A key Project 2025 architect, as well as major donors to the infamous Trump administration-linked initiative, have been at the heart of a sprawling UK-US-Israeli nexus working to delegitimize the UN Relief Works Agency (UNRWA).
Previously, the Canary reported on a notable piece of propaganda the Israeli government put out smearing the UNRWA on X. Crucially, this was just weeks ahead of the launch of the controversial US-Israel coordinated Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). We exposed how the baseless claims in its one-minute-long video originated from a report produced by the British dark money foreign policy think tank the Henry Jackson Society (HJS).
Now, the Canary can reveal that the day the genocidal settler state plastered the HJS report’s ‘findings’ across its social media, a Project 2025 author was helping the think tank to launch another publication discrediting UNRWA and various UN bodies.
Another Henry Jackson Society report smearing aid and human rights groups
On 7 May, the HJS hosted a launch event for a new publication. Once more, this was awash with criticism of UNRWA, and other UN bodies operating in Palestine.
Titled, Human Rights NGOs: A Crisis of Trust – The Root Causes and Recommended Remedies, as the name suggests, it presented a 40-page smear of various human rights organisations. While its sole focus wasn’t Israel, it naturally honed in on NGOs critical of the genocidal occupier.
Perhaps predictably after the pair of high profile human rights nonprofits separately set out how Israel is perpetrating genocide, the HJS report had Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch in its particular sights.
And like clockwork, it also leaned into propaganda about the UNRWA laying cover for Hamas. Furthermore, the report dedicated an entire section to casting doubt on Israel’s use of starvation as a tool of it ethnic cleansing project. Broadly, it shamelessly contested the idea Israel is committing genocide. One part goes to pains to suggest that official reports about the famine conditions in Gaza from the UN Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) are false.
For this, it referenced another report from the Tel Aviv University-affiliated think tank the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). This points to discrepancies between OCHA and IPC’s aid data and what Israel reports. It spuriously suggested the UN’s information relies on:
incomplete presentation of the distribution of aid in the Strip
Unsurprisingly, the controversial think tank has long perpetuated justification of the IOF’s actions – those illegal under international law. Its current executive director is Tamir Hayman, the former head of the IOF Intelligence Directorate between 2018 and 2021. His tenure follows previous director Amos Yadlin, who also served as a former IOF intelligence chief.
The US Department of State has also financed its work. The US Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA) began one donation of US $628,000 on 1 October 2023. Obviously, this was mere days before 7 October and the subsequent start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. According to official government records, it appears to have finished paying this grant in February this year. In other words, this was amid the so-called ceasefire – that Israel continued to violate – and ultimately shattered altogether.
Meet NGO Monitor: an Israeli nonprofit with direct ties to the state
The speakers list for the HJS report launch was illuminating.
The first was (self-described) human rights lawyer Anne Herzberg. The former New York attorney and Israeli settler is a legal advisor for a notorious Jerusalem-based nonprofit known as NGO Monitor.
For all intents and purposes, the organisation is another pro-Israel pressure group. Far from a nonpartisan watchdog entity it self-proclaims, NGO Monitor has been an instrumental front group for Israel’s domestic and international efforts to discredit aid and human rights NGOs critical of the colonial settler state’s violence.
Its once mission statement preserved on the Internet Archive alluded to this in not so many explicit words. This previously stated how its goal is:
to end the practice used by certain self-declared humanitarian NGOs of exploiting the label ‘universal human rights values’ to promote politically and ideologically motivated agendas.
In short, its entire raison d’etre is to smear groups and bodies championing Palestinian rights. Needless to say, over the years, it has targeted numerous boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) groups. It has also attacked prominent international human rights organisations. Unsurprisingly, that has included both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch – that the HJS report honed in on.
