Alexander Soros, The Open Society Foundations, and Israel’s Genocide in Gaza

16 May 2025

The Open Society Foundations is a donation project formed by George Soros, a currency and other finances speculator. Money is his field of knowledge and operation. Having accumulated sufficient monetary assets, Soros formed his foundation with the initial aim to affect the thinking and behavior of Eastern European societies. Soros the father is a traditional Cold War enthusiast with a passion to claim advancing open societies. As an American Jewish New Yorker, Soros is part of the community’s development with no clear assertion about commitment to Zionism and Israel, but nevertheless is considered a supporter of this country, its founding and persistent myths, and its negation of Palestine.  

Perhaps to accommodate his ruthless capitalist ideology and practice, Soros’ philanthropy redundantly reiterates its objective to realize human rights and good governance. Soros the elder prides his relentless search for profitable opportunities and markets while his organization hands out money to various groups and offices, not necessarily in bad faith. The combination of Soros and his organization produces a peculiar persona that is hardly convincing or appealing. Traditional American soft power may be more absorbable than Soros’s ideological and practical schizophrenia that rationalizes greed on the one hand and insists on the purity of purpose and the idealization of the founding figure on the other. Soros can be easily traced as the walking in the street Wall Street man depicted in Jay – Z’s ‘99 Problems’. Soros’ historical narrative about his upbringing that emerges almost in every interview conducted with him has been reliably questioned and, in any event, does not contribute to a better understanding of Soros’ character, described by the New Yorker as the ‘Money Man.’

Soros is also involved in domestic American politics. He evolved to a Clintonian given the politics of the day in the United States, and stuck with Hillary after Bill, within and outside the Democratic party. To ease African–American / American Jewish tensions, particularly in New York, Soros selected to support the comforting cause of supporting progressive prosecutors. In alignment with the untalented Bill Maher and the superb but politically misguided Barbara Streisand, Soros dislikes activism on behalf of Palestinians’ rights, particularly on American campuses.

Aryeh Neier served as head of Soros’s foundation in the latter part of his career. In the traditional American context, that was a substantial reputational boost for Soros, having one of the leaders of what is known as the ‘American human rights movement’ working for him and leading the organization. Both shared the American geopolitical prism, particularly the prevailing one during the days of the Cold War. Like Soros, Neier’s understanding of the Palestine issue is scarce to non-existent, probably for the same reasons. The progression in this topic among Neier’s protégé at Human Rights Watch, Ken Roth, demonstrates the level of knowledge his predecessor possessed.

Neier’s apologetic article in the New York Review of Books from June 2024, concluding that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, may have raised an eyebrow, if not pure anger, among the elder Soros. George Soros has never proclaimed a word about Palestine and maintained his legacy throughout Israel’s onslaught on Gaza. If we disregard Soros’s brutal capitalist nature and grant credibility to his quest for recognition as a contributing intellectual, he can be placed together with Harvard’s Lawrence Summers and Yale’s Robert Post in his antagonism towards discourse on Palestinians’ rights in the United States. President Biden, who oversaw American military and diplomatic support to Israel’s genocide in Gaza under the routine direction and supervision of the Israel lobby, awarded Soros the Medal of Honor at the end of his tenure.  

As with many wealthy individuals, family matters the most for Soros. Dispute with his son Jonathan led Soros, the father, to hand the philanthropy empire to his younger son, Alexander. Neier’s most significant beneficence as a former member of the leadership of the Soros foundation was to reveal that the destined heir to the philanthropy and political oligarchy was never Alexander rather Jonathan.

A spoiled younger son with banal envious relations with other family members in a wealthy family, Alexander Soros is the ultimate photo figure without any genuine offering in any field other than being the relative of his father. George Soros’ gravest challenge was to pull his son from the depths of New York’s nihilist party scene even when doing his PhD in philosophy. Several stories have depicted young Soros’s lifestyle and character with various political motivations, including the New York Times, the New York Post, and the Daily Mail. Many of the embarrassing pictures of wild Alexander have disappeared from the internet. But that is his private life that he is entitled to.

Politically, Alexander Soros courageously places himself against the billionaire titans supporting the Republican party and Trump. His affirmation of progressive and liberal values is confined to the domestic American arena. Alexander Soros is unwilling and unable to challenge the Israel lobby on American policy towards Palestine. He is practically a constituent of Chuck Schumer. A precise profile of young Soros from April 2025 in New York Magazine exposes perceptions of his intellectual capacity and judgment by his colleagues at the Foundation. He is also quoted as saying about organizations that advocated for Palestinians’ rights and received funding from the Foundation:

“What the hell did they do, by the way? We gave them money, and now all they do is talk about Palestine. It’s ridiculous."

Soros the elder and his son, as much of the elite of the American Jewish community in New York, have never been interested in advancing the rights of Palestinians. Their understanding of Palestine is limited to the dominant American Jewish community, where the country and its people either do not exist or are irrelevant in the best tradition of Golda Meir’s messianic politics and historical consciousness. For governance purposes and legitimacy considerations, the Foundation would gain cogitation if it decides to dispose from Alexander Soros and the opaque legacy of George Soros. Political oligarchy and adherence to the Israel lobby are a devastating combination that should be confronted, not adhered to.

Alexander Soros. Source: Wall Street Journal, 11 March 2024.