Category Archives: government fraud spending collusion

Iran’s Windfall From Nuclear Deal Cut in Half by Debts

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NYT’s -WASHINGTON — Iran gained access to about $100 billion in frozen assets when an international nuclear agreement was implemented last month, but $50 billion of it already was tied up because of debts and other commitments, a U.S. official said on Thursday.

Stephen Mull, the State Department’s lead coordinator for implementing the international nuclear agreement with Tehran, also told the House Foreign Affairs Committee there was no evidence Iran had cheated in the first few weeks since the deal was implemented.

Mull and John Smith, acting director of the Treasury Department office that oversees sanctions, faced heated questioning from some members of the committee, where several Democrats had joined Republican lawmakers in opposing the nuclear pact that was reached in July.

Many have worried that Iran would cheat on the deal and use unfrozen funds for action against Israel or to support Islamist militants elsewhere in the region.

“Of that amount, a significant portion of it, more than $50 billion, is already tied up,” Mull said.

It was the first top-level congressional hearing on the nuclear pact since Jan. 16, when world powers lifted crippling sanctions against Iran in return for it compliance with the agreement to curb its nuclear ambitions.

“We seem to be in many instances talking tough about Iran,” said U.S. Representative Eliot Engel, the panel’s top Democrat, a deal opponent. “In reality our actions are far away from our rhetoric and that’s a worrisome thing. We want to make sure that Iran’s feet are held to the fire.”

Many members of the U.S. Congress, where every Republican and a few dozen Democrats opposed the agreement, have been calling for legislation to impose new sanctions on Iran over its ballistic missile program and human rights record.

House Republicans have been pushing legislation to restrict the ability of President Barack Obama, a Democrat, to lift sanctions under the nuclear pact. One measure passed the House on Feb. 2 almost entirely along party lines but it has not yet been taken up in the Senate and Obama has promised a veto.

*** Not so fast, all is still not kosher….

WASHINGTON (AP) — A State Department official says the U.S. does not know the precise location of tons of low-enriched uranium shipped out of Iran on a Russian vessel under the landmark nuclear agreement.

Testifying Thursday, Ambassador Stephen Mull tells the House Foreign Affairs Committee the stockpile is a Russian custody issue.

Critics of the nuclear deal seized on the shipment’s status to show the agreement’s flaws. New Jersey GOP congressman Chris Smith says it’s “outrageous and unbelievable” that Russia is being trusted to be the repository for such sensitive material. Russia is a close ally of Iran.

The low-enriched uranium is suitable mainly for generating nuclear power and needs substantial further enrichment for use in the core of a nuclear warhead. Mull says he’s confident the material will be controlled properly.

***

Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have banned Iranian-flagged vessels from entering their waters and imposed other shipping restrictions, according to ship insurers citing local reports, potentially escalating tensions between Tehran and Riyadh.

Iran has been struggling to ramp up oil exports and still faces insurance and financing hurdles despite the lifting of international curbs on its banking, insurance and shipping sectors last month as part of a nuclear deal with world powers.

A ban on Iranian ships in those ports is unlikely to affect international trade, although the uncertainty will add to trade hiccups for Iran.

Some ship insurers in recent days, citing reports from local agents and correspondents, said in notes to members that Saudi Arabia and Bahrain had banned all Iranian-flagged ships from entering their waters.

Norwegian ship insurer Gard said Bahrain had imposed a ban on any vessel that has visited Iran as one of its last three port calls.

“There is currently no such restriction in Saudi Arabia,” Gard wrote, citing information from a logistics provider. Saudi Arabian and Bahraini authorities did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Ship insurer West of England said separately: “An entered vessel has since been denied entry to Bahrain after visiting an Iranian port two port calls earlier, resulting in the fixture being cancelled.”

Other ship insurers had yet to issue any guidance or confirm there were new regulations in place.

 

While oil companies such as Italy’s Eni and France’s Total have been looking to book cargoes from Iran, international insurers are no nearer to resolving concerns over US sanctions that remain in place.

Last month, Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia cut ties with Shi’ite Iran after its Tehran embassy was attacked following Riyadh’s execution of a Shi’ite cleric.

In solidarity with Riyadh, Kuwait and Qatar subsequently pulled out their ambassadors from Tehran, and the United Arab Emirates downgraded its ties. Bahrain and two non-Gulf states, Djibouti and Sudan, severed relations completely.

