“The Soros family claiming they will fight antisemitism is like the arsonist showing up with an empty fire extinguisher.” That was State Assemblyman Kalman Yeger, a Brooklyn Democrat, reacting to the news that billionaire George Soros is putting $30 million toward groups that fight antisemitism and other bigotry.
The money comes through Open Society Foundations. Alex Soros, who runs the grant-making network for his 95-year-old father, announced the plan in a May 13 video. It will fund work against antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate over the next three years. “This investment is about keeping people safe and pushing back against hate,” he said.
He also wrote on X that his father, a Hungarian-born Jew and Holocaust survivor, “has been a target of antisemitism his whole life.”
Critics say that history doesn’t settle the question. Joel Petlin, superintendent of the Kiryas Joel School District, wrote on X that George Soros “uses his Open Society Foundation to indirectly fund the anti-Israel protests and encampments on college campuses.” Alex Soros complaining about his father being targeted, Petlin said, is “the textbook definition of the word ‘chutzpah.’”
The New York Post, which first reported the reaction, says Soros has given more than $15 million to groups that organized pro-Palestinian protests after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel. Critics quoted by the paper call him largely responsible for the rise in hate because of the causes he backs.
Soros has been a political target before. President Donald Trump named him in September when he ordered the FBI to crack down on what he called “left-wing terrorism.” The grant network denied the accusation and said its mission is to strengthen democracy.
