Open Society Foundations says it will spend $30 million over three years on groups that fight antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate. Within days the pledge was under attack from people who say the family behind it helped feed the problem.
Alex Soros, who oversees the network for his 95-year-old father George, laid out the plan in a May 13 video. “This investment is about keeping people safe and pushing back against hate,” he said. On X he added that his father, a Hungarian-born Jew and Holocaust survivor, “has been a target of antisemitism his whole life.”
The reply came fast. Joel Petlin, superintendent of the Kiryas Joel School District, posted that George Soros “uses his Open Society Foundation to indirectly fund the anti-Israel protests and encampments on college campuses.” For Alex Soros to complain now, he wrote, is “the textbook definition of the word ‘chutzpah.’”
Kalman Yeger, a Democratic state assemblyman from Brooklyn, chose a sharper image. “The Soros family claiming they will fight antisemitism is like the arsonist showing up with an empty fire extinguisher,” he said.
The New York Post, which reported the backlash, says George Soros has given more than $15 million to groups that organized pro-Palestinian protests after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. His critics argue that the radical anti-Israel causes he supports are largely to blame for a surge in hate. The foundation has not accepted that framing.
It has fought similar charges before. When President Donald Trump singled out Soros in September while ordering the FBI to crack down on what he called “left-wing terrorism,” the grant network denied the accusation. Its mission, it said, is to strengthen democracy.
