George Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF) provided almost $6 million in donations to Columbia University, the university at which student groups issued a statement bashing Israel and empathizing with Hamas terrorists.
Leftists love to pretend that criticizing radical leftist billionaire and OSF founder Soros is “anti-Semitism,” even though Soros was a Nazi collaborator in his youth and has long supported the Palestinians rather than Israel. A 2007 post on Soros’s website even encouraged support for the terrorist group Hamas: “America and Israel Must Open the Door to Hamas,” as MRC’s Joseph Vazquez uncovered. But it turns out Soros’s OSF also funneled a whopping $5.86 million to Columbia University, where student groups expressed support for Palestinian terrorists after the recent Hamas atrocities against Israeli civilians.
OSF gave the donations in a series of 39 grants between 2016 and 2021 to the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York (except one to the Institute of International Education [IIE] for placing a Eurasian scholar at Columbia). According to the Columbia University website, “Overall governance of the University lies in the hands of its Board of Trustees. The trustees select the president, oversee all faculty and senior administrative appointments, monitor the budget, supervise the endowment, and protect University property.” Thus OSF was giving its donations straight to the trustees who govern Columbia.
The donations to Columbia were all under George Soros’s leadership. His son Alexander Soros became the chairman of OSF this year. Excluding the OSF grant to IIE for placing a scholar at Columbia, the OSF donations to Columbia University amount to $5,849,439. Including the IIE grant, the amount is $5,860,939.
Back in 2003, Soros reportedly told a Jewish group that he blamed U.S. and Israeli policies for European anti-Semitism! Soros’s OSF has also donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Palestinian and pro-Palestinian organizations including 7amleh, Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA), Palestinian Center for Policy Research and Strategic Studies – MASARAT, and Palestinian Performing Arts Network. Worse, according to the New York Post, Soros funneled over $15 million to the groups behind the recent anti-Israel, pro-Hamas rallies. My point? While Soros might have donated to Columbia University as a whole and not necessarily the anti-Semitic student groups in particular, he certainly supports pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli propaganda.
Below are selections from the revolting anti-Semitic screed signed by over 20 student organizations at Columbia after the recent heinous and unprovoked Hamas terrorist atrocities. It is key to keep in mind that the “Palestinians” are an invented “people” with no right to Israeli land, that Gazans overwhelmingly supported jihad against Israel in 2021 even though the terrorists that control them are keeping Gaza poor, and that the Arabs have always rejected a two-state solution in favor of trying to destroy Israel with continual terrorist jihad. The student groups are also defending a Hamas terrorist attack that included the decapitating, mutilating, raping, and burning alive of innocent Israeli men, women, and children, even babies. While the scope of this new attack was unusually large, Palestinians also committed over 5300 terrorist attacks just last year on Israel. Without doubt or question, Palestinians are the aggressors, and Israel is just trying to defend itself. And most countries consistently side with the Palestinians, so they are not without recourse as Columbia students allege.
“We also affirm that there can be no future of safety and freedom for all Israelis and Palestinians without holding the Israeli occupation accountable for its actions and putting an end to the untenable status quo of Israel’s apartheid and colonial system…
We cannot view the recent actions of Palestinian fighters in isolation. Gaza is an open-air prison that lacks the essential necessities such as food, clean water, medicine, and electricity. Palestinians in Gaza have endured five brutal wars and prolonged inhumane siege for 16 years depriving them of their most basic rights. The United Nations issued a warning in 2012 that Gaza would become unlivable by 2020 due to Israel’s siege. Yet, here we are in 2023, and the whole world is SILENT while Palestinians live in an open air prison and continue to suffer as a result of the siege and wars applied by a series of fascist, racist, and colonial Israeli governments…
The weight of responsibility for the war and casualties undeniably lies with the Israeli extremist government and other Western governments, including the U.S. government, which fund and staunchly support Israeli aggression, apartheid and settler-colonization…Every single political avenue available to Palestinians has been blocked…we urge Columbia University to stand firmly for accountability and end its ties with apartheid Israel, including discontinuing the Columbia Global Center in Tel Aviv and the Dual Degree Program with Tel Aviv University…
If every political avenue available to Palestinians is blocked, we should not be surprised when resistance and violence break out. The international community is quick to affirm Israel’s right to protect itself but does not extend this same right to Palestinians. Israel does not have the right to defend its occupation, its apartheid state or its siege of Gaza. As an occupying power, the state of Israel has a responsibility to protect civilian life under its own occupation.”
Again, everything the Columbia students allege is a blatant lie. They are affirming terrorist propaganda to justify a horrific terrorist slaughter against Israelis, the single worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. It’s anti-Semitism, pure and simple.
Hamas’ terrorist headquarters under the Shifa hospital is draining the necessities—fuel, oxygen, water and electricity—from the Gazans and staff and using them for terrorism. pic.twitter.com/LKCu0WILvd
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 28, 2023
It is significant that the president of Columbia was also condemned for staying silent on the Hamas attacks and shocking student response. A former Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion director recently said that anti-Semitism is a severe problem on U.S. college campuses.
Related: Former DEI Director: DEI ‘Deliberately Stokes’ Anti-Semitism at Colleges
Soros, born a Jew, was a teenager when he escaped the Holocaust in Hungary by posing as a Christian and helping his fake godfather confiscate property from Jews. In a 1998 CBS interview, Soros admitted the threat of Nazi genocide to be a “tremendous threat of evil,” but also expressed the fact that he felt “no sense of guilt” “at all” about being involved in the confiscation of property from his fellow Jews. He even smiled while discussing his youthful role in helping his “godfather” round up Jews for the Nazi death camps.
George Soros might be Jewish by birth, but he has spent his whole life unashamedly assisting anti-Semites, a condemnable course of action he continues to the present day. It’s no coincidence that Columbia University, beneficiary of so much Soros cash, has a disturbing anti-Semitism problem.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member