Are Pro-Palestine Campus Protests Being Funded By George Soros? A Closer Look
Analyzing the claims of George Soros’ involvement in financing the ongoing pro-Palestine protests across college campus’s, and the narrative surrounding it as a whole.
Don Via, Jr | The Rundown Live
March 1, 2024
In recent days mass protests have begun to sweep across University campuses of the United States with students rising up in mass opposition to Israel’s ongoing genocidal onslaught in Gaza. Particularly targeting the policies of the Biden administration support for the genocide, as well as the schools themselves for their financial ties to corporations such as weapons manufacturers and other groups also playing a role in facilitating the massacre.
Galvanized by initial protests at Columbia University, the viral nature of the protests and copycat demonstrations have quickly begun to spread internationally, as it has lit a fire of anti imperial resistance in the hearts of the youth.
Or has it? Almost immediately Western corporate media reports, particularly from The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post and later parroted by similar outlets such as Fox News and others, began circulating the notion that the mass protests sweeping across college campuses in opposition to the genocide is in fact an activist campaign funded by billionaire philanthropist George Soros and his Open Society Foundation.
On the surface these claims certainly seem plausible given Soros’ known history as a deep state financier and funder of political agitation. Still, as critical thinkers evidence has to take precedent over speculation. So what is the evidence?
The basis for the allegation asserts that three specific individuals; Nidaa Lafi, Craig Birckhead-Morton, and Malak Afaneh, and three organizations which they are all closely associated with: Education for Just Peace in the Middle East (which operates publicly under the name U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, or USPCR), Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).
The article then goes on to draw attention to the fact that these individuals have been involved with the protests, and the organizations with which they’ve been associated has received funding from nonprofits which received funding from Soros’s Open Society Foundation. Connecting a line of dots to assert that Soros is funding the protests.
Although, it is interesting to note that when reading NYP’s supposed exposé that the article in question doesn’t actually provide any sort of financial documents or other records to substantiate their claims. However, at the time of this writing we were able to locate publicly available financial records concerning the grants from the Open Society Foundation to the three organizations in question.
The records indicate three donations to Education for Just Peace in the Middle East, totaling $700,000 between 2018 and 2022. Four donations to Jewish Voice for Peace totaling $875,000 between the years of 2017 to 2022, and as for Students for Justice in Palestine the supposed money trail is particularly convoluted. With donations allegedly going from the Open Society Foundation, to the Tides Foundation, then to the Westchester People’s Action Coalition Foundation (WESPAC), and finally to the SJP.
OSF records indicate a total of ten donations to the Tides Foundation between 2016 and 2022 at an approximate sum of $15 million, of that money donations to WESPAC, reportedly to the tune of $132,000, is undisclosed. And any alleged funding from WESPAC to Students for Justice in Palestine is unknown, as no record of it exists, leaving it as nothing more than unsubstantiated allegation. For what it’s worth, a spokesmen for SJP also publicly denies that the organization has received any funding from WESPAC.
Furthermore, it is also worth pointing out that the three students identified in the article are no longer fellows associated with the aforementioned organizations, having been from last year’s class. Meaning that even if such funding was flowing to these organizations, the three primary individuals accused of being “paid protestors” in the New York Post’s report would not have been eligible to receive the money anyway…
Certainly, three allegedly dubious individuals who were once tied to an organization that at one point took some money from some other organizations that at one point received funding from the Open Society Foundation, does not in fact equate to the assertion that mass droves of protesters, numbering in the thousands, as being nothing more than paid shills. Overall, the report doesn’t provide any solid tangible proof that the money from the donations of more than two years ago is critical to funding the current protests.
Despite this, now rightoid pundits and Israel apologists are capitalizing on this reporting by claiming “See, all these protests are just a Soros funded left wing psy-op!” as a means of once again hijacking the narrative in an attempt to discredit the logical and rational objection to systematic mass murder. Using the very rightfully placed distrust in deep state financier George Soros as the convenient boogeyman necessary to get those on the right who began questioning the Biden administrations “Israel first” policy back in line with the establishment status quo of supporting the Zionist regime.
Of course, if there is some sort of yet to be seen deeper involvement of Soros and company we will do a follow-up report provided there is hard evidence of it — as leaked emails from 2016 suggest that Soros money has been tied to such activities in the past.
Should that be the case one of the big questions that we could ask is why? Why would George Soros, the lifelong ruling class oligarch, Zionist sympathizer, and admitted Nazi collaborator fund a movement in opposition to Zionist colonialism?
A potential answer could be that in funding such campaigns and therefore attaching himself, and the stigma associated with him, to such movements would serve to discredit them. Or perhaps it could be something as simple as “funding both sides of the conflict” in the typical problem-reaction-solution style, as the ruling class is known to do. Although at this time that is just speculation, and as stated earlier evidence must take precedent over speculation.
