George Soros, Founder and Chairman of the Open Society Foundations arrives for a meeting in Brussels, on April 27, 2017. Photo by Olivier Hoslet/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

This article originally appeared on Haaretz, and was reprinted here with permission. Sign up here to get Haaretz’s free Daily Brief newsletter delivered to your inbox.

Right-wing activists on Wednesday launched a “Jews Against Soros” grassroots coalition, aimed at combating allegations that attacking the Jewish billionaire is antisemitic.

Spearheaded by senior Newsweek editor Josh Hammer and Missouri attorney general candidate Will Scharf, the group said it will “fight back against the common left-wing smear that opposition to Soros and his sprawling network of political organizations is antisemitic.

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“Attacking Soros for his influence on American politics, to say nothing of his nefarious agenda in Israel itself, isn’t antisemitic,” the coalition stated. They added that U.S. Jews have a special interest in stopping Soros due to his funding of groups that “have spread antisemitic lies about the state of Israel,” citing the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and J Street.

The BDS movement, in fact, previously called to boycott Soros due to his fund’s investment in the Israeli company SodaStream, which held manufacturing facilities in the West Bank. Soros’s fund eventually divested from SodaStream, though it did not say whether the move was the result of BDS pressure. The BDS movement, however, claimed victory regardless.

Soros donated $1 million to J Street’s super PAC in July after AIPAC’s super PAC received $30 million in donations, including six gifts of $1 million or more. He additionally has a long-standing relationship with the organization, including a grant from his Open Society Foundations covering approximately 6 percent of J Street’s annual budget.

“We have been proud of and continue to be proud of our association with George Soros, the Soros family and Open Society. That is something we’ve been proud of since 2009 when they first started funding us,” J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami previously told Haaretz.

“It is simply a fact that Soros funds a huge proportion of the radical left in this country. And he must be stopped,” the Jews Against Soros coalition says, with its website reading “it’s not antisemitic… he’s just the worst.”

The push comes amid renewed significant attention concerning the proliferation of anti-Soros sentiment and conspiracy theories within the Republican Party, and from public figures like Elon Musk.

Such conspiracy theories have become exponentially more common in recent months since a Manhattan grand jury indicted Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a 2016 hush money payment to a woman who accused him of sexual assault. Trump has accused Soros of handpicking and funding Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to politically target the former president.

?

One of the most dishonest accusations is that criticism of George Soros is "antisemitic."

It is not.

Today, @willscharf and I are launching Jews Against Soros (https://t.co/OiaeFEnqtX) to push back against this false narrative—and Soros' agenda. https://t.co/YNTdV7xGoU

— Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) May 31, 2023

This approach is rooted in Soros’ $1 million donation to the Color of Change political action committee, which backed Bragg and other liberal prosecutors in recent elections.

There is no evidence that Soros has pressured law enforcement to pursue any legal case against Trump, nor that these prosecutors are responsible for rising crime. However, the claim was given new life when Musk compared Soros to comic book villain (and fellow Holocaust survivor) Magneto, while adding that Soros “hates humanity,” in a tweet posted back in May.

U.S. antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt had rejected both Musk’s allegations and Israeli antisemitism czar Amichai Chikli’s attempts to defend Musk, saying “when you turn [Soros] into the Rothschild of the 21st century and this villainous caricature with antisemitic overtones, you’ve crossed the line.”

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