Activity

• The Ford Foundation is a private grant-giving foundation whose stated goal is “to reduce poverty and injustice, strengthen democratic values, promote international cooperation, and advance human achievement.”

Funding

• In 2023, total income was $1.2 billion; total expenses were $808.5 million, of which $607.4 million was disbursed as grants to NGOs.

Funding to Politicized NGOs

• The Ford Foundation has also provided grants to a number of highly biased and politicized NGOs active in the Arab-Israel conflict, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), Center for Constitutional Rights, Oxfam, and Christian Aid. (See table below for further funding information.)
• In 2023-2026, Ford Foundation granted $1.1 million to Human Rights Watch (HRW).
  • HRW disproportionately focuses on condemnations of Israel and publications related to Israel often lack credibility. HRW has also been a leader in BDS campaigns, beginning with the 2001 NGO Forum of the UN Durban conference.
  • HRW is a leader of demonization campaigns, including lobbying the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Israeli officials, and leading BDS campaigns targeting banks, soccer clubs, and other businesses operating in Israel.
  • In June 2024, HRW was granted permission by the UK High Court to intervene in an “ongoing legal challenge by Al-Haq and the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) to the UK’s transfer of arms to Israel.” In November 2024, HRW and Amnesty submitted an amicus brief to the UK High Court claiming, “Israel denies the applicability of key rules of IHL relevant to the conflict in Gaza contrary to the settled position at international law. The evidence also shows that Israel’s statements, positions and established practices in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (‘OPT’) more generally are contrary to core rules of IHL, including rules the infringement of which constitute ‘grave breaches’ of IHL. In some instances, Israel’s position is flagrantly contrary to such rules.”
  • In June 2021, HRW Israel and Palestine Director Omar Shakir participated in a conference, “Challenging Apartheid in Palestine: Reclaiming the Narrative, Formulating A Vision,” hosted by the Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University. Conference organizers and sponsors, as well as other participants, were linked to various terror groups, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
• In 2023-2026, Ford Foundation granted $3.2 million to Amnesty International.
  • Amnesty disproportionately singles out Israel for condemnation, focusing solely on the conflict with the Palestinians, misrepresenting the complexity of the conflict, and ignoring more severe human rights violations in the region.
  • In violation of its policy of “impartiality,” Amnesty employs numerous anti-Israel activists and BDS campaigners with well-documented histories of radical activism in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
  • In April 2024, 11 French NGOs, including Amnesty International France and Association France Palestine Solidarité (AFPS), filed three separate legal actions at the administrative court “to obtain the suspension of export licenses for war materiel in categories ML5 (fire control equipment) and ML15 (imaging equipment) destined for the State of Israel. The NGOs claimed the judge has “48 hours to respond to their request to cancel weapons exports to Israel over the risk that the Israeli military might use them to commit war crimes in Gaza.”
    • On April 13, the administrative court rejected the case. 
  • In March 2024, Amnesty International Denmark, Oxfam Denmark, ActionAid Denmark, and Al-Haq announced they were suing the Danish National Police and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in an attempt to stop Danish arms exports to Israel. According to the NGOs, “Denmark should not be sending weapons to Israel when there is a reasonable suspicion that it is committing war crimes in Gaza. We need to get the court’s word on Denmark’s responsibility.” 
    • In April, in response to the lawsuit, Denmark announced that it would implement a “very restrictive approach” for military exports to Israel amid what it called the “disastrous consequences” of the war in Gaza. According to Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, “All arms exports to Israel, as applications will continue to be assessed on a case-by-case basis.”
  • Amnesty is a leader of a network of NGOs that promote artificial and manufactured definitions of apartheid to extend the ongoing campaigns that seek to delegitimize and demonize Israel. (Read NGO Monitor’s reports “False Knowledge as Power: Deconstructing Definitions of Apartheid that Delegitimise the Jewish State,” “Neo-Orientalism: Deconstructing claims of apartheid in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” and “Amnesty International’s Cruel Assault on Israel: Systematic Lies, Errors, Omissions & Double Standards in Amnesty’s Apartheid Report.”)
• In 2023-2026, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) was granted $1.4 million.
  • CCR is active in lawfare suits against Israel and Israeli officials, promotes anti-Israel BDS campaigns; urges the U.S. government to stop providing military aid to Israel; presents an entirely biased and distorted view of the conflict and utilizes highly politicized rhetoric, accusing Israel of  “war crimes,” “crimes against humanity,” and other such allegations.
  • In November 2023, Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed a lawsuit on behalf of Al-Haq and Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P), alleging that Israel’s “mass killings,” “widespread and systematic attacks on infrastructure,” and “forced expulsion” amount to “genocide.” The NGOs demanded that the “President of the United States, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Defense adhere to their duty to prevent, and not further, the unfolding genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza,” as well as “take all measures within their power to prevent Israel’s commission of genocidal acts against the Palestinian people of Gaza.”