Towards the end of May, NGO Monitor published its own controversial report. This too laundered many of the same unfounded claims about UN agencies and aid NGOs in Gaza. In particular, its publication linked official UK government aid to programmes in which it alleged:
Hamas was likely dictating the disbursement of UK taxpayer funds
A Project 2025 architect at the HJS report launch
Next to Herzberg on the HJS’s report launch speaker list was the Heritage Foundation’s Max Primorac. As the bio for him on the event noted, Primorac is a senior research fellow at the think tank’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom. The center covers matters concerning “Europe, foreign aid and global development”. He previously acted as the COO for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
But significantly, it was Primorac who authored Project 2025’s chapter on international aid. One particularly telling paragraph advocates for the US international aid arm, USAID, to cut aid to “states allied to Iran”. Naturally, this singled out Palestine and Lebanon. It argues that the administration should limit aid in these places:
to the advancement of narrow strategic priorities and support for basic American values, such as aid to persecuted religious minorities.
Primorac also input into a previous chapter concerning the Department of State. This called for the US to terminate funding for UN organisations, including UNRWA, and international NGOs.
Of course, it’s a blueprint the Trump administration awash with Project 2025 connections from the get-go has been only too happy to follow. After suspending aid to UNRWA as per Israel’s propaganda, the Trump administration has maintained this.
What’s more, the 922-page conservative manifesto, published in April 2023, contains a noteworthy passage about Iran’s nuclear technology that’s only too prescient. This reads that:
the U.S. must prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear technology and delivery capabilities and more broadly block Iranian ambitions. This means, inter alia, reinstituting and expanding Trump Administration sanctions; providing security assistance for regional partners; supporting, through public diplomacy and otherwise, freedom-seeking Iranian people in their revolt against the mullahs; and ensuring Israel has both the military means and the political support and flexibility to take what it deems to be appropriate measures to defend itself against the Iranian regime and its regional proxies Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
As the Canary’s Charlie Jay previously underscored, the US and Israel have long used unsubstantiated claims about Iran’s purported nuclear capabilities as a pretext for imperialistic expansionism in the region. Project 2025 laid this playbook out in no uncertain terms.
Awash with Israel government connections
Herzberg and Primorac’s cameos at the HJS report launch event is hardly the only connection between the British dark money think tank, the Israeli nonprofit, and Project 2025 either.
For one, the previous report the HJS put out – and which Israel ran its propaganda piece over – also had a significant direct link to NGO Monitor. Specifically, co-author Salo Aizenberg has regularly written reports for the Jerusalem-based organisation.
NGO Monitor’s involvement with both HJS reports is also telling.
In April 2024, +972 Magazine unearthed the damning resume of its founder Gerald Steinberg. The 2004 document showed that Steinberg had served as a consultant to the government of Israel. Notably, this was two years after he’d established NGO Monitor. In other words, the organisation has had direct ties to the Israeli government from the beginning. B’nai B’rith International, which set up the infamous pro-Israel lobby group the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), is also one of its founding organisations.
A 2018 report by Policy Working Group – a collective of ex-Israeli diplomats and academics – exposed the organisation’s de facto affiliation to the Israeli government. Notably, it stated how:
NGO Monitor describes itself as politically “independent and nonpartisan”. In reality, the organization operates in close coordination and cooperation with the Israeli government.
The group highlighted an instance as far back as 2009, in which the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosted a press conference for the nonprofit. This was over a report the nonprofit had produced on so-called ‘lawfare’. Specifically, this contested the legitimacy of human rights NGOs like Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) and Al Haq taking Israeli war criminals to court.
The author of the problematic publication was none other than Anne Herzberg. Naturally, this was a fact which the HJS was only too content to boast about in its report launch.
Unsurprisingly, NGO Monitor’s proximity to the Israeli government doesn’t stop there. The state has repeatedly provided support for its numerous lobbying efforts in Europe. Alongside this, the nonprofit has publicised its cosy ties to government ministries across multiple annual reports.
NGO Monitor’s opaque funding hypocrisy
And like the HJS, NGO Monitor is not transparent about its funding sources. While it styles itself as a nonprofit transparency watchdog, it’s with no small irony that the Israeli organisation itself doesn’t disclose its own donors.
Over the years, journalists and researchers have dug up an informative list of its financiers nonetheless.
Some of its US donors have emerged in Form 990 filings with the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Funders have sent donations via a US-registered organisation Research + Evaluation = Promoting Organizational Responsibility and Transparency (REPORT), formerly American Friends of NGO Monitor (AFNGOM). NGO Monitor’s website notes only how it “receives significant financial support” from REPORT, but not who has funded it through the shell donation vehicle.
