Activity

• The Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) aims to advance “social change that contributes to a more just, sustainable, and peaceful world.”
• The Fund’s Peacebuilding program, which approves grants related to the Arab-Israel conflict, aims to “advance just and durable peace by supporting innovative and collaborative approaches and policies for conflict prevention, management, and transformation; strengthening constituencies and political will for conflict transformation and durable peace; and exploring solutions to emerging transnational threats and drivers of conflict.”
• Daniel Levy, a trustee of the Fund, is the president of the US Middle East Project (USMEP), a co-founder of J Street, council member of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), and a former member of the board of directors of Molad-The Center for the Renewal of Democracy, all recipients of RBF funding. In addition, Levy is a member of the board of directors of the New Israel Fund (NIF), which is affiliated with many of the Israeli NGO recipients.

Funding

• In 2022, total income was $37.5 million; total expenses were $89.3 million.

Funding to NGOs Active in the Arab-Israeli Conflict

• Rockefeller Brothers Fund funds highly politicized and biased NGOs active in the Arab-Israeli conflict, including Defense for Children International – Palestine, Palestinian Medical Relief Society,  Al-Shabaka, Medical Aid for Palestinians, Breaking the Silence, Akevot, Gisha, Yesh Din, and Who Profits. 
• In December 2023, the New York Post published an article accusing RBF of “shell[ing] out more than $2.6 million since 2018 directly or indirectly to at least six anti-Israel organizations, several of which openly celebrated Hamas’ Oct 7 terrorist attack on the Jewish state.” In a statement, RBF defended the grants claiming, “We categorically reject any claim that our grantee organizations support, materially or ideologically, acts of terrorism… We conduct robust due diligence to ensure our grantees comply with all U.S. laws and regulations.”

