Tides, Soros, and the New Face of “Pro-Israel” Advocacy

Why did the same network funding Jewish Voice for Peace bankroll the TLV Institute?

The nonprofit that calls itself the Tel Aviv Institute (legally registered as To Be Honest with the IRS) has presented itself as a new model of Jewish advocacy. Yet a number of issues have come to light about its origins, its funding, and its message. Public filings indicate that George Soros’s Open Society Foundations contributed tens of millions of dollars to the Tides Foundation. According to IRS filings, Tides reported transferring over a million dollars to Hen Mazzig’s organization. There is no evidence that Soros personally funded Mazzig directly, but the overlap of funding streams raises legitimate questions. One begins to suspect that honesty is the very thing absent from this project.

In 2019, Tides cut a check for $102,500 to the Tel Aviv Institute. That was followed by $400,000 in 2021, $150,000 in 2022, and another $400,000 in 2023. In five years, more than $1 million went into Mazzig’s organization. All of this was funneled from the same network that bankrolls organizations promoting boycotts of Israel, waging lawfare in international courts, and slandering Zionism as colonialism.

Proof of the Tides Foundation transfer to “To Be Honest” in 2023.

Tides styles itself as a charity, comparable to donor-advised funds offered by Schwab, Fidelity, or Vanguard. And legally, it is. But its donor-advised structure is precisely the problem. It exists to allow wealthy patrons to move vast sums into activist projects while obscuring the true source of the money. The million-plus dollars that reached To Be Honest might have come through Soros-backed contributions or through another hard-left financial backer. Charity in form, it is structured in a way that obscures accountability. Worse still, Tides itself acknowledges that it imposes restrictions on its grantees. On its own site, Tides states: “Tides requires that all grantees comply with U.S. laws and regulations, including restrictions related to lobbying and political activity. We also review all proposed activities to ensure alignment with our values and commitment to equity, human rights, and sustainability.” Tides also makes clear that eligibility to open a fund requires so-called mission alignment: “All funds and their grantmaking purposes must be aligned with Tides’ vision, mission and approach.” On its mission page, Tides defines this vision as “a world of shared prosperity and social justice, founded on equality and human rights, and a sustainable environment.” In other words, the money does not flow freely. It flows through a filter that ensures recipients conform to the regulatory requirements and the ideological commitments of Tides itself.

Fund requirements at the Tides Foundation.

Part of the mission at the Tides Foundation.

The beneficiaries prove the point. Tides has delivered funds to Jewish Voice for Peace, which agitates to cut off U.S. aid and campaigns for boycotts, and to Al-Haq, a Palestinian NGO tied to the PFLP that drags Israel before hostile international tribunals. Critics argue that the fact the Tel Aviv Institute received funding routed through the same network that also supports anti-Israel groups should raise concern.

Soros’s role is a matter of record. His foundations granted at least $25.8 million to Tides in 2020 and 2021, $3.35 million in 2022, and $8.18 million in 2023 — at least $37.33 million in four years. NGO Monitor has identified another $17.8 million going to the broader Tides network in just 2022 and 2023. While Soros never wrote a personal check to Mazzig, public filings show his millions may have helped fill the same reservoir from which Tides later drew to support To Be Honest.

And what has this funding produced? Not a defense of Israel on its own terms, but a rebranded Zionism. Israel becomes a Pride float, a diversity accessory, a prop in America’s culture wars. This is not advocacy. It is surrender marketed as relevance.

Mazzig has been explicit. In a Times of Israel blog, he scolded critics of critical race theory, insisting that “Jews are not a political football.” And yet he made them precisely that, reducing Jewish legitimacy to a bargaining chip in progressive politics. This is not fortitude. It is weakness dressed up as moral seriousness.

He compounds the irony by calling himself a “Senior Fellow” at an institute he co-founded. The charade is obvious. Having built the apparatus, he now presents himself as an outside analyst of it. It is a title borrowed from think tanks to cloak responsibility while retaining influence.

His public pronouncements grow worse. In April 2024, he tweeted that “the two-state solution is the only viable way” to secure peace, and in doing so declared that “radicals on both sides” were to blame for decades of failure. With that phrase, he placed Jews who believe in their right to settle the ancestral homeland on the same moral plane as Hamas terrorists. This is not moderation. It is moral illiteracy. To equate Jewish builders with jihadist butchers is to debase argument. To suggest that both sides are equally guilty is to obscure the reality of who seeks peace and who seeks destruction.

After two Israeli embassy staffers were murdered in Washington by a single killer, Mazzig may well have condemned the perpetrator separately, but he made sure to pivot quickly to pushing for gun control. He tweeted, “It is disturbing that two days after an antisemitic murder, the conversation in the Jewish community is more about arming ourselves than about regulating guns. Elias Rodriguez’s antisemitism would have been far less deadly if he hadn’t had access to a gun.” Even Jewish blood, it seems, had to be pressed into service for his domestic progressive agenda. That is not leadership. It is opportunism.

The Tel Aviv Institute’s official response to criticism is even more revealing. In glossy graphics, it insists that “Tides has never donated a dime to us.” This is a word game. Tides, as they well know, operates as a donor-advised fund. The money flows through Tides because donors choose it as their vehicle. That is precisely the point: TBH willingly accepts money routed through an institution whose donor pool finances groups that vilify Israel. To protest that “Tides didn’t donate, a donor used Tides” is like a politician caught with lobbyist cash claiming the lobbyist merely “processed the payment.”

Part of the TLV Institute spin.

Another claim is that suggesting problems with DAF money is just “the latest in a series of baseless attacks.” But the attack is not baseless. It is rooted in IRS filings. The numbers are in black and white. To pretend otherwise is a tactic as old as politics: dismiss your critics as hysterical while refusing to engage with the evidence.

They further declare that “division only weakens us.” This bromide ignores the fact that what weakens us more than division is dishonesty. Jewish advocacy cannot be built on concealment, on blurred lines between hostile donor networks and institutions claiming to speak for Israel. Unity built on silence is not unity at all. It is complicity.

Additional parts of the TLV Institute spin.

The Institute even scolds critics as “extremists” who “hate moderation and principle.” Here again we see the rhetorical inversion. Those who raise legitimate questions about funding sources are branded as extremists, while the organization that equates Jewish settlers with Hamas terrorists congratulates itself as the embodiment of moderation. This is gaslighting. It is an attempt to close off debate by anathematizing dissent.

Finally, their slogan declares: “The truth about our funding: why the smears against us don’t add up.” Yet the filings add up all too clearly. The numbers are public. The sums are real. What does not add up is the claim that a group can take over a million dollars through Tides and then insist that it has nothing to do with Tides. It is sophistry, and it insults the intelligence of anyone paying attention.

This is not advocacy. It is evasion. It is the art of laundering language. And it is defeatism masquerading as principle. The Tel Aviv Institute’s response reveals more about its desperation than about its integrity. It also raises a deeper question: has the Institute’s dependence on donor-advised funds and progressive financial pipelines pushed its version of pro-Israel activism further and further left in order to keep the support flowing? The Jewish people do not need this kind of advocacy. They need defenders who speak plainly: Israel’s legitimacy is unconditional, its survival non-negotiable, its existence a moral fact. Anything less is not advocacy but sabotage.

The Tel Aviv Institute is neither honest nor a shield. It is a mask. And the Jewish state deserves better.