FCL-Closed Democracy Center’s Freedom House-ADL-Pritzker Links (4)

The Freedom House Board of Trustees, that includes an Anti-Defamation League [ADL] national board member, the former board chair of the U.S. subsidiary of the BAE Systems PLC weapons manufacturer, the Israel Policy Forum’s treasurer and the president of the Foundation for Civic Leadership [FCL], which shut down Cambridge’s Democracy Center building at 45 Mt. Auburn St. in July 2024, also includes Retired U.S. General Joseph L. Votel--the former “commander of US Central Command (CENTCOM), which is responsible for US and coalition military operations in the Middle East, the Levant, and Central and South Asia,” according to the Freedom House website.

And, according to the same website, during Freedom House Trustee Votel’s “39 years of military service,” Foundation for Civic Leadership President Ian Simmons’s colleague on the Freedom House Board of Trustees “commanded special operations and conventional military forces at every level, including combat in Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq;” and “prior to his assignment at CENTCOM, he “served as commander of US Special Operations Command and the Joint Special Operations Command.”

In addition, the Freedom House Board of Trustees also includes former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs Goli Ameri and former Goldman Sachs Vice President, former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Energy, Sanctions, and Commodities and former White House Executive Assistant to the National Security Adviser Peter Bass; while the Freedom House Board of Trustees’ current Co-Chair, Jane Harman, is a “former ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee” who “ has served on advisory boards for the CIA, the Director of National Intelligence, and the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Stat,” according to the Freedom House website.

Primary funding for the programs of the organization, on whose board of trustees the FCL’s president (and Blue Haven Initiative investment firm Co-founder and husband of Liesel Pritzker Simmons) sits, comes in the form of grants from the U.S. government’s Agency for International Development [AID] and the U.S. State Department, as well as from the NATO member governments of Canada, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden, the European Union, and private foundations like the Ford Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation.

In addition, according to the Freedom House website, in recent years Freedom House has received four $100,000+ donations from donors who “wish to remain anonymous” and five $50,000+ donations from donors who “wish to remain anonymous.”

Prior to being appointed in April 2024 to lead the U.S. government’s “Voice of America” [VOA] propaganda agency as its current director, Michael Abramowitz was the U.S. State Department-funded Freedom House president for seven years.

And before being named Freedom House’s president, the current Voice of America propaganda agency director had “previously directed the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Levine Institute for Holocaust Education and led the museum’s genocide prevention efforts;” and “for nearly 25 years” had “worked at The Washington Post, rising to national editor and then White House correspondent,” according to the VOA website.

So, not surprisingly, the text of a November 7, 2023 statement by former Freedom House President Abramowitz, that was posted on the website of the organization on whose board of trustees FCL’s president was then a member of, contained the following disputed Israeli and U.S. government propagandistic assertions:

“As we reach the end of the first month in the current fighting between Israel and Hamas, I wanted to share some thoughts on the conflict, which started with the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. The coordinated terrorist attack on October 7 has since turned into a full-scale war…

“Hamas’s attack on Israel was a brutal act of terrorism, and the latest addition to a centuries-old legacy of antisemitic violence. The murder of children, the elderly, and other innocent people at the hands of a group committed to killing Jews and eradicating the state of Israel is unacceptable and unjustified, regardless of circumstance. Especially shocking has been the escalation of naked antisemitism around the world in the aftermath of the attack—and the complete lack of empathy in some quarters for Jewish suffering. Given the history of the Jewish people, it is hard to overstate the trauma experienced by Israelis in recent weeks…

“…We must clearly distinguish between Hamas and the Palestinian people. Hamas has imposed a repressive authoritarian rule on the people of Gaza...Israel is a democracy and a sovereign state, and like every state it has the right and obligation to defend itself from those who aim to destroy it…

“It is no easy feat to prosecute a war against an enemy that hides fighters and weaponry among civilians...For its part, Hamas must immediately release the remaining hostages…”

Yet in his Nov. 7, 2023 statement, the Freedom House president did not call, for example, for the immediate release by the Israeli government of all of the thousands of Palestinians political prisoners and detainees who were held within Israeli prisons prior to Oct. 7, 2023 and for an immediate and permanent end to all U.S. government weapons shipments to the IDF--like most U.S. antiwar Movement student and non-student organizers living in Cambridge, Somerville and Boston do?

According to Freedom House’s Form 990 financial filings for 2020 and 2021, incidentally, between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2022, the total annual compensation that Voice of America Director and former Freedom House President Abramowitz was paid by Freedom house increased from $242,535 to $323,682; and Freedom House Inc.’s total revenues increased from $64,626,506 to $93,499,518 during the same period. (end of article)