THE DAILY BEAST
Tens of thousands of dollars pumped into organizations involved in recent anti-Israel demonstrations on college campuses originated in the fortune of one of America’s most venerable and politically active Jewish families—one that includes a sitting U.S. congressman and a former contender for ambassador to Jerusalem, and which owes its wealth to the Levi Strauss denim dynasty.
A much-publicized recent report by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, an Israeli-backed think tank, ranked the Bafrayung Fund as the single largest sponsor of pro-Palestinian activist groups involved in campus demonstrations and adjacent actions.
The Institute’s tabulations appear to include donations to any organization that has ever supported or promoted pro-Palestinian events. Nonetheless, The Daily Beast’s own research confirms that the Bafrayung Fund, based in Covina, California, ranks among the most consistent supporters of the Palestinian Youth Movement, which played a major role in the rash of encampments that spread through U.S. colleges this year. The Fund has also contributed substantially to two of the Palestinian Youth Movement’s allies: the Arab Resource and Organizing Center and Critical Resistance.
Notably, each of these organizations has employed the controversial slogan “from the river to the sea,” which critics interpret as calling not for two coexisting states between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, but for Israel’s extinction as a polity. Some, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), dispute this characterization.
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