The group has also reported some – albeit obscure – donor information to the Israel registrar for nonprofits. This details donations of over NIS 100,000 (approximately £20,648) or more than NIS 50,000 (currently £10,324) if it constitutes at least 20% of the nonprofit’s annual turnover.
Guidestar – the online register that displays this information – shows that three donors made contributions exceeding this in 2023. The largest donation comprised NIS 4,199,733 (£867,176). It lists two further donations of NIS 1,219,534 (£251,811) and NIS 186,814 (£38,574). Unfortunately, it does not provide the names of the donors for these amounts.
The Israeli government charity registrar only makes this information available for a small fee. Due to the moral implications of making this payment, the Canary has not accessed this.
Moreover, historic records that groups have obtained previously have revealed that donors have primarily funneled donations through other organisations, and therefore the originating source remains largely hidden. The 2018 Policy Working Group report identified that REPORT had contributed 90.7% of the group’s total income for 2016.
The Orion Foundation – a company registered in the British tax haven the Isle of Man – also made some of its donations that year. Evidently, the company is a conduit for a donor who wanted their donation to stay out of the public view.
Donors revealed
The Canary has traced a number of its donors for recent years. Many also fund the HJS. You can explore these here:
Its biggest identifiable donors included US property mogul Myron Zimmerman’s philanthropic organisation, the MZ Foundation. The Canary previously highlighted that it has bankrolled illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank via funding to the Central Fund of Israel.
San Francisco-based Koret Foundation was another and is a known donor to numerous Zionist causes and lobby groups. It’s the charitable arm of the Koret family, who established clothing company Koret of California in 1939.
The Emerson Family Foundation also cropped up and is another prolific donor to a multitude of pro-Israel groups. One of its founding couple – Rita Emerson – previously sat on the board of REPORT and Zionist organisation Stand With Us.
Alongside these, the Maryland-based Ben and Esther Rosenbloom Foundation has given significant sums to NGO Monitor. It has long funnelled funds to a vast number of pro-Israel groups.
Also among the hall of NGO Monitor donation infamy was neoconservative heiress to the Sears, Roebuck and Co. department store fortune Nina Rosenwald’s Abstraction Fund. As an SOAS report on the HJS previously noted, Rosenwald:
Has been dubbed “the Sugar Mama of anti-Muslim Hate”, and is the founder and director of the Gatestone Institute, which has been accused of promoting the ‘White Genocide’ theory that white populations in the USA and Europe are being replaced by non-white populations as part of a deliberate policy.
HJS and NGO Monitor funders: bankrolling Project 2025
What’s even more significant, is that a number of HJS and NGO Monitor’s donors have bankrolled Project 2025 advisory groups. These have done so to the staggering tune of close to $99m:
The bulk of these went via the Donors Trust, a donor-advised fund (DAF). Mother Jones once branded it the “dark money ATM” of the conservative movement – and for good reason. The DAF has distributed gargantuan sums to a who’s who of multifarious right-wing groups, and has included many pro-Israel causes. As the Canary previously detailed, DAFs enable donors to conceal their identity.
The Canary didn’t include the Emerson Family Foundation in the above network graph. However, the philanthropic foundation gave to another significant donor of Project 2025-affiliated groups: the Bradley Impact Fund. An investigation by Desmog recently singled out the organisation as one of six billionaire family fortunes financing the Heritage Foundation-led initiative. It uncovered the fund had poured more than $50m into Project 2025 advisory board organisations. It also underscored it had made further donations to the Donors Trust.
Pro-Israel Project 2025 links
Excluding DAFs like the Donors Trust and Jewish Communal Fund, HJS and NGO Monitor donors have given almost $8.46m to Project 2025 groups in the past five years.
Turning Point USA accounted for the lion’s share of this – at more than $6.6m ($10.5m with DAF donation included). The group promotes ultranationalist neoliberal conservative ideals on campuses across the US. Naturally, it has invariably meant manifest support for Israel. This has taken the form of pro-Israel “Activism Kits”, events with prominent Zionists, and sponsoring students on “educational trips” to the genocidal settler state.