Saudi Arabia and Iran – leading members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries – continue to grapple with weak oil prices.

The Double Life of a FL. Congressman

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  Hello Ethics Committee….

Email Shows Concern About Alan Grayson’s Hedge Fund

Email correspondence from June 2015 between Representative Alan Grayson and his campaign manager at the time involves concern among his staff about the political damage Mr. Grayson’s hedge fund could cause his Senate bid.

For just a few additional facts on Grayson, his scandals and his history, go here. Even the Huffington Post has several items on his highly contested and perhaps even violent marriage, annulment or divorce.

Alan Grayson’s Double Life: Congressman and Hedge Fund Manager

WASHINGTON — The hedge fund manager boasted that he had traveled to “every country” in the world, studying overseas stock markets as he fine-tuned an investment strategy to capitalize on global companies’ suffering because of economic or political turmoil.

But the fund manager had an even more distinctive credential to showcase in his marketing material in June 2013: He was a “U.S. congressman,” Representative Alan Grayson, Democrat of Florida, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Now he is also among the leading Democratic candidates for one of Florida’s United States Senate seats.

This highly unusual dual role — a sitting House lawmaker running a hedge fund, which until recently had operations in the Cayman Islands — has led to an investigation of Mr. Grayson by the House Committee on Ethics.

The inquiry has become public, but emails and marketing documents obtained by The New York Times show the extent to which Mr. Grayson’s roles as a hedge fund manager and a member of Congress were intertwined, and how he promoted his international travels, some with congressional delegations, to solicit business.

Interviews and the documents show that Mr. Grayson told potential investors in his hedge fund that they should contribute money to the fund to capitalize on the unrest he observed around the world, and to take particular advantage when there was “blood in the streets.”

The emails also show how Mr. Grayson’s work for the hedge fund — which had $16.4 million in assets as of October and only for investors since it was established — at times interfered with his other duties. In August 2015, after Mr. Grayson introduced legislation calling for larger annual increases in Social Security benefits, he signed off on a plan to highlight the proposal at an event in Tampa, Fla., emails obtained by The Times show. But the plan was scuttled, two former aides said, when economic turmoil in China sent stock markets tumbling globally and Mr. Grayson had to turn his attention to the fund.

Ken Scudder, a spokesman for Mr. Grayson, disputed that account. “There has never been any time when Representative Grayson’s investment activities have disrupted any of his work, whether official or campaign-related,” he said.

Mr. Grayson says he has done nothing wrong. “Here is something that is not true: that I somehow traded on my membership as a U.S. congressman to get clients for this fund,” Mr. Grayson said in an interview. He added that in the last year he had refunded the full original investments put in by his two outside investors in a fund that had faced steep losses — leaving only Mr. Grayson and a family trust invested in the fund.

Mr. Grayson has closed the Cayman Islands branches of the hedge fund, and in September, after the ethics complaint was filed, he changed the name of the fund from the Grayson Fund to the Sibylline Fund, LP. He did so, he said, to try to assuage critics who said he was violating congressional ethics rules by naming a professional business after himself. Although Mr. Grayson said he did not agree that the name was a violation, “there was no point in arguing about it any longer.”

But Mr. Grayson’s activities have long concerned his campaign aides. In private emails in June, Mr. Grayson’s aides pleaded with him to close the hedge fund, convinced that its focus on investing in nations hit by political or economic strife, and its ties to the Cayman Islands, a notorious tax haven, sharply conflicted with his image as a scold of Wall Street — even if he had not done anything wrong.

“This is going to be the drip, drip, drip story that never goes away,” Doug Dodson, Mr. Grayson’s Senate campaign manager until the end of 2015, wrote in a June email to Mr. Grayson, saying his political opponents would “try to make you look like a hypocrite and a fraud and not the populist you claim to be.” Read the whole summary here.

Syria, now Uncontrollable

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Opposition Leader: U.S. Diplomacy Costs Syrian Lives

Bloomberg: In the days since the collapse of the Syria peace talks championed by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the humanitarian catastrophe in northern Syria has grown, tens of thousands of new refugees were created, and the Russian- and Iranian-backed killing of civilians has increased. These are all consequences of the flawed U.S. strategy, according to the lead negotiator for the Syrian opposition.

