US Lawmakers Prod Treasury Department for Reports on Anti-Zionist Groups Behind Campus Protests

Two US congressional committees investigating extremist anti-Zionist groups organizing rampant anti-Israel protests on college campuses implored Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday to assist their efforts to collect information on the organizations which fund them.

The request continued an effort begun in May, when Congress launched an inquiry into 20 nonprofits that funded dozens of pro-Hamas encampments during the final weeks of the last academic year. As part of the probe, US Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and James Comer (R-KY) wrote to Yellen, asking her to share any “suspicious activity reports” prompted by the deeds of Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, American Muslims for Palestine, Tides Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and other groups.

In their latest letter, Comer and Foxx — chairs of the House Oversight and Accountability and Education and Workforce committees, respectively — charged that Yellen has been of no help, noting that one of the groups — Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) — “recently took credit for releasing maggots” and setting off “fire alarms” at a Washington, DC area hotel where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a guest. Stressing that Yellen could advance the committees’ investigation by releasing information about PYM’s benefactor, the Western Political Action Committee Foundation (WESPAC), they chided her for not doing so.

“Treasury has yet to produce a single document,” Comers and Foxx wrote. “The committees made a considerable accommodation to Treasury on June 6, 2024, by prioritizing for an initial production, a more narrowly scoped range of documents, and Treasury has indicated that this initial prioritized request would encompass fewer than 50 responsive documents. The committees made the accommodation to ensure that Treasury could deliver an initial batch of responsive documents as soon as possible.”

They added, “Considering the serious nature of recent illegal antisemitic events related to entities named in this investigation, it is imperative that Treasury immediately cooperate and provide the requested documents.”

Congress’s inquiry came amid widespread suspicion that an eruption of anti-Zionist protests on college campuses, in which students illegally occupied sections of section and refused to leave unless their schools agreed to condemn and boycott Israel, was fueled by immense financial and logistical support from outside groups. Foxx and Comer said in May that any findings will inform recommendations for new federal laws requiring increased transparency and reporting of foreign contributions to American colleges and universities.

Foreign links to the anti-Zionist student movement have been the subject of numerous comprehensive studies.

In May, the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) published a report showing a connection between the anti-Zionist group Shut It Down for Palestine (SID4P) — a group formed immediately after Hamas’ massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7 — and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). NCRI explained that SID4P, which organized numerous traffic-obstructing demonstrations after Oct. 7, is an umbrella group for several other organizations which compose the “Singham Network,” a consortium of far-left groups funded by Neville Roy Singham and Jodie Evans. The report described Singham and Evans as a “power couple within the global far-left movement” whose affiliation with the CCP has been copiously documented.

“The Singham Network exploits regulatory loopholes in the US nonprofit system to facilitate the flow of an enormous sum of US dollars to organizations and movements that actively stoke social unrest at the grassroots level,” the report said. “Alternative media outlets associated with the Singham Network have played a central role in online mobilization and cross-platform social amplification for SID4P.”

In 2022, the National Association of Scholars (NAS) revealed that one of the founders of Students for Justice in Palestine, Hatem Bazian, was also a co-founder of American Muslims for Palestine, an advocacy group which, NAS said, “retains ties to terrorist groups operating in the Palestinian territories.”

NAS added that the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic Cultural Boycott of Israel — which has been influential in steering the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel in academia — is “structurally linked” to Palestinian terrorist organizations through the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine — a member of the Palestinian BDS National Committee which comprises Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Popular Front-General Command, Palestinian Liberation Front, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

“On the one hand, BDS is designed to secure political legitimacy vis-á-vis Israel, with boycotts and divestment offering Palestinian activists and terrorists new domains to assert their cause,” NAS senior fellow Ian Oxnevad wrote. “On the other hand, BDS, along with the formation of multiple NGOs and nonprofit organizations, offers the Palestinians new avenues by which to access funding in a post-9/11 international financial system designed to curtail funding for terrorism.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.