FCL-Closed Democracy Center’s Freedom House-ADL-Pritzker Links (3)

In recent years the president of the Foundation for Civic Leadership [FCL] that shut down Cambridge’s Democracy Center building in July 2024, Ian Simmons, has been sitting on a Freedom House Board of Trustees which, besides including former BAE Systems Inc. Chair of the Board Michael Chertoff and Anti-Defamation League [ADL] National Board Member Sharon S. Nazarian, has also included a former board member and current treasurer of the Israel Policy Forum named Thomas S. Kahn.

Besides sitting next to the FCL president on the Freedom House Board of Trustees in recent years, Israel Policy Forum Treasurer and Freedom House Trustee Kahn is also an American Jewish Committee [AJC] and Jewish Electorate Institute board member, the Vice Chair of the National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry, a National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute consultant and a Council on Foreign Relations [CFR] member.

According to the Israel Policy Forum’s website, Freedom House Trustee and Israel Policy Forum Treasurer Kahn “has been on the national board of governors of the American Jewish Committee for 25 years, chaired the D.C. chapter, and is the current co-chair of AJC’s Central Europe Institute;” and is also the “chair of the Policy Committee of the Jewish Democratic Council of America.”

The Israel Policy Forum’s board chair, David A. Sherman, is “the past Chairman of the Israel Action Network, the leading national organization combating the boycott, divestiture, and sanctions movement,” a Crown Family Foundation board member and the “Chairman of Benj. E. Sherman & Sons, Inc., a Chicago-based real estate firm”, which “has 100 employees focusing on apartment ownership around the country,” according to the same website.

Although most Cambridge, Somerville and Boston antiwar student and non-student Movement organizers and their supporter are opposed to the U.S. government’s policy of continuing to ship munitions to the IDF, on May 9, 2024 the website of the Israel Policy Forum (whose treasurer sits on the Freedom House Board of Trustees with the Foundation for Civic Leadership [FCL] president, who also co-founded the Blue Haven Initiative capitalist investment firm with his ultra-rich wife, Liesel Pritzker Simmons) posted a “STATEMENT ON U.S. PARTIALLY WITHHOLDING ARMS FROM ISRAEL”, which included the following text:

“We are disheartened by the partial withholding of U.S. military support from Israel while the threats from Hamas and other actors hostile to Israel are acute, and when the U.S.-Israel partnership should be at its strongest.

“We urge the Biden administration to communicate clearly that this action does not erode its full commitment to the security of the State of Israel, and its support of the critical objectives of returning the Israeli hostages held by Hamas and of eliminating Hamas’ capacity to govern Gaza or present a serious military threat.

“U.S. support for Israel’s security remains essential…A military operation in Rafah is supported by a broad spectrum of Israelis, and Hamas’ leadership hiding amidst the civilian population there must be held to account for launching this war on October 7...

“We urge the Israeli government to work with the United States to ensure close coordination in the critical days ahead, to align on a plan to bring the fighting in Gaza to an end without leaving Hamas’ military capabilities in place, and, most pressingly, to secure the return of all Israeli hostages while a significant number remain alive…”

Yet by providing U.S. military support and weapons shipments to the Israeli government since October 7, 2023, the U.S. government, with the support of the Israel Policy Forum, has helped the IDF wage a genocidal war in Gaza which has claimed the lives of between 39,965 and a Lancet-estimated 186,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, as of August 14, 2024. (end of part 3 of article. To be continued.)