Riyad Hijab was prime minister of Syria in 2012 under the dictator Bashar al-Assad; he became the highest-ranking defector from the regime when he switched sides and joined the rebels. He is now the leader of the High Negotiating Committee that represented the Syrian opposition at last week’s meetings in Geneva, which collapsed after two days. Kerry had pressured the Syrian opposition leaders to attend, even warning they could lose their U.S. funding if they boycotted. Hijab says that Kerry’s approach — to try to persuade Assad and Russia to negotiate while the offensive continues — has actually made things much worse.

“The administration is saying it is testing the good faith of the other side,” Hijab told me in a phone interview on Monday. “But when you are testing these things and it fails, the price that is being paid is horrendous death and the expansion of extremism and terrorism on the ground.”

Syrian forces backed by Russian air power are pressing an offensive against rebel groups in and around Aleppo, the nation’s largest city, that began before the scheduled peace talks. Kerry said Friday, “This has to stop.” He said he would know if the other parties, such as Russia, were “serious” about upholding United Nations Security Council resolutions on protecting civilians after a meeting later this week in Munich of the international group of countries supporting proxies in the Syrian civil war.

In the eyes of the Syrian opposition, Russia and Iran are making a mockery of the peace process, and Kerry’s reluctance to acknowledge this is putting them in deadly harm. It also creates more problems for America’s regional allies, aids the Islamic State and dims the prospects for future peace talks. “The failures of the negotiations end up lowering the credibility of the moderate opposition in front of the Syrian people,” said Hijab. “United States credibility is plummeting within the population of Syria but also in the region as a whole.”

This week, it is Syrians near Aleppo who are paying the price. Regime forces, with Russian support, are advancing toward the Turkish border, threatening to cut off opposition groups and civilians from their source of aid. At least 35,000 people have joined the flood of refugees since the collapse of the talks, ahead of what many anticipate will be another in a long line of starvation sieges the regime is perpetrating on cities. Hijab said there are now 18 cities under siege, three more than when the talks began. More here.

Syria, already a catastrophe, seems on the verge of an uncontrollable disaster

WaPo: Suddenly, after four years of brutal civil war, Syria this week became even more of an uncontrollable military, diplomatic and humanitarian disaster.

“We are not blind to what is happening,” Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Tuesday, as he prepared for a meeting in Munich of stakeholders from outside Syria. “We are all very, very aware of how critical this moment is.”

The Thursday gathering could well be the last gasp of a three-month, Kerry-orchestrated effort to bring together powerful countries on all sides of the conflict — from Russia and Iran on behalf of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, to the United States and its partners on the opposition side — to try and forge a political solution that would allow them all to focus their efforts on defeating the Islamic State.

What seemed possible even two weeks ago, however, now seems all but hopeless. Failure of planned peace negotiations could lead President Obama finally to a decision he has long resisted — whether to more fully arm and back rebel groups whose cohesion and commitment to a democratic and secular Syria he mistrusts.

In recent days, Russian bombardment of opposition forces north of Aleppo, a rebel stronghold, has severed opposition supply lines and threatens to allow government-aligned forces to encircle the city. In a letter sent to the Obama administration this week, Russia proposed to stop the bombing on March 1, allowing it to continue for another three weeks

The Russian blitz has allowed pro-government ground forces, mostly composed of Iranian-trained militias from Iraq, Iran and Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah, to push north to with 20 miles of the Turkish border. This is the same area where the United States and Turkey have planned to carve out an opposition-held zone to combat Islamic State forces approaching it from the east.

Tens of thousands of new refugees have fled Aleppo and its environs to the recently closed Turkish border. Mercy Corps, one of the few aid agencies in a position to help them, said Tuesday that its supplies will soon run out. For those who haven’t fled, the encirclement of Aleppo “would leave up to 300,000 people, still residing in the city, cut off from humanitarian aid unless cross-line access could be negotiated,” the United Nations said.

In Europe, where a flood of nearly a million migrants and refugees from the region, most of them Syrians, have already arrived, political and social tensions are threatening the foundation of European unity constructed over the past 70 years.

“There are fault lines emerging that we thought we had overcome,” said Peter Wittig, Germany’s ambassador to the United States, who described the situation as an existential threat to Europe.

“The United States has been slow to recognize this is a much bigger thing than anything else we’ve experienced since the beginning of the European Union,” Wittig said. “We didn’t see it earlier, we were totally unprepared. . . . We’re not blaming the United States. It takes time for this country to realize that it’s really that serious.”