    • In January 2024, the Court dismissed the case. In a highly irregular note, the judge added that he believed the “current treatment of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military may plausibly constitute a genocide” and “implored” the White House to “examine the results of their unflagging support of the military siege against the Palestinians in Gaza.”
    • The NGOs appealed the decision and filed a brief in March 2024. In July 2024, a three-judge panel affirmed the dismissal. 
    • In August 2024, the NGOs filed a petition for rehearing en banc, claiming that the courts “have a constitutional duty to assess the legality of the Biden administration’s actions.” In October 2024, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied their petition for rehearing en banc.
• In 2023-2026, various branches of Oxfam, including Oxfam America and Oxfam Mexico, received $5.8 million from the Ford Foundation.
  • Oxfam consistently paints a highly misleading picture of the Arab-Israeli conflict, departing from its humanitarian mission focused on poverty. Most Oxfam statements erase all complexity and blame Israel exclusively for the situation, and these distortions and their impacts contribute significantly to the conflict.
  • In February 2025, Oxfam signed a letter addressed to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, calling to “ban all trade and business between the EU and Israel’s illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), including East Jerusalem.”
  • In November 2023, Oxfam Novib, alongside the Rights Forum, PAX, and Amnesty International, sued the Netherlands in an attempt to stop “export arms to Israel” and demanding “the immediate cessation of the supply of parts for Israeli F35 fighter planes.” 
    • A Dutch court rejected the lawsuit, noting that the government “‘weighed the relevant interests’ before agreeing to the delivery of parts.” It stated that the “Dutch government [has] a large degree of freedom when it comes to weighing political and policy issues in deciding on arms exports.” In February 2024, the Dutch Court of Appeal reversed the lower court. 
    • In May 2024, the NGOs started summary proceedings against the Netherlands, claiming the “state did not correctly implement the previous ruling by not stopping all export and transit of F-35 components with a possible final destination of Israel.” In July 2024, the judge rejected the case, claiming that “it was unclear whether the earlier ruling only covered direct deliveries from the Netherlands or also deliveries via other countries, such as the United States. This ruling means that deliveries via the United States will not be stopped.”
    • On September 6, 2024, the Supreme Court held a hearing to assess whether the Court’s ruling will stand and whether the Netherlands may resume the export of F-35 components to Israel. As of March 26, 2025, the Court has still not provided a ruling.
  • In March 2020, following criticism, Oxfam apologized for raising funds by selling copies of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a fabricated text that proclaimed an international Jewish conspiracy bent on world domination and accuses the Jews of controlling government, the economy, media and public institutions.
• In 2023-2026, Ford Foundation granted $7.2 million to the Tides Center.
  • The Tides Center provides fiscal sponsorship for “social change leaders and ventures,” including funding to a number of NGOs that promote anti-Israel narratives, lawfare, and discriminatory BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) campaigns — including the Adalah Justice Project, Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), and Palestine Legal.
• In 2023-2026, Ford Foundation granted $2,152,500 to SOMO.
  • SOMO’s research claims to “expose[] the corporate impunity that characterises the business-as-usual approach of many multinationals operating in occupied Palestine. Through activities like tourism and the unlawful exploitation of Palestinian natural resources such as stone, gas, and agricultural products, these corporations actively support Israel’s illegal settlement economy.”
  • In November 2023, SOMO, alongside European Legal Support Center (ELSC), Al-Haq, and the Rights Forum, filed a criminal complaint with the Dutch Public Prosecutor accusing Booking.com of “laundering funds obtained from the commission of war crimes” and being “instrumental in facilitating the criminal Israeli settlement enterprise.” In May 2024, Booking.com rejected the allegations and affirmed, “we will permit listings anywhere in the world unless legally prohibited by the domestic laws…Currently, there are no applicable laws that prohibit listing properties in Israeli Settlements in the West Bank.”
• In 2023-2026, Ford Foundation granted $850,000 to the Euro-Mediterranean Foundation of Support for Human Rights Defenders.
  • A number of EMHRF’s Council of Representatives are highly biased and politicized NGOs active in the Arab-Israeli conflict, including Al-Haq, Al Mezan, Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC), Adalah, B’Tselem, and Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI).
• In 2023-2026, Ford Foundation granted $560,000 to Diakonia.
  • In October 2024, Diakonia published a brief that called on states to “Abstaining from entering into economic or trade dealings with Israel concerning the oPt or parts thereof which may entrench its unlawful presence in the oPt,” “Taking steps to prevent trade or investment relations that assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel in the oPt,” “Ban the importation of goods produced in settlements, the exportation of goods to settlements, as well as the provision of services to and investment in settlements in the oPt,” and “Ban dealings with Israeli companies that engage in activities listed as high-risk pursuant to the UN database on enterprises operating in the settlements, for example in the fields of defence, infrastructure, construction, and exploitation of natural resources.”
