George Soros and his son Alex Soros gave campaign donations to Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., who recently stirred controversy with verbal attacks against Israel, the Washington Examiner reported Tuesday.
George Soros, a billionaire, and his son both contributed the maximum $6,600 allowed on June 29 to the campaign for Jayapal, according to second quarter filings. Soros is well-known for giving to liberal causes.
Last week dozens of House Democrats released a statement calling Jayapal's comments "dangerous and antisemitic" after she said at a progressive event in Chicago that she's "been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state."
The statement from Democrats said her remarks were "unacceptable," stressing that "we will never allow anti-Zionist voices that embolden antisemitism to undermine and disrupt the strongly bipartisan consensus supporting the U.S.-Israel relationship that has existed for decades."
After her censure from fellow Democrats, Jayapal has attempted to walk back her remarks, saying that she was trying to "defuse a tense situation" at the Chicago event and offered "apologies to those who I have hurt with my words."
The donations by George Soros fit a pattern in which he has funded campaigns and nonprofit organizations that have tried to delegitimize Israel.
In one case, the Soros-backed Foundation to Promote Open Society granted $250,000 in 2020 to Alliance for Global Justice, which is an anti-Israel charity in Arizona that is linked to Palestinian terrorism, according to the Washington Examiner.
Despite that, the Anti-Defamation League has claimed that criticism of Soros from Republicans about his political influence is antisemitism, because the Hungarian native survived the Nazi-Hungary occupation, and is of Jewish descent.
But Scott Walter, president of Capital Research Center, a conservative investigative think tank, emphasized to the Washington Examiner that "the Soros family and its massive network of nonprofits have long been some of the biggest funders of antisemites and Israel-haters in the world, surpassed only by a few oil kingdoms. This gives a lie to claims that it's antisemitic to criticize Soros."
Hayden Ludwig, policy research director for Restoration of America, a conservative advocacy group, added that "it's far from surprising that the Soroses would support a radical, anti-Israel bigot like Jayapal. We know that their shared 'Open Society' ideology loathes Israel and the United States in equal measure."
Ludwig said "it should be eye-opening to the 'progressives' who pretend that criticism of Soros is 'antisemitic.' They want to have it both ways, but Americans won't be fooled."
Jayapal's campaign and a Soros spokesman did not reply to requests for comment.