Germany has taken in the bulk of the migrants and refugees, while some Eastern European members of the E.U. have closed their borders to them.

Negotiation track derided

U.S. ties have become strained with partners closer to the conflict. These allies fear the Obama administration has been blinded to the threat from Russia and Iran by its desire to believe they can be swayed by diplomatic reason and appeals to shared worries about expansion of the Islamic State.

One senior official from a close partner nation described the negotiation track as a farce. The official said that it was unrealistic to expect the opposition to come to the table when its forces are being decimated on the ground and civilians are being starved by Russian bombing and the government gains it has enabled, in violation of United Nations resolutions that Moscow agreed to in order to get the talks started. The official, who said that U.S. leadership is still essential if the war is to end, did not want to be identified by name or nationality in order to speak candidly.

Frontline Turkey, a NATO ally and member of the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State, has dithered over its priorities, concerned that a U.S. alliance with Syrian Kurds fighting against the militants will give advantage to Turkish Kurds who seek independence. Even as pro-government forces expand north from Aleppo, Kurdish fighters in Syria’s northwest corner are pushing into the same area.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has demanded that the United States choose between Turkey and the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party. After State Department spokesman John Kirby said this week that the United States does not consider the Syrian Kurds to be terrorists while recognizing that Turkey does, the Ankara government called in U.S. Ambassador John R. Bass on Tuesday for a dressing-down.

Talks between the Syrian government and opposition were suspended before they began this month after rebel representatives said they would not sit at the table until the government provided humanitarian access to besieged areas and released women and children it is holding prisoner. The Munich meeting, originally scheduled to monitor progress in the negotiations, became a final effort to get them started.

Scorched-earth policy

Kerry has long sought a more muscular U.S. policy than Obama has allowed. But he also firmly believes that if negotiations can begin, Assad will eventually be forced from power, with Russian acquiescence in the face of the inevitable.

For the moment, Moscow seems more interested in adjusting the balance of power on the ground — where just months ago, the rebels were on the ascendant — to strengthen Assad’s position before entering talks about his future.

Near the Turkey-Syria border Tuesday, rebels said they fear they are being betrayed by the countries they thought were their allies — most notably the United States. Without significant new injections of arms and ammunition, they said, they will not survive the combined onslaught of intense Russian airstrikes and advances by pro-government ground forces.

“Russia is the second superpower in the world, and Russia is using all of its power against the rebels,” said Mohammed Adib, a political officer with Jabhat Shamiya, the main rebel group fighting in northern Aleppo province. “They’re using a scorched-earth policy, and they don’t care what the international community says.”

“The problem is the friends of the regime are really good friends and give lots of support, whereas our friends sometimes give support and sometimes not,” he said.

While they don’t expect they will receive anti-aircraft missiles, which would have a major impact on the balance of power, rebels said they still hope to receive upgraded weapons, including new-generation models of the TOW missiles that have proved effective at taking out the Syrian government’s aging battle tanks, though these are no match for newly supplied Russian T-90 tanks.

If the rebel fighters cannot rebound, Adib and other rebel spokesmen said, there is a risk that opposition fighters will join more radical organizations, including the Islamic State. “People will not surrender to [Assad] under any circumstances,” said Khaled Shihabeddine, a political adviser to the Noureddin al-Zinki rebel group. “If things stay as they are, with no support and no one stopping Russia, the rebels will be pushed into a corner and . . . all possibilities will be open.”

Have you Met Taylor Johnson?

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Imagine a government doing this to an employee, when an employee is bound by law to do so. Ah, Harry Reid, of course.

EXCLUSIVE: ICE Whistleblower Fired After Refusing DHS Hush Money

DailyCaller: The Department of Homeland Security on Thursday dismissed an ICE whistleblower it was secretly smearing to reporters after she testified before Congress about her troubles with the agency.

Special Agent Taylor Johnson — who had a storied career until she irked Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid by objecting to a visa program for foreign investors tied to the senator’s son — says she declined to take a $100,000 severance package because it included a non-disclosure agreement.

Gee, what a great use of taxpayer money that would have been. Pay a woman not to talk about what already got nationwide coverage when she talked about it before Congress.

DHS Acting Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Todd Breasseale did not respond to multiple inquiries about the reason for Johnson’s dismissal and why they tried to buy her silence.