  • Diakonia has relied on data from the Ministry of Health in Gaza, a Hamas entity, for reporting on Palestinian casualties in Gaza.
• In 2024-2025, Jews For Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) received $200,000 from the Ford Foundation.
  • In July 2024, JFREJ was a signatory on a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona urging a Justice Department investigation into “allegations of abuse by law enforcement” in response to the pro-Palestinian campus protests.
    • In May 2024, JFREJ members, alongside Columbia University faculty, testified to the NY City Council allegingthe “NYPD’s brutal assault on free speech and demand[ing] the disbanding of NYPD-SRG.”
  • In January 2024, JFREJ condemned a proposal from New York governor Kathy Hochul (D.) to expand the list of offenses that can be charged as hate crimes. Those who commit hate-fueled crimes against Jews, the group said, should be met with “restorative, community-based education and healing,” not “a police-driven response with criminal penalties.”
• In 2019-2020, Ford Foundation granted $200,000 to the Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD).
  • On October 16, 2023, AARD published a statement claiming, “On the 7th of October 2023, Hamas launched an unprecedented attack from Gaza towards the occupied Palestinian territories and the illegal Israeli settlements surrounding the densely populated Strip using thousands of rockets and breaching the wire that separates Gaza from the 1948 territories…The operation was driven by a long historical cycle of colonial violence against the Palestinian population… This recent escalation needs to be understood within the long and violent process and structure of Israeli settler colonialism, which has relentlessly expanded in the past century in historic Palestine… However, in the past few days, once again the outstanding sumud [steadfastness in Arabic] of Palestinians and their will for liberation and life, has shown that Palestine lives and Arab peoples reject normalization and stand with Palestinians” (emphases added).
  • On October 8, 2023, ARDD Executive Director Samar Muhareb shared a picture of Yaffa Adar, an ill elderly Israeli woman, who was kidnapped to Gaza on October 7th, with a PIJ terrorist. Muhareb wrote, “What a remarkable sight of Palestinian resistance fighters after they entered a settlement. They showed compassion in their actions when they were with an Israeli settler woman that was carrying her child, when their resistance commander ordered them to wrap her, and not to harm her, showing the world the humanity of the Palestinians that have been repeatedly been labeled by ‘Israel’ as terrorists. An elderly Israeli woman raising the sign of victory next to a Palestinian resistance fighter who entered along with his cell to her settlement. The resistance fighter carried out a human act by placing his weapon in her lap, showing that the elderly people were scared or caused to be in panic by them, as was the resistance’s commands. It is a sight of victory which commentators have said will push to create tears in the ‘justification’ of ‘Israel’…”
  • In May 2023, AARD published a statement on PIJ senior terrorist Khader Adnan: “Today we mourn the tragic passing of Khader Adnan, a Palestinian revolutionary, the knight of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement…Adnan was a beacon of Palestinian resistance. He embodied tenacity, discipline, and resilience, paving the path to secure our liberation. Adnan’s teachings and influence were part of the body of thought that led to denouncing the failure of the Oslo Accords and the rejection of any compromise and negotiation over justice and rights for Palestinians… Adnan’s toleration of mortal hunger showcases that no suffering is intense enough to break Palestinians’ spirit and unwavering commitment to liberate their land from the suffocating clutches of Zionist settler-colonialism” (emphases added).
    • On May 2, 2023, senior PIJ member Khader Adnan died following a 86-day-long hunger strike and refusal to receive medical treatment from the Israeli Prisons Service. Adnan was arrested in February 2023 and indicted  for membership in a terror group, supporting a terrorist organization, and incitement.
• In 2015-2017, Ford Foundation granted $1.4 million to the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH).
  • FIDH, which is funded by multiple European governments, is a major leader of BDS campaigns worldwide.
  • FIDH supported campaigns including the BDS campaign against Orange (2015), promoted the EU product labeling guidelines, and participated in the NGO campaign at the UN Human Rights Council to establish a Commission of Inquiry targeting Israel following the 2014 Gaza War.
  • In August 2016, Shawan Jabarin (General Director of Al Haq) was elected as FIDH’s Secretary General. Jabarin has been denied exit visas for Israel and Jordan on several occasions due to his alleged ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a designated terrorist organization by the U.S., EU, Canada, and Israel. According to the Israeli Supreme court, Jabarin “is apparently acting as a manner of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, acting some of the time as the CEO of a human rights organization, and at other times as an activist in a terror organization.”
    • According to a 1995 Israeli submission to the UN, Jabarin was convicted in 1985 for recruiting members for the PFLP. Jabarin was also found guilty of arranging PFLP training outside Israel and was sentenced by Israeli courts to 24-months imprisonment, of which he served nine. In 1994, Jabarin was again arrested for alleged links and placed in administrative detention for six months. An Israeli statement to the UN notes that he “had not discontinued his terrorist involvement and maintains his position in the leadership of the PFLP.”

