Activities

• The World Peace Foundation (WPF) is a research foundation originally based at Harvard University’s Kennedy School. In 2011, it became affiliated with the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
• In 2020, WPF launched “The Corruption Tracker,” a joint project with Shadow World Investigations (UK) and RüstungsInformationsBüro (Arms Information Centre, Germany) that “seeks to delegitimise and dismantle the arms trade using the lens of corruption.”
  • In August 2024, Corruption Tracker published an article claiming, “As the catastrophe in Gaza only worsens by the day, it is necessary to account for forthcoming infrastructural and logistical endeavors expediting the transfer of arms, specifically–the architectures and armaments bankrolled by the United States government and other government and nongovernmental actors co-signing this genocide.”
  • In July 2024, Corruption Tracker wrote, “Palestinian presence is being erased to create infrastructure used by Israel to appropriate land and resources such as natural gas.” According to the article, “Zionist settler colonial bloodthirst is evidenced of course by the body count, but also by the acceleration of land theft.”
• Since the brutal Hamas attack on October 7, the WPF has been a leader of the “starvation as a weapon” narrative against Israel.
  • In August 2024, WPF Executive Director Alex de Waal participated in a webinar held by Jewish Voice for Peace and Doctors Against Genocide titled, “Starvation As A Weapon: Predicted Health Outcomes for Mothers and Children in Gaza.”
  • In July 2024, in an interview with PressTV (Iran), de Waal claimed, “The starvation of Gaza is man-made. It is a crime—certainly a war crime, possibly the crime of extermination, possibly the crime of genocide. Its effects will be experienced for generations.” 
  • In June 2024, de Waal published an opinion article in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition titled, “Famine in Gaza: an example of the global humanitarian crisis,” alleging, “The deaths of children in Gaza from severe malnutrition, and of aid workers seeking to save their lives.” Professors Gerald Steinberg and Lesley Klaff published a detailed rebuttal of these accusations, noting that they were based on unverifiable claims primarily from Hamas-linked sources and political NGOs including some linked to the PFLP terror organization.
  • In May 2024, de Waal was the keynote speaker for Médecins Sans Frontières “Conference Without Borders,” speaking about “Famine:what’s in a name?” At the conference, de Waal claimed, “I think we have within reach, though perhaps not yet within grasp, a legal obligation to prevent famine as such. I welcome this, and also welcome the increased attention to starvation crimes, and pressure for them to be prohibited, exposed and punished. At present that doesn’t seem to be deterring Israel.”
  • In April 2024, de Waal participated in a webinar titled “A Looming Famine: Starvation in Gaza.”
  • In February 2024, de Waal participated in the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s podcast on “Mass Hunger & Israel’s Culpability in Gaza.”
• In June 2024, WPF published an article titled, “Striking Parallels: Israel in comparative context with perpetrators of atrocities.” According to the article, “There are many people more qualified than I am who can and have contextualized today’s assault in Gaza within the history, economics and politics of the region. Violence in Israel and the Occupied Territories did not start on October 7, 2023. The long history of violence, occupation and displacement in the region is relevant to how we examine today’s escalation.”
• In November 2023, WPF published an article accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and “condemn[ing] the response of the U.S. government to send more weapons to Israel as it pursues a war replete with violations of human rights and humanitarian law.”
• In May 2021, WPF published an article alleging that  “US taxpayers are killing Gazans.” According to the article, “it is important to note how US law is being ignored time and time again, when it comes to arms sales, transfer, and aid to Israel…This scale of US political and economic interest, lobbying, and support towards Israeli military aid is what obstructs the implementation of a rather basic US piece of legislation that aims to prevent the use of US arms in human rights violations.”
• In March 2017, following the publication of the UN Economic and Social Commission for West Asia report “Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid,” WPF published an article titled, “In Defense of Richard Falk and Freedom of Speech.” According to WPF, “The word ‘Apartheid’ is an explosive one that needs to be handled with great care…A true friend is one who is ready to express a contrary opinion in an honest manner. On that basis, Professor Falk is a much truer friend of the Jewish people than his abusers. Discussion of the issues that Prof. Falk raises in his quiet, civilized manner is a fundamental test for academic freedom.”

Staff

• Alex de Waal
  • In January 2024, WPF Executive Director Alex de Waal was a signatory on a statement supporting South Africa’s submission to the ICJ. According to the statement, “South Africa’s application to the ICJ cannot be disconnected from its own struggle against apartheid and the legacy of Israel’s close military support for the apartheid regime during some of the most oppressive years of white supremacist apartheid rule. The eradication of apartheid in South Africa was a significant achievement in the worldwide fight against racism, discrimination, and colonial subjugation…We recognise that these connected struggles against apartheid and the racial calculus of genocide are crucial for upholding the internationalist vision of global justice, freedom, and decolonisation.”
  • In November 2023, de Waal published an article claiming, “The most obvious impact is that the Israel-Palestine war has legitimized and invigorated protest across the wider region. Hamas showed that Israel was not invincible, and Palestine would no longer be invisible. Many in the Arab street — and Muslims more widely — are ready to overlook Hamas’s atrocious record as a public authority and its embrace of terror, because it dared stand up to Israel, America, and Europe.”
• Anat Biletzki
  • WPF Vice Chair Anat Biletzki previously served as the Chair and Board Member at B’Tselem.
    • B’Tselem is part 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 Policy Paper “False Knowledge as Power: Deconstructing Definitions of Apartheid that Delegitimise the Jewish State.”)
  • In March 2024, Biletzki signed a petition headlined “Genocide is plausible; stop arms to Israel.”
  • In December 2023, Biletzki signed a petition calling on the US to “stop its unconditional support of Israel’s assault.”
  • In July 2014, Biletzki signed a petition accusing Israel of the “slaughter of large numbers of wholly innocent people” in Gaza
  • In 2014, Biletzki signed a petition urging the Spanish parliament to recognize a Palestinian state.
• Yael Krifcher
  • WPF Researcher on Famine and Starvation Crimes was previously a former Fellow at Israeli NGO Bimkom.
  • In March 2024, in response to three resolutions passed by the Tufts Community Union Senate by the Coalition for Palestinian Liberation, related to the Israel-Hamas war, and the university’s subsequent disapproval, Krifcher wrote an article in the school paper arguing that “While Tufts is an academic and educational space, it is also an institution of significant financial power, with an endowment in the billions of dollars. It is the right and responsibility of the students who fund Tufts in part with our tuition, and of the Tufts community in general, to know where our tuition money and the university’s endowments are being invested, and to demand that the university avoid its complicity and engagement with acts deemed criminal internationally. By simply reaffirming their rejection of the BDS movement, the administration has failed to engage with its students on this important demand.”
• B. Arneson
  • B. Arneson serves as the Director of the Arms Trade Program and Co-Research Coordinator for the “Corruption Tracker.”
  • In January 2023, Arneson tweeted, “The UK isn’t the only state supplying arms to Israel. Israeli forces have long deployed US arms to kill Palestinian civilians. According to @inthesetimes, since 2009, at least 272 Palestinians have been killed by US-made arms. This is precisely why we must #takeonthearmstrade.”
  • In November 2023, Arneson tweeted, “What is happening in #Gaza did not begin on October 7th. The Israeli state has separated, contained, imprisoned, tortured, and killed #Palestinians for 75 years. Here is our statement on the ethnic cleansing taking place in Gaza.”
  • In November 2023, Arneson participated in a protest in Boston, tweeting, “#Boston stands with #Palestine!These genocidal “leaders” do not represent the people!”