Despite all the media coverage of her case, including a Washington Gadfly report that the ICE press secretary with the approval of Breasseale was peddling confidential information to discredit her in violation of the Privacy Act, Taylor is not surprised she got the boot.

“My entire chain of command was appointed by Obama,” she remarked. “They can do anything they want.”

In testimony last June to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Johnson said she was stripped of her gun and badge, without explanation, after discovering fraud and abuse.

“Some of the violations investigated surrounding the project included bank and wire fraud, and I discovered ties to organized crime and high-ranking politicians and they received promotions that appeared to facilitate the program,” Johnson testified.

She said that during her investigation in 2013, she “discovered that EB-5 applicants from China, Russia, Pakistan, Malaysia had been approved in as little as 16 days” and that case files “lacked the basic and necessary law enforcement queries.”

At ICE, Johnson had amassed many awards and never had any disciplinary problems. But everything changed abruptly in 2013 when she invoked the ire of Senator Reid by holding up a visas for a foreigner investor in a Las Vegas casino represented by his son, attorney Cory Reid.

The Senator’s office complained to Johnson’s Special Agent in Charge. She was then placed on administrative leave, without explanation, on October 13, 2013.

Under pressure from Senate Democratic staffers Johnson did not mention in her testimony the role Reid’s office played in her ouster. But the DHS Inspector General concluded in a report last March that U.S. Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) director Alejandro Mayorkas intervened in “an unprecedented matter” to approve EB-5 visas for the Las Vegas casino investors after pressure from Reid’s office.

The report essentially vindicated complaints by Johnson and other DHS employees about the program.

DHS has never given any public explanation for the disciplinary action it took against Johnson. After the hearing a DHS spokeswoman said they do not talk about personnel matters.

But this past December, ICE press secretary Gillian Christensen, citing confidential information from Johnson’s file, tried to convince this reporter off the record that she was a dishonest and a problem employee.

That argument is going to be even harder to peddle now that the Department would have allowed Johnson to leave with a clean work record and $100,000 in spending money if she promised to keep her mouth shut.

Johnson is soliciting donations on gofundme.com to cover legal fees for a possible federal lawsuit.

 

 

 

Congress Moving to Stop BDS, Finally

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BDS and the Methodist Church:

The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the largest coalition in Palestinian civil society leading the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, salutes the United Methodist Church (UMC) for declaring the five largest Israeli banks off limits for investment for the Church’s $20-billion Pension and Health Benefits Fund.

The BNC congratulates the United Methodist Kairos Response (UMKR) group within the Church for its relentless and effective leadership in raising awareness among Methodist communities about Palestinian rights and the need for the church to end all its investments in companies that profit from Israel’s occupation and human rights violations.

Bisan Mitri, a spokesperson for the BNC, warmly welcomed the decision: “This historic step shows, with concrete measures, the ethical commitment of the United Methodist Church to peace and justice. Israeli banks finance the decades-long occupation and oppression of Palestinians and are a key pillar in sustaining the brutality of Israel’s military, the unrelenting expansion of Israel’s settlements, and the plundering of Palestinian resources.”

(It should be noted that the Methodist Church is a large grant recipient for resettling refugees across the homeland)

Congress to Pave Way for Divestment From Anti-Israel Companies

New bill fights back against BDS, encourages pro-Israel business ties

FreeBeacon: A bipartisan coalition in both the House and Senate are pushing legislation that would authorize all state and local governments to divest taxpayer funds from any company that engages in boycotts of Israel, according to interviews with lawmakers and a copy of the bill obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The new bill, which was filed Wednesday afternoon, marks an aggressive push by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to combat the growing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, otherwise known as BDS, which advocates in favor of economic war against the Jewish state.

The bill would provide legal shelter to states seeking to divest taxpayer funds from any company that has backed the BDS movement. It also would set a legal precedent granting safe harbor for private investment companies to do the same.

The legislation comes amid a new move by the European Union to single out all Jewish goods produced in disputed areas of the West Bank, an effort that the Obama administration has supported.

Lawmakers leading the anti-BDS charge told the Free Beacon that the bill is a shot across the bow to a growing coalition of anti-Israel organizations that have lobbied state-level officials to boycott the Jewish state and products produced there.

Congress hopes to draw a line for the Obama administration, which has long been criticized in pro-Israel circles for straining U.S.-Israeli ties through policies that isolate the Jewish state.