Funding to American NGOs

• Jewish Voice for Peace
  • Latest grant: $150,000 in 2023-2026 for general support. JVP has received $490,000 since 2019.
  • JVP is highly active in anti-Israel BDS campaigns and considers itself the “Jewish wing of the Palestinian solidarity movement,” seeking to create “a wedge” within the American Jewish community over support for Israel, while working toward the goal of eliminating U.S. economic, military, and political aid.
  • In the aftermath of the brutal Hamas attack on October 7, JVP published a press release claiming “The Root of Violence Is Oppression.” According to JVP, “The Israeli government may have just declared war, but its war on Palestinians started over 75 years ago. Israeli apartheid and occupation — and United States complicity in that oppression — are the source of all this violence. Reality is shaped by when you start the clock. For 16 years, the Israeli government has suffocated Palestinians in Gaza under a draconian air, sea and land military blockade, imprisoning and starving two million people and denying them medical aid….For 75 years, the Israeli government has maintained a military occupation over Palestinians, operating an apartheid regime.”
• Palestine Legal via the Tides Center 
  • Latest grant $240,000 in 2023-2026. Palestine Legal has received $515,000 since 2019.
  •  Palestine Legal works to provide legal cover for those advancing the BDS agenda on college campuses. This includes legal guidance on campus activities such as posting mock eviction notices to dorm rooms and setting up mock checkpoints, as well as lobbying public officials on behalf of BDS activists and initiatives.
• Adalah Justice Project via the Tides Center
  • Latest grant $300,000 in 2023-2026. AJP has received $550,000 since 2020.
  • In 2014, the Israeli NGO Adalah created the “Adalah Justice Project” (AJP), based in Boston, with the goal of transforming “American perception, policy and practice in Palestine/Israel into a human rights approach that guarantees historical justice and equality for all.” Since its founding, AJP has been highly active in BDS campaigns and legal warfare.
• IfNotNow
  • Latest grant $60,000 in 2021-2023 for general support. IfNotNow has received $160,000 since 2017.
  • IfNotNow is a US-based fringe group that uses highly polarizing tactics in attacking American Jewish institutions, citing supposed “support for occupation.” IfNotNow has organized protests and sit-ins at the headquarters of leading American Jewish communal organizations, infiltrated Birthright trips, as well as “run[] small, weekend-long orientation trainings on our movement DNA – our collective strategy, story, and structure.”
• Al-Shabaka (Middle East Policy Network)
  • Latest grant $221,000 in 2024-2026 for its “Palestine nonpartition project.” Al-Shabaka has received $705,000 since 2017.
  • Claiming to be a “think tank without borders,” Al-Shabaka solely promotes an intense anti-Israel agenda, advocating BDS campaigns, a Palestinian “right of return” and featuring writers on its website who accuse Israel of “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing,” without featuring alternative views.
  • Since October 7, 2023, Al-Shabaka’s employees have made tens of declarations justifying or contextualizing Hamas’ massacre.
• Education for Just Peace in the Middle East-US Campaign for Palestinian Rights 
  • Latest grant: $225,000 in 2023-2026 for general support. USCPR has received $515,000 since 2019. 
  • USCPR is a national coalition of hundreds of groups working to advocate for Palestinian rights and a shift in US policy and is a leader and mobilizer of anti-Israel BDS campaigns.
  • Accuses Israel of maintaining a “matrix of control” over the Palestinian population and enacting “laws that discriminate against [Palestinians], much as Black Americans had been treated during the Jim Crow era.”
  • In the aftermath of the brutal Hamas attack, USCPR published a statement claiming, “The clock did not start on Saturday…The root cause of recent violence is clear: It is Israel’s 75+ years of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and theft of native Palestinian land. In order to address it, Congress must end the $3.8 billion/year in U.S. military funding to Israel, which has been actively fueling the Israeli military’s massive violence for decades” (emphasis in original).
• Middle East Children’s Alliance
  • Latest grant: $75,000 in 2023 for its project “Rawa: Creative Palestinian Communities Fund.” MECA has received $365,000 since 2019. 
  • MECA organizes delegations to “Palestine/Israel” where participants can “witness the impact of the Israeli occupation and…learn about refugees, land confiscation, political prisoners…” Trip highlights include learning “about the origins of the Palestinian refugees and the Right of Return, and how it can be implemented.”
  • MECA lists Union of Health Work Committees (UHWC), is a PFLP-affiliated health committee active in Gaza, as identified by USAID and in Palestinian documents. as an organization “we support.”
• Alliance for Global Justice 
  • Latest grant: $100,000 in 2022.
  • In February 2023, Alliance for Global Justice announced that Salsa Labs, the company that handled its credit card transactions for itself and the 140 groups that it fiscally sponsors, had blocked its ability to process donations. In September 2023, Stripe and PayPal also severed ties with Alliance for Global Justice. This followed several Washington Examiner reports that exposed the links between fiscally-sponsored Samidoun and the PFLP.
  • Alliance for Global Justice has supported convicted terrorists. Its website lists a number of “Political Prisoners” that it supports, including convicted murderers, as well as terrorists affiliated with Hamas, PFLP, Al-Qaeda, FARC, and other groups.

Funding to Palestinian NGOs

• Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P): 
  • Latest grant: $100,000 in 2020-2022 for its US program. DCI-P has received $190,000 since 2017.
  • Numerous individuals with alleged ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terrorist organization designated as such by the US, EU, Canada, and Israel, have been employed and appointed as board members at DCI-P. For more information on DCI-P’s PFLP ties, read NGO Monitor’s report “Defense for Children International – Palestine’s Ties to the PFLP Terror Group.”
  • On October 22, 2021, the Israeli Ministry of Defense declared Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P) a “terror organization” because it is part of “a network of organizations” that operates “on behalf of the ‘Popular Front’.”
• Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS)
  • In 2020-2021, RBF granted PMRS $50,000 for general support.
  • Mustafa Barghouthi, founder and president of PMRS, praised the October 7th attacks and repeatedly denied the systematic rape of Israeli women during the atrocities.
  • In May 2023, Israel arrested PMRS member Mohammad Al-Barq alongside five other suspects who were responsible for manufacturing and planting a bomb on a bus in the town of Beitar Illit, on March 9, 2023 on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
  • In February 2022, Barghouti participated in a conference, “Colonialism Will Go Down,” organized by Hamas. 

