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A progressive think tank founded by Anuradha Mittal transferred $3,000 from Ben & Jerry’s Foundation to the Badil Center, which is on record defending “armed struggle.”
By Pesach Benson, United With Israel
Anuradha Mittal, the chair of Ben & Jerry’s board of directors, has funneled thousands of dollars from the ice cream company to a radical Palestinian non-governmental organization that denies Israel’s right to exist. The funds were transferred through the Oakland Institute, a progressive think tank founded by Mittal in 2004.
According to the London Jewish Chronicle, Mittal’s Oakland Institute transferred $3,000 to the Badil Resource Centre for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights.
In 2016, Badil, which is based in Bethlehem, issued a controversial report defending “armed struggle” by the Palestinians. In 2019, the organization further dug in its heels and rejected new European Union requirements that NGOs not work with or provide funds to people or organizations on the EU’s designated terror list.
The $3,000 which the Oakland-based Oakland Institute transferred to Badil came from an $80,000 grant supplied to the think-tank by the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation. The foundation’s web site says it funds organizations in the U.S. that promote social justice. The fund was originally created in 1985.
The Chronicle didn’t specify when the Oakland Institute transferred the money to Badil.
Badi’s 2016 report argued, “The right to resist of people under foreign and colonial domination, including armed struggle, and the applicability of these provisions to the Palestinian people has been reaffirmed by many other UNGA resolutions . . .
“Equating all forms of resistance with terrorism as a justification for suppression lacks legal basis, as the Palestinian struggle for liberation is legitimate and all actions carried out against Israel for that purpose are therefore lawful.”
NGO-Monitor, a Jerusalem-based NGO watchdog, pointed out that Mittal has previously tweeted in support of BDS, signed a petition calling for an end to U.S. arms sales to Israel, and retweeted support for the release of Khalida Jarrar, a senior figure in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group,
NGO-Monitor also noted that the Oakland Institute has also partnered with other problematic NGOs such as the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions and the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee (HRC). ICAHD was closed in 2015 by court order over issues of transparency about its funding, while the HRC’s rhetoric accuses Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” “genocide,” “apartheid” and “collective punishment.”
The board of the Vermont-based ice cream company announced in July it is boycotting Jewish settlements Judea and Samaria. The board initially sought to boycott all of Israel, but the parent company, the London-based Unilever, wouldn’t allow that.
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