After the political fight over the Obama administration’s nuclear agreement with Iran—which Israel opposes—lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are seeking to reassure Israel that Congress continues to stand by its side, Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) told the Free Beacon.

“After the big Iran fight, it was the right time to set a pro-Israel marker down there with members [of Congress] against the BDS movement,” said Kirk, who is jointly pushing the Senate version of the bill along with Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.).

Reps. Bob Dold (R., Ill.) and Juan Vargas (D., Calif.) are spearheading the House version of the anti-BDS legislation.

“It’s a powerful step to make sure that those around the country that want to send a very clear signal that we are standing shoulder to shoulder with Israel, that we will not stand idly by and let individuals and entities out there target, boycott, divest or sanction Israel in any way shape or form,” Dold told the Free Beacon. “This is an offensive opportunity.”

The bill employs similar legislative tactics used to encourage states and local governments to divest from companies doing business with Iran.

Both Kirk and Dold expressed concerns that a growing wave of anti-Semitism in Europe could spill over into the United States and add fuel to the BDS movement.

“We see the Muslim community and the Arab community having a political impact in the key allies—Germany, the UK—where something like BDS could catch fire and become official policy,” Kirk said. “There needs to be some pushback from the best friend of Israel.”

Dold agreed, noting that with relations between the United States and Israel at an all-time low, Congress must set down a marker.

“I’ll call it what it is—the absolutely wrong approach,” Dold said, referring to the EU effort to label Israeli goods, a policy that most pro-Israel groups view as anti-Semitic.

“Our greatest ally is Israel and we need to make sure we’re sending a very clear signal,” Dold said. “This is unacceptable: We are going to try to make sure we are going to provide cover for states, for local governments … I think it’s important they know the federal government here stands with them.”

Pro-Israel organizations that work with Congress have long been pushing for this type of legislation, saying that it could help deflate the BDS movement in America.

“Congress isn’t messing around,” said Omri Ceren, managing director at The Israel Project, a D.C.-based organization that has been at the center of fights against anti-Israel boycotts at the state and federal levels. “Polls show that their constituents want lawmakers at every level of government to stand with Israel, and senators and representatives are going to do everything in their power to make sure that happens.”

However, there is disagreement within the pro-Israel umbrella about the value of such legislation. Some maintain that anti-BDS legislation violates the First Amendment and violates existing U.S. policy.

J Street, an organization that bills itself as pro-Israel but that has been criticized by some in the mainstream Jewish community, has lobbied lawmakers to oppose similar anti-BDS efforts, according to a copy of an email that group has been sending to lawmakers since last year.

J Street quietly came out against a House resolution last year that expressed disapproval of the EU’s boycott effort.

J Street and other who share its position accuse Congress of trying to legitimize “Israeli settlement activities.”

“There are many other ways for your boss to express concern over BDS against Israel without defending settlement activity or undermining a two-state solution,” J Street argued in its letter to lawmakers.

When asked about the potential opposition to the new bill, both Kirk and Dold were dismissive of J Street and its supporters.

“We know there is opposition,” Dold said. “Which is more reason why this had to be done. This isn’t partisan and I think it’s absolutely critical we make sure it’s not. This is about doing the right thing. It’s not left versus right. It’s right versus wrong.”

***

TheTower: The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the largest coalition in Palestinian civil society that is leading the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement for Palestinian rights, called today for a boycott of the Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Foundations due to the recently announced – first-quarter 2014 — investment by Soros in SodaStream stock and increased investment in Teva Pharmaceuticals, both Israeli companies that are deeply involved in violations of international law.
Ironically, Soros, through his Open Society Foundation, is known for funding many similarly oriented non-governmental organizations (NGOs). According to a special report (.pdf) compiled by the  watchdog group NGO-Monitor (emphasis added):
The first category comprises large and extensive Open Society Foundation grants to Palestinian organizations such as Al-Haq, Al-Mezan, and Palestinian Center for Human Rights, as well as Israeli political NGOs, including Yesh Din, Breaking the Silence, and Adalah. These groups are active in promoting the Durban strategy by attempting to portray Israel as a “racist” and “apartheid state” that commits “war crimes.” A primary goal of such demonizing language is to isolate Israel internationally, leading to the implementation of sanctions. Many of these NGO recipients are also leaders in the international boycott, sanctions, and divestment (BDS) and “lawfare” campaigns, including the filing of international lawsuits aimed at harassing Israeli officials.