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- Written by Richard Silverstein Richard Silverstein
- Published: 06 January 2013 06 January 2013
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[Note: The Israel Project listed below has a board of advisers that includes Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, a staunch zionist]
Most Jewish foundations support the equivalent of Bubbeh’s chicken soup: Israel, synagogues, youth groups, Jewish education, Jewish studies programs, etc. But over the past ten years or so, as the ideological battle within Israel has intensified with a rightward nationalist drift, a number of foundations have led a drive toward the increasing politicization of Jewish philanthropy. Three of the most radical in their funding objectives are located in the west: the Koret Foundation in San Francisco, which is based on the fortune amassed by a successful Jewish clothing manufacturer, with a reported $473-million in assets and $19-million in grants in its latest IRS filing. The Fairbrook Foundation, based on the $1-billion technology fortune of Aubrey and Joyce Chernick, is based in Los Angeles and had $50-million in assets and $5-million in grants in its last available 2010 IRS filing. The Irving Moskowitz Foundation, which had assets of $48-million and grants $5-million, supports the radical settler vision of its namesake, whose fortune was made buying and selling hospitals and in running a Southern California bingo-parlor.
[Photo: Irving Moskowitz surrounded by settlers and security as they ethnically cleanse East Jerusalem Palestinian home (Awad Awad/AFP)]
These foundations are major funders of the most extreme of Jewish groups and individuals including David Horowitz, Pam Geller, Robert Spencer, Daniel Pipes, The Israel Project, MEMRI, and many others. The agenda of these funders is decidedly Islamophobic and contributes enormously to the current hostile atmosphere toward Muslims in the U.S. and Israel. They funded Geller’s “Ground Zero Mosque” jihad, her NY subway ads. They helped Daniel Pipes create and fund his lawfare campaign called The Legal Project, which provided free legal representation to leading Dutch Islamophobe politician, Geert Wilders; and for MEK official, Hassan Daioeslam, in defense of his libel suit with the National Iranian American Council.
The main problem with Jewish Islamophobia is that it turns the Israeli-Arab conflict into a religious holy war when it’s really a battle over political power. Injecting religion as these radical ideologues do, makes resolving differences almost impossible. Finally, in smearing the religion of most of those living in the Middle East, it almost guarantees that no Muslim will be able to tolerate a Jewish presence there as well.
Similarly, these radical philanthropists fund the most extreme of the settler movement. Those who not just espouse violence and hate against Palestinians, but engage in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.
Because so much of the activism of the radical Jewish right is shrouded in obscurity, I like to debunk this periodically by showing you the money: who has it, where it’s going, and what it’s doing.
* The following is a list, by Foundation, of some of the most radical of these groups and how much they’ve received. I last bloggedabout the Fairbrook Foundation’s 2008 IRS 990. The following is from the 2010 report:
American Freedom Alliance
$80,000
Ateret Cohanim (De-Arabizing East Jerusalem)
$30,000
Kiryat Arba Yeshiva
$110,000
Center for Security Policy (Frank Gaffney’s Sharia-obsessed non-profit)
$100,000
Central Fund for Israel (general support for radical settlers and settlements)
$150,000
CAMERA (right-wing media advocacy)
$25,000
David Horowitz Freedom Center
$160,000
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies
$190,000
Heritage Foundation
$50,000
Hudson Institute
$75,000
Middle East Forum (Daniel Pipes)
$270,000
Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE-David Yerushalmi)
$90,000
Zionist Organization of America
$200,000
* While the Koret Foundation has a distinctively more regional focus in a lot of its Jewish grantmaking, it is nonetheless playing a major role funding right-wing pro-Israel groups whose political ambitions are national and international in scope. Here is a list of some of the far-right Jewish groups it funded in 2011. Grants may be paid between 2011-2013:
American Israel Education Foundation (AIPAC Israel junkets)
$20,000 (2012)
American-Israel Cooperative Enterprise (former Aipac staffer, Mitchell Bard)
$50,000 (2012)
Central Fund for Israel
$20,000
Chabad
$80,000
David Horowitz Freedom Center
$45,000
Federalist Society
$180,000
Friends of the IDF
$22,000
Hudson Institute
$25,000
Institute for Jewish and Community Research (funding Ken Marcus’ campus anti-Semitism initiative)
$100,000
The Israel Project
$50,000
Investigative Project on Terrorism
$25,000
Jewish Agency (Natan Sharansky)
$45,000
Middle East Forum (Daniel Pipes)
$50,000
MEMRI
$200,000
Scholars for Peace in the Middle East
$70,000
StandWithUs (Bay Area chapter, one of whose members engaged in a physical assault at a Jewish Voice for Peace meeting)
$50,000
Ayn Rand Institute
$13,000
Center for Security Policy
$225,000
* These are the grants listed in the Moskowitz Foundation’s 2011 IRS report:
Central Fund for Israel
$260,000
Ir David (the settler archaeological excavations which are at the heart of the campaign to depopulate Palestinian East Jerusalem)
$1,000,000
Friends of IDF
$40,000
Honenu (legal defense for settlers accused of nationalist violence like Yigal Amir)
$20,000
MEMRI
$100,000
Young Israel
$100,000
Zionist Organization of America
$100,000
Western Wall Foundation
$100,000
Friends of Itamar
$25,000
Center for Security Policy
$100,000
Americans for a Safe Israel
$50,000
Nefesh B’Nefesh (supporting immigration, often to settlements)
$300,000