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<h1 class="title" id="page-title">Are climate change deniers funding
attack on Palestine activism?</h1>
<div class="field-author">
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/charlotte-silver"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel"
datatype="">Charlotte Silver</a><br>
<b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/are-climate-change-deniers-funding-attack-palestine-activism/14374">http://electronicintifada.net/content/are-climate-change-deniers-funding-attack-palestine-activism/14374</a></small></small></small></b><br>
</div>
<br>
<div class="field-publication-date">
<span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2015-03-26T20:26:00+00:00">26
March 2015</span> </div>
<div class="field-body">
<p>Last weekend, Zionist activists paid up to $1,000 each to
attend a <a
href="https://www.standwithus.com/ppsc/bdsconf2015.asp">conference</a>
in <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/los-angeles">Los
Angeles</a> on the Palestinian call for <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/bds">boycott,
divestment and sanctions</a> (BDS) against Israel.</p>
<p><a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/standwithus">StandWithUs</a>,
the conference’s organizer, is one of the most powerful outfits
in the US leading the current backlash against activism in
support of Palestinian rights. Though it tries to present itself
as grassroots-led, it is <a
href="http://972mag.com/standwithus-to-take-cash-messaging-from-israeli-govt/101314/">funded</a>
by the Israeli government, as well as richly endowed
foundations.</p>
<p>A new <a
href="http://www.ijan.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/IJAN-Business-of-Backlash-web.pdf">report</a>
by the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/international-jewish-anti-zionist-network-ijan">International
Jewish Anti-Zionist Network</a> identifies eleven of the most
significant of the foundations that provide financial backing to
what IJAN calls the “Zionist backlash.”</p>
<p>Zionist organizations have received nearly a billion dollars
from these sources over the last seven years, according to the
report.</p>
<h2>Hubs and catalysts</h2>
<p>“It is almost unknown that eleven major donors, routing their
capital through an array of foundations, fund nearly the entire
network of ‘hubs and catalysts’ of anti-Palestinian backlash in
the United States,” according to the report.</p>
<p>IJAN analyzed thousands of pages of tax returns of some of the
most prominent “backlash” organizations, including the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/amcha-initiative">Amcha
Initiative</a>, StandWithUS and <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/hillel">Hillel
International</a>.</p>
<p>It traced their funding to the Newton D. and Rochelle F. Becker
Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Koret Foundation,
the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, the Klarman
Family Foundation, the Russell Berrie Foundation, the Lynde and
Harry Bradley Foundation, the Adelson Family Foundation, the
Koch Family Foundations, the Moskowitz Foundation and the
Fairbrook Foundation.</p>
<p>Some of these names will be familiar to readers acquainted with
the well-funded “<a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/islamophobia">Islamophobia</a>
industry” in the United States. Previous investigative reporting
and research have <a
href="http://www.alternet.org/world/follow-money-islamophobia-israel-right-or-wrong">shown</a>
that overlapping interests provoke anti-Muslim sentiment as well
as strengthen the US-Israel relationship.</p>
<p>However, lesser-known players with similar objectives have
undergone less scrutiny.</p>
<p>For example, the Koch Family Foundations, operated by Charles
and David Koch — notorious for their zealous devotion to the
free market as well as their significant sway over electoral
outcomes — poured $56 million in 2012 alone to <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/donors-capital-fund">Donors
Capital Fund</a> and Donors Trust, intermediary groups that
are used to obscure funding for sensitive or controversial
causes. The Koch brothers’ firm, Koch Industries, is heavily <a
href="http://www.kochindustriesinc.com/files/kochfacts.pdf">involved</a>
in energy projects.</p>
<p>Donors Capital Fund and Donors Trust gained notoriety for their
heavy <a
href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/10/11819/meet-network-hiding-koch-money-donors-trust-and-donors-capital-fund">investment</a>
in institutions that produced dubious reports challenging the
veracity of <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/climate-change">climate
change</a>.</p>
<p>But it has also contributed significantly to Zionist backlash
organizations — including StandWithUs, the Friends of the Israel
Center for Social and Economic Progress and the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/camera">Committee for
Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America</a> (CAMERA). Of
note, in 2011 the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/center-american-progress">Center
for American Progress</a> found that Donors Capital Fund was
the <a
href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/religion/report/2011/08/26/10165/fear-inc/">largest
contributor</a> to the “Islamophobia network.”</p>
<h2>Sustaining power and profit</h2>
<p>Donors Capital Fund has also donated to <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/shurat-hadin">Shurat
HaDin</a> — or Israel’s Law Center. Focused on taking lawsuits
against Palestinians and Palestine solidarity activists, that
group has <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israeli-lawyers-group-shurat-hadin-unmasked-mossad-proxy">ties</a>
to the <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/mossad">Mossad</a>,
Israel’s foreign inteligence outfit. Shurat HaDin <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/jailing-rasmea-odeh-may-trigger-trauma-israeli-torture-expert-tells-judge">assisted</a>
the US government’s recent case against Palestinian American
community leader <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/rasmea-odeh">Rasmea
Odeh</a>.</p>
<p>Many of the donors use intermediary “donor advised funds” —
also called “anonymizers” — to obscure their support for more
controversial groups. Anonymizers receive and disseminate direct
donations and play a large role in distributing funds to Zionist
backlash organizations, as the IJAN report details.</p>
<p>Only by reviewing a specific foundation’s public tax returns
can one gain any insight into who is funding these
intermediaries.</p>
<p>Like Donors Capital Fund, these intermediary groups have
innocuous names including Combined Jewish Philanthropies of
Boston and Jewish Communal Fund. Yet they bankroll some of the
most aggressively anti-Palestinian groups all over the United
States.</p>
<p>IJAN’s report emphasizes the crucial alignment of interests
that fuels such bounteous investment in fighting and undermining
Palestinian activism in the United States. Profit competes with
political ideology as a motivating force, the report suggests.
Many of the biggest funders of the backlash also maintain
substantial investments in oil, gas and weapon industries that
have interests in Israel’s geopolitical position.</p>
<p>“While there are donors whose investments in the backlash are
clearly ideological, we want to make the case that these are
rational investments, that are, in part, about sustaining their
power and profit,” David Langstaff, a researcher with IJAN, told
The Electronic Intifada.</p>
<p>Langstaff also stated that while many of his colleagues were
shocked by the sheer amount of money flowing to the Zionist
backlash, he was more struck that these funders were
simultaneously funding attacks on other movements for social
justice, including environmental, anti-racist and labor
organizing.</p>
<p>Langstaff was involved in the drawn-out legal battle by <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/olympia-food-co-op">Olympia
Food Co-op</a> in Washington state after it decided to boycott
Israeli merchandise. StandWithUs, along with the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/zionist-organization-america">Zionist
Organization of America</a> and the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/lawfare-project">Lawfare
Project</a>, propelled <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/olympia-co-op-lawfare-case-backfires-court-fines-anti-boycott-plaintiffs">litigation</a>
against the co-op’s right to boycott Israeli goods on such
dubious legal grounds that two courts ultimately ruled that the
case had “no merit” and qualified as an attack on public
expression.</p>
<p>While the litigative effort has thus far failed, Langstaff
points out, “There were years’ worth of energy going into that
single victory.”</p>
<p>But in spite of the big money that fuels their opposition, the
IJAN report stresses that Palestine solidarity activism in the
United States continues to have successes.</p>
<p>“It is our hopeful conclusion that our movement has made gains
in spite of such enormous quantities of money,” Langstaff said.</p>
<p><em>Charlotte Silver is a journalist based in San Francisco.
Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/CharESilver">@CharESilver</a></em></p>
</div>
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