Tides Foundation’s donors include George Soros and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund
The Tides Foundation, a left-wing dark money giant backed by George Soros and other progressive billionaires, bankrolled the fiscal sponsor of the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, an anti-Semitic group sanctioned in the United States for providing financial support to terrorists, according to newly released tax forms.
The foundation reported in its latest Form 990 tax return that it granted $286,000 to the Alliance for Global Justice in 2023, a group best known for serving as the fiscal sponsor of Samidoun. The Treasury Department in October sanctioned Samidoun as a “sham charity” that provided material support to a Palestinian terrorist organization that participated in the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist rampage in Israel. Canada levied its own sanctions against Samidoun as well in October, labeling the group a “terrorist entity” under its criminal code.
Founded in 1998, the Alliance for Global Justice let Samidoun borrow its charitable tax privileges to operate and raise funds in the United States without obtaining its own organizational credentials. In other words, the Alliance for Global Justice and Samidoun are legally indistinguishable. It’s unclear if the group continued to serve as Samidoun’s fiscal sponsor after the Treasury Department sanctioned the terrorism financier in October.
The Tides Foundation said the purpose of its grant to the Alliance for Global Justice in 2023 was to support a “sustainable environment.” It’s unclear if the Tides grant went to support Samidoun or one of the several dozen other fiscally sponsored organizations operating under the Alliance for Global Justice’s tax ID.
The Treasury Department in October described Samidoun as a “sham charity that serves as an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization.” The PFLP cut its teeth in the late 1960s by hijacking and opening fire on commercial airplanes, and later participated in the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel. It leverages Samidoun as a front organization in both Europe and North America to bankroll its terrorist activities, the Treasury Department said in October. Samidoun is also banned in Germany for its overt support of Hamas terrorism.
Samidoun’s U.S. leaders don’t shy away from their terroristic tendencies. Its leaders, Charlotte Kates and her husband, Khaled Barakat, explicitly endorsed terrorism against Jews during a lecture in March before the anti-Israel student group Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the Washington Free Beacon reported. The Treasury Department sanctioned Barakat in October for his “fundraising and recruitment” efforts for the PFLP’s “terrorist activity against Israel,” adding that he has publicly acknowledged Samidoun’s affiliation with the terrorist network.
Tides and the Alliance for Global Justice did not return requests for comment.
Major donors to the Tides network include liberal billionaire financier George Soros, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Ford Foundation. In 2023, the Tides network raked in nearly $800 million, according to its audited financial statements.
The Tides network is hardly the only liberal dark money giant to bankroll the Alliance for Global Justice. In 2021, Tides and the New Venture Fund, the largest branch of the Arabella Advisors dark money behemoth, donated more than $9 million to the Alliance for Global Justice. The Arabella Advisors network donated an additional $1 million to the Alliance for Global Justice in 2022, the Free Beacon reported.
The Arabella Advisors network distanced itself from Samidoun after the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, telling the Free Beacon that Samidoun “is not and has never been a client of Arabella Advisors” and that it “unequivocally condemn[s] terrorism and violence against civilians.”
The Tides network has offered no such denunciation of the terrorism financier.
