23 May, 2006
Three years after the Ford Foundation's grants to anti-Israel groups prompted strong criticism in the United States Congress, the New York-based philanthropy has come under fire again from the "NGO Monitor", an Israeli publication overseen by Israel's former ambassador to the United Nations, Dore Gold. According to the "New York Sun", the "NGO Monitor" claims that eleven Ford grants had gone to questionable organization despite the fact that the foundation adopted new standards against promoting violence, terrorism, or bigotry. According to the report, Ford has given significant contributions to groups such as the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, International Committee of Jurists, Miftah, Al-Haq, and Al-Mezan, among others. "Their activities are primarily political, and they exploit human rights rhetoric to delegitimize Israel," the "NGO Monitor" said in its report. "The cumulative effect of continued association with supporters of the academic boycott of Israel (...) is a serious challenge to the Ford Foundation's credibility."
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which received a grant of US$ 370,000 from the Ford Foundation, supported the British Association of University Teachers' attempt to impose a boycott on Israeli universities. Additionally, the group has accused Israel's military of war crimes for its "willful killings; torture or inhuman treatment." Miftah, which received US$ 250,000, has described Israel's security operations as "ethnic cleansing" and has called for economic sanctions against the Jewish state. The vice president for communications at the Ford Foundation, Marta L. Tellado, said in a statement yesterday to The New York Sun, "We take very seriously any allegations of inappropriate activity by any of our grantees. We have taken a variety of actions when we found troubling activity in the past, including cessation of funding, and we are prepared to do so again if necessary." The Ford Foundation is a charitable foundation founded in 1936 by Henry Ford, the anti-Semite who created the Ford Motor Company. It no longer has any connection to the carmaker.
