During UN Women’s 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, National Review is featuring 15 women’s organizations that have either supported Hamas’s violence against Israeli women or remained silent about it.
The American Jewish World Service is a Jewish human-rights group based in New York that has not yet condemned Hamas’s October 7 attack against the Jewish state. Although the group is not exclusively a woman’s organization, many of its funding initiatives focus on women’s rights and feminist causes.
AJWS has no formal ties to Israel, but is “a community of Jewish global citizens fighting for a better world.” The group was founded in 1985 and led by Democratic operative and failed New York mayoral candidate Ruth Messinger for decades. AJWS preaches tikkun olam as its guiding principle — the Jewish tradition of “repairing the world” that social-justice advocates often employ to justify their left-wing agendas.
Since AJWS was founded, the Dobkin Family Foundation, the Kendeda Fund, and the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund have each given the organization more than $10 million.
The president of the Dobkin Family Foundation, Eric Dobkin, has said that “supporting AJWS is the most important financial, philanthropic—and even human—effort the foundation has had.” The foundation supports a host of other left-wing Jewish groups, including the New Israel Fund. To its credit, the New Israel Fund immediately professed support for Israel following Hamas’s October 7 attacks and called for Hamas to release Israeli hostages. In its most recent statement, however, NIF said that a cease-fire alone would not bring peace — and that “this Israeli government, while it has taken this positive step [to agree to a temporary cease-fire], is still the same government it was before October 7th, when hundreds of thousands of Israelis, joined by people all over the world, protested it for nearly a year. It is a government of extremists, messianists, religious fundamentalists, supremacists, and radical settlers.” NIF is now focused on reinforcing Jewish-Arab relations and peace in the region.
Dobkin helps fund Gloria Steinem’s Ms. Foundation, the National Organization for Women, and Feminist Press. The Dobkin family also donates to Democratic campaigns and politicians, most notably Hillary Clinton.
The Kendeda Fund was founded by Diana Blank, the ex-wife of Home Depot co-founder and Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank. Kendeda funded grants for FRIDA and the Global Fund for Women (two insidiously anti-Israel feminist groups) and donated more than $1 billion in the 30 years it operated. Kendeda shut down this year.
Along with donating to AJWS, Wellspring Philanthropic Fund funds projects at New Venture Fund, which is a project of the dark-money network, Arabella Advisors. The attorney general of the District of Columbia recently launched an investigation into Arabella Advisors, after the Washington Free Beacon reported that the behemoth allegedly derived illegal profits from New Venture Fund. Over the last five years, Arabella Advisors has funneled $10 million into anti-Israel causes through the various nonprofits it sponsors, the New York Post reported.
AJWS lists the 11th Hour Project and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies as donors who have given between $5 million and $9,999,999 to the organization since its founding. Eleventh Hour is the grant-making arm of the Schmidt Family Foundation, run by the executive chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt. Schusterman Family Philanthropies also donates to the Tides Center and Tides Foundation, George Soros-backed philanthropies that support many anti-Israel women’s organizations.
Open Society Foundations, Soros’s philanthropy, has donated more than $2.5 million to AJWS. Ford Foundation has also donated more than $1 million. AJWS lists hundreds more donors on its website.
Actress Sarah Silverman lauded AJWS in 2010, saying that the massive amount of money the organization spends “really throws a wrench in the ‘Jews are cheap’ premise. I mean, if you think that’s cheap, there’s no way you’re Asian, ’cause you’re really bad at math.”
AJWS grants funds to organizations that “fight against oppression,” “change laws and protect democracy,” “support communities to rebuild after disasters,” and “strengthen social movements.” The organization said it creates “sustainable, long-term change, building a better world for some of the most vulnerable people on earth.” Some of its recent initiatives have been to help LGBTQI+ people stand up against discrimination, defend ancestral Indigenous lands in Kenya, and overturn an anti-homosexuality law in India. In 2023, AJWS invested in 180 organizations in eight countries to “promote sexual health and rights” and help women and girls.
AJWS celebrated UN Women’s International Day for the Prevention of Violence Against Women last week with an Instagram post that did not mention the women and children whom Hamas raped, mutilated, and murdered on October 7.