Alana Goodman of the Washington Free Beacon reports on the money behind anti-Israel Jewish groups.
An Iranian-American businessman who bankrolls the country’s largest pro-regime lobbying organization, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), is also a donor to left-wing Jewish organizations hostile to Israel, according to financial disclosure records.
Francis Najafi, an Iranian-born Phoenix investor and large donor to NIAC, which lobbies for policies favorable to the Iranian government, has also been a generous supporter of the anti-Israel Jewish group J Street and and the anti-Israel publication Jewish Currents, to which he has donated $175,000 and $25,000 respectively, according to the organizations’ financial filings.
Najafi is also a board member and donor at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, an anti-interventionist think tank that is run by NIAC’s founder and former president, Trita Parsi.
The donation records are the latest indication of a close connection between left-wing Jewish groups and advocates for closer U.S. relations with the Iranian government, which bombed Israel in April and has been financing Hamas’s war against the Jewish state. Last year, J Street, NIAC, and other left-leaning groups—including the Open Society Foundations and Human Rights Watch—teamed up to launch a lobbying campaign to revive the nuclear deal with Iran, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Najafi, J Street, and Jewish Currents did not respond to requests for comment.
J Street and Jewish Currents have both criticized Israel’s military operations, with J Street calling for a ceasefire in March and urging the Biden administration and Congress to “impose clear guardrails on Israeli policy” as a condition of military aid to the Jewish state. Just four days after Hamas’s mass terrorist attacks, the outlet published an article describing Israel’s military response as a “textbook case of genocide unfolding in front of our eyes.”
Najafi, the CEO of the Pivotal Group investment firm, has donated over $600,000 to NIAC since 2011 through his private charity, the Pivotal Foundation, according to tax records. His contributions to J Street and Jewish Currents began in 2019 and 2022 respectively.
