Funding Funding Funding Funding Funding Funding EDWIN BLACK Jewish Telegraphic Agency Washington n August 2001, thousands of human rights activists from around the globe gathered in Durban, South Africa, for a United Nations conference that partici- pants hoped would address racial injus- tice plaguing humanity. But after more than a year of prepara- tory conferences in Iran, Switzerland, Chile, France and Senegal, it became clear to Israeli officials and Jewish orga- nizational leaders that Palestinian non- governmental organizations, or NGOs, and their allies, had manipulated the agenda of the U.N. World Conference Against Racism into an indictment of Israel as an illegitimate apartheid, colo- nial and genocidal regime. As expected, anti-Israel agitation, anti- Zionist propaganda and blatant anti- Semitism permeated the eight-day Durban affair. Posters displaying Nazi icons and Jewish caricatures, anti-Israel protest marches, organized jeering, incit- ing leaflets and anti-Jewish cartoons were everywhere, as was orchestrated anti-American agitation. A virulent resolution drafted by non- governmental organizations at the Durban conference declared Israel a "racist apartheid state" guilty of "geno- cide and ethnic cleansing." Secretary of State Colin Powell withdrew the American delegation. "No one knew where the money was coming from to fund all these NGOs," remembers Judith Palkovitz of Pittsburgh, Hadassah general secretary and a delegate at Durban. She, other Jewish leaders and State Department officials "assumed it was a foreign group — say Saudi Arabia." They were wrong. The Ford Foundation, one of America's largest philanthropic institutions — and arguably the most prestigious — was a multimillion-dollar finder of many human rights NGOs attending Durban. The foundation — which was endowed by Henry and Edsel Ford but no longer maintains any ties to the Ford Motor Company — has long been known as a fonder of Palestinian causes. But most observers did not suspect the extent of the foundation's involvement I 10/17 2003 16 .t• ment for the Ford Foundation — a major fonder of LAW and PNGO. Through its Cairo office, Ford has extended $35 million in grants to 272 Arab and Palestinian organizations dur- ing the two-year 2000-2001 period alone — the most recent years- for which data is available — plus 62 grants to individuals which total another $1.4 million. Since the 1950s, the foundation's Beirut and Cairo offices have awarded more than 8193 million to more than 350 Middle East organizations, almost entirely Arab, Islamic or Palestinian. Ford's Web site at wwvviordfound.org offers detailed information about its Middle East grants. On the site as of mid-October, "Palestine" is frequently mentioned on its Mideast pages, but Israel's name is • absent. Moreover, the Web site's shaded map of the geographical region from Egypt to Lebanon and Jordan blanks out over Israel's territory, even though Ford does make grants to both Jewish and Arab organizations in Jerusalem. Initially, despite more than two dozen requests by phone and in writing over a period of several weeks, the Ford Foundation's communications vice pres- ident Alex Wilde, deputy media director Thea Lurie and media associate Joe Voeller refused to answer any questions regarding the foundation's funding of groups engaged in anti-Israeli agitation and anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist activity. However, after this investigation was completed, Wilde sent a six-page writ- ten statement, declaring: "We have seen no indication that our grantees in Durban or elsewhere engaged in anti-Semitic speech or activi- ties. The Foundation does not support hate speech of any kind." "Some of our human rights and development grantees have certainly been critical of policies and practices of the Israeli government insofar as these discriminate against Palestinians or oth- erwise violate their rights, according to internationally agreed human rights standards and international law. We do not believe that this can be described as `agitation.'" - Demontstrators prepare to march in Durban, South Africa, in 2001. in funding groups that engage in anti- Zionist, anti-Semitic and pro-Palestinian activities both inside and outside the \ Middle East. Millions With hundred of millions of dollars being pumped into Mideast NGOs by numerous private foundations in the U.S. and in Europe, government and communal officials are raising signifi- cant questions about how the money given to Palestinians is being used and whether fenders such as the Ford Foundation are exercising proper con- trols. The Jewish representatives at Durban "didn't understand the efforts, the financing and the organization that went into hijacking the conference," recalls Reva Price, Washington represen- tative of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and a Durban delegate. Many Jewish organizational officials who participated complained that a key organization responsible was the Palestinian Committee for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment, which operates under the acronym LAW. LAW officials took leadership posi- dons on the Durban conference steering committees, conducted workshops and even sponsored a pre-conference mis- sion to the West Bank and Gaza Strip for South African delegates, to convince them that Israel was an apartheid state. "LAW was instrumental in creating the anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic focus at Durban," said Andrew Srulevitch, executive director of the Geneva-based U.N. Watch. The Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO), an umbrella organization of some 90 Palestinian NGOs and many constituent groups, diligently became embedded in the conference bureaucra- cy that created the hostile environment at Durban. PNGO led the move to craft an NGO resolution that would "call upon the international community to impose a policy of complete and total isolation of Israel as an apartheid state," including "the imposition of mandatory and com- prehensive sanctions and embargoes, [and] the full cessation of all links (diplomatic, economic, social, aid, mili- tary cooperation and training) between all states and Israel." Durban was not a one-time invest- Pivotal Funds Both LAW and PNGO confirmed that