Daily Alert Archives

How Aware is the Ford Foundation of the Way Its Funds are Being Used?

(JTA) Edwin Black - The Ford Foundation, with an estimated $10 billion in assets, disburses approximately $500 million annually. The overwhelming majority of Ford's monies for the Middle East are granted to pro-Palestinian and Islamic rights groups, and Ford funds several Israeli-based dissident and human rights groups. B'Tselem currently receives $250,000 for what Ford reports describe as "monitoring human rights in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, documenting violations, and advocating for policy changes." Rabbis for Human Rights has been granted more than $250,000 to develop a Web site, place newspaper advertising, and bring other rabbis to Israel to learn about human rights. Last year, Hamoked was granted $300,000 for "advocacy and legal action to promote human rights of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories facing human rights violations by Israeli authorities." Last year, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza received $100,000 for what Ford describes as "community-based advocacy work on economic, social, and cultural rights in Gaza." The Al Mezan Center works closely with the International Solidarity Movement, which stages civil disobedience actions to obstruct Israeli security forces operating in the territories. The Jerusalem Media and Communication Center recently received $365,000 to create "media services for the foreign press and a weekly electronic magazine." The center publishes The Palestine Report, which employs dramatic imagery and testimony to portray Israel as an apartheid state guilty of war crimes, violations of international law, and repeated massacres. A State Department spokesman for the Near East Affairs bureau who viewed The Palestine Report and its link pages to terrorist sites declared, "I am uncomfortable with the funding of this site and especially these links - very uncomfortable." Yehudit Barsky, director of the American Jewish Committee's division on Middle East and international terrorism, added, "We in the U.S. have not paid attention - foundations can be used in a way no one can imagine. Here we see a Web site promoting terrorist organizations. The Ford Foundation just did not care."
2003-10-17 00:00:00
Full Article