Ford Foundation/NIF Grantees (2003-2013)

• The Ford Foundation was among the main funders for extremist NGOs involved in the 2001 UN sponsored Durban conference, which crystallized the strategy of delegitimizing Israel as “an apartheid regime” through international isolation.
• As a result of the Durban conference, in October 2003, Congressmen Jerrold Nadler and Rick Santorum, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, launched a campaign to investigate the Ford Foundation’s funding of anti-Semitic and highly political anti-Israel NGOs. As part of the campaign, twenty members of Congress sent a letter to Ford Foundation President Susan Berresford asking her to “cease funding subversive groups.” In response, Berresford initiated a review in December 2003 and pledged that Ford would act to ensure that funds no longer went to “groups that promote or condone bigotry or violence, or that challenge the very existence of legitimate, sovereign states like Israel.”
• Following these new guidelines, from 2003-2013, the Ford Foundation managed the Ford Israel Fund which provided $40 million to Israeli civil society NGOs in partnership with the New Israel Fund. These funds came in the form of two $20 million grants; distributed to the NIF in 2003 and 2007.
• The Ford Israel Fund was shut down in 2013 due to changing organizational priorities and changing leadership among the Ford Foundation board.
• Ford Israel Fund grantees included Breaking the Silence, Adalah, B’Tselem, Bimkom, Rabbis for Human Rights, Mossawa Center, HaMoked, Physicians for Human Rights – Israel (PHR-I), and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI).

2018-2023 Funding to NGOs (amounts based on Ford Foundation’s “Grant Database“)