did it help the Palestinian people? – Nope
Did it help build hospitals and schools? – Nope
Did it help with building infrastructure? – No way José
What the Jihadists did was spend millions of dollars (literally, not hyperbole) on constructing an intricate terror tunnel system stocked with weapons out the wazoo for one purpose only: To wage war for the sole purpose of annihilating the State of Israel. These dumbass college kids don’t get it.
Hamas doesn’t want a two state solution they want to kill all the Jews period.
(peacefull coexistence my arse)
What the heII do you think “from the river to sea” means?
What do you think the underground tunnels, guns and rockets are for?
And as for congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, go POUND SAND.
A number of real journalistic organizations have already researched where all the money originates for every one of these organizations and groups, as well as many more other like-minded groups not mentioned here. The main financial sources are George and his son Alexander Soros, who now runs things after George handed everything over to his even more radical leftist son, the Tides Foundation (an organization initially funded by George Soros), the Rockefella Foundation (an organization associated with dozens of far left groups and organizations), and of course the OSF (yet another group founded by George Soros decades ago and the group that Soros essentially transferred the bulk of his billions to several years ago to ensure “his work” could continue for the next 200 years as he put it at the time in a press release). Also involved are people like Tom Styer and other globalists who want to leverage the chaos these protest groups generate to further the globalist agenda and destabilize, weaken and then collapse the United States.
If you want to truly stop all this in its tracks, you remove the heads of the hydra. That means arrest and prosecute the major players funding all these protests on a nation-wide basis. So far, I hear no one in D.C. proposing this solution. What I do hear as “solutions” are a lot of weak, half-baked minor tweeks designed to “send a message”. We are way past the point where that sort of activity will deter anyone on the left.
Notice all the tents of the protestors are identical. Notice the well-printer signs are very professionally done and are in great supply. Notice most of the people arrested by police are NOT affiliated with the schools, but instead are paid outside players. This is all a very well funded operation being executed on a nation-wide basis. That demonstrates the depth of financial resources and logistics available to run concurrent operations. Not sometime a punch of empty-headed 20 somethings have the means to fund or pull off.
So short of taking out the heads of the hydra in a serous fashion, you are just playing whack-a-mole at the individual colleges and universities, which is of course completely ineffective. Sorry if this is too detailed and specific for some, but I thought you might appreciate something other than pablum.
Those are the people who should be ion the FBI Watchlist, not School Parents or Maga people. Hear that Joe?
If they are in this country, charge them with terrorism and arrest them.
If the Republicans more deeply investigated those who contributed to pro-Hamas activities in the US since 2016, surely almost $4,000,000 is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the actual monies being given by sympathizers who are funding anti-American and anti-Israeli revolutionaries. Biden’s goons make it easy to demonize American and Israeli interests. Along with Biden’s open American borders — “Good Old Joe” has proven himself to be a traitorous imbecile who has absolutely no positive qualifications to be the chief executive of the United States of America. The only reason Obama picked Biden to be his vice president is that he knew with 100% assuredness that shallow Joe would do whatever Obama wanted him to do — whether as vice president or as a fake president who is taking orders from Obama and other Marxist operatives.
Go’s to show you how bad the left wants and is in making our beloved country socialist and or communist like china and russia, to gain control over what was once a free country to force us to be slaves to there controls.So is this just another way for the democrats to be slaves owners once again, like in the days of the Civil war? Think about it…..if they win this election our country will never be the same and we the people will be the ones with out power to do anything about it.Just my thoughts
Stop the lawyers & students from bending the rights to free speech to allow them to hurt the innocent students. And why would any faculty member join the protesters in defiling their own campus. IF YOU ARE NOT AN AMERICAN CITIZEN, THEN YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS UNDER OUR CONSTITUTION.
im pro choice, anti gun, and pro gay marriage, but im voting straight ticket republican because of hamas support from democrats, hamas is 100 percent terrorists
They are just pawns of the terrorist and our corrupt Totalitarian Communist Democrat Party Comrade’s.Everyone with a brain knows that a lot if them are here illegally or over stayed there visa’s It’s time to round them up and ship them directly to Gaza were they can become Hamas terrorist fighters.Also as a guest student in our country you don’t get to protest diddly.This is all part of Biden the inept, handlers to stop our free elections and have a true insurrection.
Countries go to war. Not individual political parties. The country of Palestine elected Hamas leadership. Hamas leadership used financial aid to buy weapons and create tunnels. Palestine invaded Israel killing civilians and kidnapping women and children. I would prefer every living Palestinian wiped from the face of the earth as God commanded in the Old Testament over any peace with this evil.
And? Does anyone think Merrick Garland or Christopher Wray will investigate? And risk losing their MONEY? It’s the same donors giving THEM (the DNC) money!
The proplems the world has are due to satan being the world leader. The bible gives clear answers to what is in the future for satan and people who are on his side. You can only be saved if you ask Christ Jesus, who is one with God the Father, to save you. Of course you have to be sincere. From so many signs both natural and in the behavior of people, which are predicted, the wrap up is near. After Adam and Eve picked satan’s side in the beginning of the human race, satan was allowed to rule the world. People have to make a choice between him and God. God is love, so if you want good He is the choice to make.
These companies and people are insane moronic idiots.
They might as well donate to the KKK or to a Nazi organization along with all the other haters and terrorists.
All they are donating to is the destruction of the world.
Idiot’s!!!
This is very disturbing & USA must quit being so soft on protesters & put a stop to this. It does not help that Trump publicly says protesters arrested Jan 6 are hostages & that he might pardon them. Both groups have broken windows & that is not freedom of speech nor peaceful protest.
All those so called students which a lot of them are professional protesters sent to cause trouble the one that is funding this is Soros and others who are trying to destroy this country they know we have a weak president and VP along with weak Dems in the White House we would not have this with Trump in office but also with the Dems in power there has been no BLM or Antifia around very strange but Soros got what he wanted a weak government and that is what we have. And for all the students that are taken in with this BS they should be expelled and funding cut off from the schools.
The money goes out and there is absolutely no accountability for where it goes and what it’s doing!! And then Biden wants to send more and more money, again, with no accountability!!! Is there some kind of deal between Biden and Zelensky where Joe is still getting his 10% from all of his dealings with Ukraine – I am extremely suspicious of Biden, his family and many other politicians for their schemes and scams that make them tons of money while we suffer!! The donors are off on some wild thought process if they are willing to support terrorists groups!!!
George Soros is singlehandedly trying to change America into a socialist country. Why doesn’t he just go LIVE IN ONE instead of ruining the best country on earth?
I was going to ask why this is allowed, with preferential tax treatment as well. But then I realized this is exactly what leftists want.
No donors to the colleges from the US or NGOs
Or money from overseas
People should remember, all of them, rich to poor, were jumping up an down, screaming with joy, when 9/11 happened, when 17/7 happened, and now, as they claim these colleges as their own.