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.

Analysis of Grantee Activities (Partial List; See table below for additional funding information)

• Click here for a summary of recent funding to RBF.
• Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P): (Latest grant: $100,000 for 2 years, October 2020, for its US program): DCI-P leads the campaign exploiting children to promote demonization of Israel, and is linked to the PFLP terror group. Many of its allegations are false and part of attempts to smear Israel with allegations of “war crimes” and promote BDS (boycotts, divestments, and sanctions) campaigns.
• Jewish Voice for Peace (Latest grant: $165,000 for 2 years, July 2021,  general support): 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.
• Who Profits Research Center (Latest grant: $135,000 for 2 years, June 2021, general support): 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.” Co-founder Dalit Baum was a former board member of radical Israeli NGO Zochrot and in October 2014 was names the Director of Economic Activism at the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), both RBF grantees.
• American Friends Service Committee (Latest grant: $35,000 for 1 year, November 2019, for its Israel program): AFSC actively promotes BDS (boycotts, divestments and sanctions) campaigns, trains campus BDS activists, advocates for a Palestinian “right of return,” and supports efforts to encourage Israeli youth to dodge the draft.
• Palestine Legal via the Tides Center (Latest grant $150,000 for 2 years, June 2021): 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.
• Education for Just Peace in the Middle East-U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (Latest grant: $150,000 for 2 years, July 2021,  for general support) for general support): More commonly referred to as the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, the group serves as an umbrella organization for BDS supporters in the United States. Additionally, it insists that it is “impossible to ignore the apartheid nature of Israel’s occupation”, and advocates for the commemoration of the Nakba and the “ethnic cleansing of Palestine.”
• Zochrot (Latest grant: $40,000 for 2 years, 2018, general support) Supports a “One State Solution” or a “de-Zionized Palestine,” and refers to Israel as having an “ethnicized and racialized Zionist” system.
• Grassroots Jerusalem (Latest grant: $225,000 for 3 years, May 2021, for general support): Its website states that “Grassroots Jerusalem strongly supports the global BDS call as a strategic tool to hold ‘Israel’ accountable for its oppression of the Palestinian people” (scare quotes in original). Grassroots Jerusalem officials have stated that “Non-violence is a privilege, impossible to implement,” and that “It’s ridiculous when the Palestinian Authority talks about co-existing with Israel.”
• Middle East Policy Network (Latest grant: $150,000 for 2 years, June 2019, for general support): Also known as Al-Shabaka, The Palestinian Policy Network, a think tank that produces policy analyses “on Palestinian human rights and self-determination within the framework of international law.”Al-Shabaka policy advisers such as Omar Barghouti, Ali Abunimah, and Sam Bahour advocate for the dismantling of the Israel as a Jewish State and implementing a “one-state” vision in its place
• Middle East Children’s Alliance (Latest grant: $150,000 for 2 years, February 2021, for its project Rawa: Creative Palestinian Communities Fund): MECA organizes delegations to “Palestine/Israel” where participants can learn “about the origins of the Palestinian refugees and the Right of Return, and how it can be implemented” (emphasis added).  MECA founder and Executive Director Barbara Lubin wrote “I think that the Jewish State is racist to the core.”  Lubin refers to the 1948 “ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population” and wrote that “[t]he concept of ‘Jewish morality’ is truly dead. We can be fascists, terrorists, and Nazis just like everybody else.”
• Yesh Din (Latest grant: $100,000 for 2 years, September 2019, for general support) 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.

Grants for Peacebuilding Relating to the Arab-Israeli Conflict