George Soros is paying student radicals who are fueling nationwide explosion of Israel-hating protests
George Soros and his hard-left acolytes are paying agitators who are fueling the explosion of radical anti-Israel protests at colleges across the country.
The protests, which began when students took over Columbia University’s Morningside Heights campus lawn last week, have mushroomed nationwide.
Copycat tent cities have been set up at colleges including Harvard, Yale, Berkeley in California, the Ohio State University and Emory in Georgia — all of them organized by branches of the Soros-funded Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) — and at some, students have clashed with police.
The SJP parent organization has been funded by a network of nonprofits ultimately funded by, among others, Soros, the billionaire left-wing investor.
USCPR provides up to $7,800 for its community-based fellows and between $2,880 and $3,660 for its campus-based “fellows” in return for spending eight hours a week organizing “campaigns led by Palestinian organizations.”
They are trained to “rise up, to revolution.”
The radical group received at least $300,000 from Soros’ Open Society Foundations since 2017 and also took in $355,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund since 2019.
It has three “fellows” who have been major figures in the nationwide protest movement.
Nidaa Lafi, a former president of the University of Texas Students for Justice in Palestine, was seen at an encampment at UT Dallas Wednesday making a speech demanding an end to the war in Gaza.
Lafi, a former legislative intern for the late Democratic Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, graduated from the school last year with a degree in global business and is now a law student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
In January, she was detained for blocking the route of President Biden’s motorcade after he arrived in Dallas for the funeral of Johnson, her former boss.
At Yale, USCPR’s fellow Craig Birckhead-Morton was arrested Monday and charged with first-degree trespassing when SJP’s branch, Yalies4Palestine, occupied the school’s Beinecke Plaza, the Yale Daily News reported.
Birckhead-Morton — also a former intern for a Democrat, Maryland rep John Sarbanes — emerged from custody to address a sit-in blocking traffic in New Haven.
The most high-profile of the fellows is Berkeley’s Malak Afaneh, co-president of the Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine.
She has been a serial speaker at an anti-Israel protest on the campus this week — which came after she first shot to prominence by hijacking a dinner at the law school dean’s home to shout anti-Israel slogans, then accused the dean’s wife of assaulting her when she asked the radical to leave.
The cash from Soros and his acolytes has been critical to the Columbia protests that set off the national copycat demonstrations.
Three groups set up the tent city on Columbia’s lawn last Wednesday: Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Within Our Lifetime.
At the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” 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.
An analysis by The Post shows that all three got cash from groups linked to Soros. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund also gave cash to JVP.
The fund is chaired by Joseph Pierson, and includes David Rockefeller Jr, a fourth-generation member of the oil dynasty, on its board of directors. The non-profit gives money to “sustainable development” and “peace-building.”
And a former Wall Street banker, Felice Gelman, a retired investment banker who has dedicated her Wall Street fortune to pro-Palestinian causes, funded all three groups.
Both SJP and JVP were expelled from Columbia University in November for “threatening rhetoric and intimidation.” JVP blamed Israel for the Oct 7 Hamas terrorist attack that left 1,200 Israelis dead.
“Israeli apartheid and occupation — and United States complicity in that oppression — are the source of all this violence,” JVP said in a statement on its website.
SJP called the terrorist strike on Israel “a historic win.”
An analysis by The Post shows how Soros and Gelman’s cash made its way to the students through a network of nonprofits that help obscure their contributions.
Soros has given billions to the Open Society Foundations which his son Alexander — whose partner is Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s top aide and the estranged wife of pervert Anthony Weiner — now controls.
In turn, Open Society has given more than $20 million to the Tides Foundation, a progressive nonprofit “fiscal sponsor” that then sends the cash to smaller groups.
Those groups include A Jewish Voice for Peace, which between 2017 and 2022 has received $650,000 from Soros’ Open Society. Its advisers include the academic Noam Chomsky and the left-wing feminist author Naomi Klein.
JVP has been a prominent part of the protests at Columbia and one of its student members was among a group expelled from the university for inviting the leader of a proscribed terrorist group, Khaled, to the “Resistance 101” Zoom meeting.
Soros has also donated $132,000 to WESPAC, called in full the Westchester People’s Action Coalition Foundation.
The White Plains-based nonprofit was founded in 1974 to rally for civil rights and against the Vietnam War but is now a major funder of anti-Israel groups, including Within Our Lifetime and Students for Justice in Palestine.
SJP has also received funding from the Sparkplug Foundation, a New York-based nonprofit run by Gelman and her husband, Yoram Gelman.
The couple funneled their $20,000 donation to the group through WESPAC in 2022, according to public filings.
Gelman was previously on WESPAC’s committee for Justice and Peace in the Middle East in 2009 when she was invited to Gaza by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, according to the group’s website.
The UN group has been slammed for its support of Hamas.
Gelman is on the board of the Bard Lifetime Learning Institute, an offshoot of the infamously progressive college, as well as the Jenin Freedom Theatre, located in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.
WESPAC president Howard Horowitz, a former Orthodox Jew, is a member of the New York chapter of JVP, which says it works for “advocacy and public education for Palestinian human rights.”
Horowitz said he embraced the Palestinian cause after time spent living in Israel, according to a report in the Israel Times.
WESPAC has also given money to Within Our Lifetime, founded by the ubiquitous anti-Israeli protester Nerdeen Kiswani.
Within our Lifetime uses a loophole in the law to avoid declaring how much it receives from donors by not being a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, meaning it is unknown how Kiswani has benefited.
However, WESPAC is named as a fiscal sponsor of Within Our Lifetime.
After The Post published out story, an Open Society Foundations spokesperson said: “For the record, Open Society Foundations has a long history of fighting antisemitism, islamophobia and all forms of racism and hate.
“Open Society has funded a broad spectrum of US groups that have advocated for the rights of Palestinians and Israelis and for peaceful resolution to the conflict in Israel and the OPT.
“This funding is a matter of public record, disclosed on our website, fully compliant with US laws, and is part of our commitment to continuing open debate that is ultimately the only hope for peace in the region.
“The Open Society Foundations proudly support the right of all citizens to peaceful protest — a bedrock principle of our democracy.”
None of the other groups responded to requests by The Post for comment.
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