Group targeting Glenn Beck funded by Soros

George Soros

An organization leading a crusade demanding Fox News fire host Glenn Beck is backed by philanthropist George Soros and is tied to many of the liberal activists that Beck routinely excoriates on his highly rated program, WND has learned.

Jewish Funds for Justice, or JFSJ, a charity that campaigns for social change, delivered a petition with 10,000 signatures to Fox News this past week in protest of a program in which Beck specifically targeted Soros, calling the businessman the "puppet master." JFSJ deemed the show anti-Semitic.

During the program, Beck highlighted nine people of the 20th century who contributed to what he called "the era of the big lie." All nine of those figures were Jewish, including psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, columnist Walter Lippman and Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania.

JFSJ is funded by Soros' Open Society Institute.

In 2009, the Open Society provided a $150,000 grant to the JFSJ and its associated group, the Funder's Collaborative on Youth Organizing.

In 2010, the Open Society provided a $200,000 grant to last a period of two years.

JFSJ says it is seeking to create a just, fair and compassionate America, with social and economic security for all citizens. The group believes that "by transforming leaders, we are better able to transform society" and "create a more just world."

The group also promotes "green" jobs, immigration reform and was a champion of President Obama's health-care bill.

JFSJ has worked with a who's who of radical left groups and leaders.

Many of its leaders and board members come from the organized labor community. The group's president and CEO, Simon Greer, previously worked as a labor and community organizer and social change leader for 15 years.

Greer recently wrote that he has had the "privilege of getting to know George Soros. During our conversations, he made it clear that his experience surviving the Holocaust seared a simple but profound truth in his brain."

JFSJ's runs a Selah Leadership Program, which provides community organizing training to local leaders. As of mid-2007, more than 200 leaders from 165 organizations had gone through the program.

Past participants include Heather Booth, founder of the radical Midwest Academy, which teaches the tactics of radical community organizer Saul Alinsky.

WND was first to report that the Woods Fund, a Chicago nonprofit on which Barack Obama served as paid director alongside Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers, provided money to Midwest Academy.

WND also broke the story that the executive director of Midwest Academy was part of the team that developed and delivered a group of volunteers for Obama's 2008 campaign.

Another past participant in JFSJ's training program is Working Families Party Executive Director Dan Cantor.

JFSJ was listed as an endorsing organization of the One Nation rally in Washington, D.C., in October, which was meant to counter Glenn Beck's Washington event in August.

The group has previously worked with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.

"We are proud to be associated with the work of CAIR," declared Jeffrey Denko, JFSJ's senior vice president.

With research by Brenda J. Elliott.