What we do have a plethora of evidence of and know for certain is that the western media propaganda machine has pontificated lie after lie after lie in its effort to bolster pro-Zionist narrative control. Not just since the October 7th false flag attack, but for decades.
Even now, the corporate media in lockstep with the agenda of the establishment remains very transparent in their pro Israel bias, as evidenced by the reports of Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), demonstrating how the MSM refuses to do much reporting at all on the otherwise international headlines exposing Israeli war crimes following revelations of more mass graves containing the bodies of Palestinian civilians bound and executed by IDF forces at hospitals in Gaza.
Or the recently leaked memos reported on by The Intercept showing how the New York Times consistently frames their coverage of the atrocities as favorable to Israel.
Or in the disingenuous corporate media framing of pro-Palestine protests as being “pro-Hamas, “pro-terrorist”, “anti-Semitic” or some other inflammatory rhetoric deliberately intended to delegitimize opposition to mass murder.
In certain cases the claims of anti-Semitic hate speech at campus protests appear to be an inside job from Zionist counter protesters as well, as evidenced by recently surfaced videos showing pro-Israel agitators infiltrating groups of pro-Palestine protesters, wherein the agitators began yelling “Kill the Jews!” in order to incite a police response to the protest, resulting in the arrest of over 100 protesters.
Moreover, it can be observed that the widespread and polarizing media coverage of these protests is serving an agenda in and of itself. A convenient distraction pivoting attention to the protests, rather than what the protests are about. Focusing on the “disruptive college students” or the heavy-handed state response to them infringing on the 1st amendment rights of peaceful demonstrators — as opposed to the fact that Israel is engaged in a mass extermination of civilians. Bombing schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, and homes. Killing over 34,500 people so far, an estimated 70% of them being women and children, with an additional 70,000 wounded, amid preparations for an imminent ground invasion of Rafah, the southernmost city of Gaza serving as one of the last bastions of refuge for over one million civilians as Israeli officials call for its “total annihilation”.
Is George Soros somehow responsible for fomenting elements of these protests? It’s plausible. But at the present moment we simply do not have the evidence to say that conclusively to any meaningful degree.
What can be said is that we are living in extraordinary times. And while one should certainly always remain skeptical and question everything, it is also of equal import to take care not to fall victim to the “everything is a conspiracy” mindset. Far too often we see that rhetoric used by nihilists as a blanket disqualifier for any and everything. Such a mentality undercuts the very real spirit of resistance that exists within every single one of us. It discounts any potential act of resistance as simply a ploy by the system to instigate upheaval for some hidden ulterior agenda. When in reality sometimes people really do just get pissed off at the way things are and decide to do something about it.
If the last few years have shown us anything it’s that people do have the power to change things, and they are continuing to recognize that on an increasing basis. Across the entire political spectrum there is a younger generation that is increasingly becoming discontent with the current state of affairs. From the mass global protests that brought an end to the COVID lockdowns, to the farmers revolt against draconian EU climate policies, the last few years have shown us that average people do in fact possess the capacity to organize on a large scale to oppose authoritarian systems of power.
We should keep in mind that prior to this recent eruption of protests here in the United States and elsewhere, prior to the previous spate of protests, prior to the US media even acknowledging that protests were occurring at all, millions were already rising up the world over to reject Israel’s genocidal slaughter. Quite frankly it seems illogical to suggest that such a massive uprising opposing everything that the globalist ruling class establishment stands for is entirely the work of some 5D chess coordinated psy-op by those very entities.
Could we suggest they are meddling in those protests, attempting to manipulate and influence them for their own gain? We can certainly assume so. That is their playbook. Which is why it is our responsibility to get involved ourselves, to scrutinize them, to elevate them, to keep them authentic. To hold the powerful accountable and ensure that these movements of resistance don’t get co-opted by agent provocateurs. Outside of the political rhetoric and the religious rhetoric and all of the other polarizing narratives used to create division regarding this subject, it should not be difficult for decent people to come to the agreement that the deliberate systemic eradication of human beings is wrong.
This is about more than just Palestine. It’s about the way in which the predatory oligarchy utilizes war as a means of achieving everything else it desires.
The war machine is the mechanism that perpetuates everything else. It’s endless war that keeps the banking cartels in power.
It’s endless war that expands imperialism, colonialism, racism, classism.
It is endless war that our tax money is used to fund resulting in even higher taxes due to the economic devastations caused from endless war and the big corporations that fund it in order to profit from the monopolization of stolen resources.
It is endless war that helps contribute to the globalist depopulation agenda through the killing of innocent people.
It is endless war that results in catastrophic environmental destruction that feckless politicians can then blame on a manufactured climate crisis to implement more draconian regulations on average citizens while continuing to give the worst environmental polluters a pass.
The racket that is the war machine is essentially the linchpin that holds the whole system together.
So at what point do we simply say mass murder is not okay? And does it really need to go any further than that?