A major left-of-center nonprofit is providing support to several groups that have justified Hamas’ attacks on Israeli civilians or accused Israel of genocide.
The Tides Center provides fiscal sponsorship to several groups expressing support for Palestinian terrorists and accusing Israel of human rights abuses. Several groups supported by Tides praised Hamas, saying they “breached the apartheid wall that has imprisoned them for over 16 years, separating them from their land, their loved ones, their holy sites” and have organized protests over the genocide they claim the Israeli government is carrying out.
Fiscal sponsorship is “a process in which a sponsor organization is paid to act as an umbrella under which new center-left political groups may fundraise and operate prior to achieving recognition of tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), at which point they’re often spun off into standalone nonprofits,” according to Influence Watch.
Tides maintains a list of its fiscally sponsored projects on its website, which includes the Adalah Justice Project. That organization posted an image to its Instagram page on the day of Hamas’ terrorist attacks featuring a bulldozer tearing down a section of Israel’s border fence.
“Israeli colonizers believed they could indefinitely trap two million people in an open-air prison … no cage goes unchallenged,” the caption on the image read.
Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 civilians, kidnapped children and destroyed entire towns in Israel. Members of Hamas raped women next to the bodies of their dead friends during a massacre at music festival near the Israeli-Gazan border, according to an eye witness interviewed by Tablet Magazine.
“The natural reaction to colonization and oppression is resistance,” another section of the caption read.
“We can not expect Palestinians to passively accept ethnic cleansing, indefinite imprisonment without charges, a 17-year siege, ongoing and endless military occupation, and the deep segregation and indignity of apartheid,” an Oct. 8 post from Adalah reads.
“The natural consequence to colonization and oppression is resistance,” the post continued.
The organization also retweeted a news article calling Hamas terrorists “freedom fighters” and released a statement asserting that “history will eventually write that Palestinians taught the world how to survive.”
Palestine Legal, another fiscally sponsored project of the Tides Center, released a statement on Oct. 10 calling the Hamas terrorist attacks “one of the most significant acts of Palestinian resistance to Israel’s nearly eight decade long settler colonial project in Palestine.” The group goes on in its statement to accuse Israel of genocide and cites an Israeli-designate terror organization to argue that Israel is engaged in a “relentless attack by air, sea, and land against the civilian population in Gaza.”
“There is no equivalence—moral or otherwise—between Israel’s nearly eight decades of ceaseless colonial violence, and the resistance that it has engendered,” Palestine Legal’s statement continued.
The Arab Resource and Organizing Center, also one of the Tides Center’s fiscally sponsored projects, issued a statement saying it “holds the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence we’ve witnessed across historic Palestine.”
“In the face of such violence we recommit ourselves to the struggle for freedom and justice in Palestine, in our region, and globally,” the group stated in response to Hamas’ terrorist attacks.
The Catalyst Project is an anti-racism initiative that is a fiscally sponsored project of the Tides Center.
“An historic act of resistance happened in Palestine last Saturday, as Palestinians in Gaza breached the apartheid wall that has imprisoned them for over 16 years, separating them from their land, their loved ones, their holy sites,” the group said in response to Hamas’ terrorist attacks.
The Catalyst Project accuses Israel of genocide numerous times across its social media.
Tides’ involvement in the anti-Israel movement extends beyond its fiscal sponsorship activities.
The Trans Justice Funding Project, which Tides lists as one of its grantmaking partners, accused Israel of genocide. The Tides Foundation also appears to process donations for Black Lives Matter Grassroots, an organization that said Hamas’ terrorist attacks “must not be condemned, but understood as a desperate act of self-defense.”
Grantmaking partners are “individuals and institutions with grantmaking funds at Tides,” according to the organization’s website.
The Tides Foundation and Tides Center are both part of the Tides umbrella, which is made up of “five separate legal entities,” according to Tides’ website. The Foundation distributes grants while the Center “primarily offers fiscal sponsorship and nonprofit acceleration services.”
The Tides Foundation has dolled out hundreds of thousands of dollars to organizations pushing the narrative that Israel’s defensive operations constitute a genocide.
IfNotNow, a group that seeks to “confront the U.S. government’s role in upholding apartheid” in Israel, received $45,000 from the Tides Foundation during the 2021 fiscal year. IfNotNow organized pro-Palestine protests following Hamas’ attack on Israel.
Forty-nine people were arrested on Oct. 16 for unlawfully entering the White House compound and blocking entrances at a protest organized by IfNotNow, according to Axios. More than 300 people were arrested on Oct.18 for protesting inside the Cannon House Office Building at the Capitol during a demonstration organized by IfNotNow.
In the 2021 fiscal year alone the Tides Foundation gave $250,000 to Showing Up for Racial Justice, $10,000 to the Abolitionist Law Center, $75,000 to Women’s International League for Peace And Freedom, $30,000 to CAIR Arizona, $200,000 to the Muslim Public Affairs Council Foundation and $100,000 to the Center for Third World Organizing, according to tax forms. All six groups accused Israel of genocide or ethnic cleansing.
“We stand by our statements,” the Muslim Public Affairs Council’s chief of staff told the DCNF.
The Center For Constitutional Rights, which received $28,000 from Tides, released a statement saying that it “stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their decades-long struggle for self-determination and freedom from Israel’s regime of apartheid and prolonged belligerent military occupation” on the day Hamas attacked Israel.
“Israeli colonization of historic Palestine gives rise to the international legal right of colonized people to resist colonial domination and to pursue national liberation and self-determination,” their statement continued.
“Under international law, armed groups, such as Palestinian resistance fighters, can lawfully carry out attacks on military targets.”
An Oct. 20 Pro-Palestine protest in Washington, D.C., was organized by a coalition of 16 groups, seven of which were either fiscally sponsored projects of the Tides or received funding from the Tides Foundation. Groups tied to Tides boost each other’s content on social media.
Every group mentioned above, including Tides, did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
Robert Schmad on October 25, 2023