Then, there’s the powerful far right Claremont Institute. HJS donor the Jack Roth Foundation ploughed £1.3m into the extreme neoconservative think tank between 2020 and 2024. DAFs take this figure to £1.62m.
In October 2024, Claremont Institute senior fellow Steven F. Hayward penned a Trump ‘Agenda for Day One’ for the think tank’s online publication. Top of his list was to suspend all US aid to UNRWA, and to completely disband it, spuriously claiming it had become a “willing adjunct to Hamas in Gaza”. Through its numerous publications, the think tank has put out a number of articles advancing pro-Israel propaganda.
The ‘Israel Victory Project’: a sinister love-letter to genocide
Perhaps the most obvious pro-Israel Project 2025 advisory board member is the right-wing Zionist think tank, the Middle East Forum (MEF). Multiple HJS and NGO Monitor donors together gave the MEF $173,500 during the same period (of $9.2m when including DAFs). Since 2017, the MEF has operated the controversial ‘Israel Victory Project’.
As the name suggests, it’s all about engineering Israel’s entire occupation of Palestine. Its website is peppered with sinister platitudes to Zionist total dominion, stating its goal to steer:
U.S. and Israeli policy toward backing an Israel victory over the Palestinians to end the conflict by convincing the Palestinians of their defeat in their century-long war against Israel.
The landing page reads like a love letter to Israel’s ethnic cleansing plans. A dashboard delivers regularly updated statistics counting ‘Israeli Military Achievements’. One disturbing figure notes the number of ‘terrorists’ the IOF has slaughtered in Gaza: “+24,000”. It lists this next to a 1.08:1 ratio of civilians to combatants – outrageously implying that nearly half the civilians it has killed are Hamas operatives.
Paving the way for the aid as a tool of genocide
The connections between two organisations at the forefront of manufacturing smears against established aid mechanisms in Gaza, and Project 2025 has clear significance amid the present situation with the GHF.
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace remarked recently how the GHF reads like a “prelude to implementing” the “Trump plan”. This was of course the president’s machinations for the ‘voluntary’ removal – that is, the forced mass expulsion – of Palestinians from Gaza. Naturally, Trump’s vision is very much in step with Netanyahu and many among Israel’s far-right government. After all, many haven’t exactly concealed their explicit genocidal occupation ambitions. And, as the Canary previously pointed out, the settler state’s weaponisation of aid is a fundamental part of its leaked ground offensive plan operation ‘Gideon’s Chariots’.
And on 26 June, the US government approved $30m in direct funding for the GHF. It did so amid repeated reports of the IOF massacring – in the hundreds – Palestinians seeking aid. Of course, taking a leaf out of the IOF propaganda playbook, the GHF has denied its role.
Not coincidences
None of this is coincidence. Israel’s manoeuvres to concentrate Palestinians at its deliberate death trap aid distribution points is a calculated feature of its ethnic cleansing agenda. The funding signals the Trump administration’s emphatic support for this. Of course, the US has long been an active partner in Israel’s violent colonial annexation of Palestine so it’s hardly surprising.
It all comes amid unsettling revelations over proposals bearing the GHF’s name that went to the heart of the Trump Whitehouse. The documents put forward plans for ‘Humanitarian Transit Areas’, confining the Palestinian population in eight GHF-controlled compounds. And as Reuters reported, the proposals called for:
using the sprawling facilities to “gain trust with the local population” and to facilitate U.S. President Donald Trump’s “vision for Gaza.”
These horrifying proposals are already materialising. Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz has signalled to the IOF to prepare Rafah for a ‘humanitarian city’. The plan involves forcing 600,000 Palestinians into this Israel-commanded area. But it amounts to nothing short of chilling propaganda for what is in essence, literal concentration camps.
Now, Project 2025’s ties to organs of Israel’s UNRWA propaganda brings the IOF’s blood-soaked inauguration of the GHF into sharp relief. The aid outfit was always a front – or more to the point, an active instrument – in Israel’s genocide, which a Trump-tied rightwing pro-Israel network paved the way for from the start.
Feature image via the Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.