Pro-Palestine rally sponsors raked in $9M in city funds

Metro

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By Rich Calder and Matthew Sedacca

Big Apple taxpayers have shelled out nearly $9 million since 2010 — including $3.3 million the past two years — to four nonprofits that helped spearhead anti-Israel protests where demonstrators openly cheered Hamas’ terrorist attacks on the Jewish State.

A Post examination of city records shows more than $4.25 million – or nearly half — of the cash was funneled through yearly pots of political pork that City Council members dish out to help raise local support and sway votes during re-election bids.

And nearly $2 million of the Council’s so-called “discretionary funds” were awarded to the anti-Israel groups after a November 2021 general election spawned a mass influx of socialists and other new far-left members to the legislative body.

The remaining $4.46 million was paid out to the nonprofits through government contracts awarded by city agencies.

The biggest winner: The Arab American Association of New York, a Brooklyn-based group that helped plan a hate-filled “Flood Brooklyn for Palestine” protest in Bay Ridge on Oct. 21, where protestors called for the eradication of Israel and held a sign of the Israeli flag in a trash basket that read “Please keep the world clean!”

It’s received $6.8 million in Council pork and city contracts – including $3 million-plus the past two years – for criminal justice services, adult literacy programs, mental health aid through ex-First Lady Chirlane McCray’s failed ThriveNYC initiative and other services, records show.

Council members had previously discussed pulling the Arab American Association’s funding in 2015 after controversial Muslim activist Linda Sarsour, then the group’s executive director, posted a photo on social media of a young Palestinian boy clutching a rock in front of Israeli soldiers and labeled it “the definition of courage,” recalled ex-Councilman Rory Lancman.

The Queens Democrat, who is Jewish and clashed with Sarsour over the post, said many of his Council colleagues said it would be unfair to punish the nonprofit for the behavior of its executive director, who eventually stepped down in 2017.

He said he accepted that outcome but has zero tolerance for organizations that collect taxpayer money and support “hateful conduct.”

“You reach a point where it becomes unacceptable for the government to be funding that mission,” Lancman told The Post. “It becomes unacceptable for the government and taxpayers to be subsidizing that hate.”

Other winners include:

• Muslim American Society of New York, another southern Brooklyn-based group that co-sponsored the Bay Ridge rally. It’s received more than $260,000 in city contracts and Council funding.
• Queens-based Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), which received more than $390,000 and co-sponsored an Oct. 20 rally in Bryant Park organized by Democratic Socialists of America, where hostile demonstrators blocked Midtown traffic and spewed antisemitic chants.
• Tides Center — an advocacy group heavily funded by far-left billionaire kingmaker George Soros that sponsored some nonprofits who’ve justified Hamas’ bloody attacks — earned more than $1.2 million through contracts at the Department of Education and other city agencies. The nonprofit still does business with the city, but a bulk of its contracts were awarded over a decade ago.

“Any group that’s taking taxpayer money shouldn’t be advancing anti-Jewish hate speech or excusing anti-Jewish violence,” said Sara Forman, executive of the pro-Israel group New York Solidarity Network.

“Elected officials going forward need to think long and hard before they reward taxpayer money to these groups who knowingly ally with organizations that have extremist agendas and extreme political views.” 

Follow along with The Post’s coverage of Israel’s war with Hamas

Councilman Kalman Yeger, a Democrat representing Borough Park and other heavily Jewish Brooklyn neighborhoods, agreed, saying, “No group that partners in hate causes…