Funding to Israeli NGOs

• Breaking the Silence
  • Latest grant: $300,000 in 2022-2025 for general support. Breaking the Silence has received $620,000 since 2018.
  • Breaking the Silence makes sweeping accusations based on anecdotal, anonymous, and unverifiable accounts of often low-ranked soldiers. These “testimonies” lack context, are politically biased, and erase the complicated reality in the West Bank. In addition, they reflect a distorted interpretation of the conflict in order to advance the political agenda of Breaking the Silence activists, thereby fueling the international campaigns against Israel.
  • In the aftermath of the brutal Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, Breaking the Silence tweeted, “Hamas’s attack and the events unfolding since yesterday are unspeakable. We could talk about their cruel and criminal actions, or focus on how our Jewish-supremacist govt brought us to this point.”
• Akevot
  • Latest grant: $150,000 in 2022-2025 for general support. Akevot has received $340,000 since 2017.
  • Akevot alleges censoring Israeli archives due to potential harm to national security, and foreign relations are “political and image considerations, which are not based on factual and legitimate reasons.” Akevot also claims that restricting material “produces a distorted history of Israel’s early statehood, and harms public and political debate.”
  • Akevot exposes the “Jewish-Israeli Public” to what it sees as the “root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” and pushes them to “recognize Israel’s responsibility for historical injustices.” 
• Gisha
  • Latest grant: $150,000 in 2022-2024 for general support. Gisha has received $450,000 since 2017.
  • Gisha employs “apartheid” and other international legal rhetoric to promote a partisan political and ideological agenda.
• Yesh Din
  • Latest grant: $100,000 in 2023-2025  for general support. Yesh Din has received $360,000 since 2017.
  • Yesh Din is central to the allegations that Israeli investigative and court systems are unable or unwilling to investigate allegations of wrongdoing and is part of a wider “lawfare” strategy of pressing “war crimes” cases against Israeli officials in foreign courts and in the International Criminal Court (ICC). These campaigns use faulty information and skewed statistics to promote their political claims.
• Who Profits
  • Latest grant: $180,000 in 2023-2026  for general support. Who Profits has received $665,000 since 2017.
  • Who Profits reports serve as the basis for international BDS campaigns, such as the supposed UN BDS “blacklist” of businesses operating across the 1949 Armistice line. 
  • Who Profits targets Israeli and foreign banks, security companies, civil infrastructure facilities, and private companies, claiming to expose “the commercial involvement of Israeli and international companies in the continued Israeli control over Palestinian and Syrian land.”

Staff/Trustees

• RBF President and CEO Stephen Heintz has been criticized for supporting pro-BDS NGOs. In 2017, in response to the criticism, Heintz stated, “Given that the occupation has continued for 50 years and there have been numerous failed efforts to negotiate peace, we are looking for ways to disrupt this status quo…We’re not funding those groups specifically for their work on BDS, and BDS or whatever forms of economic activism they support are not the only things that they do.” 
• Peter Beinart
  • RBF trustee Peter Beinart is a non-Resident Fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP). FMEP has provided grants to a number of highly biased and politicized NGOs that promote BDS campaigns and antisemitic rhetoric. 
  • In February 2024, following the US announcement to send weapons to Israel, Beinart tweeted, “How long until the US is put on trial for genocide too?”
  • In October 2023, Beinart endorsed Jewish Voice for Peace’s event to storm the congressional office building, praising “their courage.”
• Daniel Levy, a former trustee of the Fund, is the president of the US Middle East Project (USMEP), a co-founder of J Street, council member of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), and a former member of the board of directors of Molad-The Center for the Renewal of Democracy, all recipients of RBF funding. In addition, Levy is a member of the board of directors of the New Israel Fund (NIF), which is affiliated with many of the Israeli NGO recipients.
• In 2017, then RBF trustee former undersecretary of state Nicholas Burns “resigned from the board, however, due to the RBF’s funding of organizations that support BDS.”

Grants for Peacebuilding Relating to the Arab-Israeli Conflict