Cracks in the foundation?

A brouhaha over the Ford Foundation’s funding of Palestinian groups points to the importance of distinguishing between legitimate advocacy and humanitarian aid for the Palestinians and support for terrorism and terror-related activities.

According to an investigation by journalist Edwin Black (available in full on the Web site of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, www.jta.org/ford.asp), the Ford Foundation offered more than $35 million in grants to some 272 Arab and Palestinian organizations during the two-year 2000-2001 period alone. Much of this money went for legitimate advocacy and humanitarian purposes, but some of it landed in the hands of Palestinian nongovernmental organizations that were instrumental in organizing anti-Israel activity at the 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. Other recipients have been reluctant to sign a United States executive order that bars a recipient of American philanthropic funding from lending “material support or resources to any individual or entity that advocates, plans, sponsors, engages in, or has engaged in terrorist activity.”

Based on the report, the American Jewish Congress is urging Congress to investigate whether certain Ford recipients are linked to terror-related groups in violation of government antiterrorism regulations. Black’s investigation did not establish such links, and supporting the Palestinian cause is not synonymous with supporting terror. But even in the absence of such links, the investigation revealed a network of Palestinian NGOs whose fierce anti-Israel rhetoric would seem to belie many of the aims that made them seem worthy recipients of the Ford Foundation’s peacemaking grants in the first place.

The $10 billion Ford Foundation, which no longer maintains any ties to the Ford Motor Company, has a history of supporting liberal causes in the United States and around the world. The Reform movement received a $500,000 grant for its Middle East peace advocacy program. One of the foundation’s Israeli beneficiaries is the New Israel Fund, the recipient of a recently announced $20 million, five-year grant from the foundation. While it is important for American philanthropies to remain similarly engaged on the Palestinian side, grant-givers must not allow good intentions to trump vigilance. The Ford Foundation has been less than forthcoming in explaining the grants it makes to certain Palestinian groups, and a full accounting is called for.