Open Society Foundations will spend $30 million over three years to fight antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate. By the time the New York Post wrote about it on May 23, the money had already drawn fire.
Alex Soros, who oversees the network on behalf of his father George, 95, laid out the plan in a video posted May 13. “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.”
Critics saw it differently. The Post reported that they blame George Soros in large part for the surge in hatred, citing the anti-Israel causes he supports. The paper put his giving to groups that organized pro-Palestinian protests, after the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, at more than $15 million.
Joel Petlin, who runs the Kiryas Joel School District, was blunt on X. Open Society, he wrote, “indirectly” funds “the anti-Israel protests and encampments on college campuses.” For Alex Soros to complain now, he said, was “the textbook definition of the word ‘chutzpah.’”
Kalman Yeger, a Democratic state assemblyman from Brooklyn, put it more vividly. The family’s vow was “like the arsonist showing up with an empty fire extinguisher,” he said.
George Soros has been a political target before. In September, President Donald Trump named him when he ordered the FBI to go after what he called “left-wing terrorism.” Open Society has rejected that charge and says its aim is to strengthen democracy.
