PULSE POINTS:
❓What Happened: Alex Soros, heir to billionaire plutocrat George Soros, criticized the Sunrise Movement for diverging from its environmentalist goals to focus on “Palestine.”
👥 Who’s Involved: Alex Soros, Sunrise Movement, George Soros, Democracy PAC, Sixteen-Thirty Fund.
📍 Where & When: United States, during and after the 2020 election season.
💬 Key Quote: “We gave them money, and now all they do is talk about Palestine. It’s ridiculous.” — Alex Soros
⚠️ Impact: The controversy led to accusations of antisemitism against the Sunrise Movement for boycotting events with Zionist Jewish groups and called into question the use of funds by Soros-backed organizations.
IN FULL:
Alex Soros, son of billionaire plutocrat George Soros and current chairman of his Open Society Foundations activism empire, has publicly voiced dissatisfaction with the Sunrise Movement. In an interview, Alex Soros expressed frustration over the environmentalist group’s focus on Israel and the Palestinians rather than climate change.
“What the hell did they do, by the way?” he said of the group, which receives around a third of its funding from Soros-supported entities. “We gave them money, and now all they do is talk about Palestine. It’s ridiculous.”
The Sunrise Movement, which publicly identifies its mission as attacking fossil fuels, received $750,000 during the 2020 election period from sources associated with Soros. However, tensions have since emerged between the group and its billionaire funder due to recent controversies involving its Washington, D.C. chapter.
In October 2021, the D.C. branch of Sunrise Movement declined participation in a rally for D.C. statehood, citing the involvement of certain Jewish organizations known for their support of Israel. This decision was met with significant backlash, including accusations of anti-Semitism, due to the group’s call to exclude what it described as “Zionist” groups.
While George Soros is ethnically Jewish, the liberal atheist has not historically been a supporter of the Jewish State. The Israeli government has even defended his critics, such as Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, against accusations of anti-Semitism, saying such allegations should not be used to “delegitimize criticism of George Soros, who continuously undermines Israel’s democratically elected governments by funding organisations that defame the Jewish state and seek to deny it the right to defend itself.”
