Children’s charity funded by Singham, Soros tied to Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine: report

A California children’s charity funded by billionaire George Soros stands accused of sending cash which may have ended up in the hands of a Palestinian terrorist organization, according to a new report obtained by The Post.
The Berkeley-based Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) features Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters and activist academic Noam Chomsky on its advisory board and claims to provide humanitarian aid to children in the Middle East.
It was founded by husband-and-wife activists Barbara Lubin and Howard Levine in 1988, but has strayed far from its original mission and has been tied to a US-designated terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine through its funding of other groups, according to a new report by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI).
Since the Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023, MECA “emerged as a critical US charitable fundraising vehicle promoted across the pro-Palestinian activist ecosystem,” according to the report.
“America built the most generous philanthropic infrastructure in human history,” said Joel Finkelstein, an NCRI senior scientist.
“When American foundations bankroll groups tied to foreign terrorist organizations, when senators, members of Congress and prestigious academics endorse it … they’re turning the country’s own institutions against it,” he claimed.
MECA and Soros did not respond to The Post’s requests for comment.
But as MECA’s grants to foreign groups grew exponentially, their reporting became less transparent, the NCRI report claims.
MECA brought in more than $18 million in revenues in fiscal 2024, according to public records. That same year, the group’s payouts rose to nearly $11 million — nearly five times the previous year — while “grant descriptions were progressively replaced with generic labels such as ‘community projects’,” according to NCRI.
By 2025, all foreign grants were described with the generic labels, obscuring their true purpose, the report claims.
“The convergence of these findings raises concerns about whether donors in the United States may be unknowingly donating to a group that ultimately benefits a foreign terrorist organization,” according to NCRI, a nonprofit that studies extremism.
Between 2017 and 2025, MECA’s tax filings show $35 million in foreign grant payouts, in total. Some of that money went to groups accused of being affiliated with the PFLP, including the Union of Health Work Committees and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, both based in the West Bank, territory under control of the Palestinian Authority.
The UHWC and UAWC have both been designated as terror organizations by Israel and accused of funneling cash to PFLP, claims which they have denied.
Mona El-Farra, who once served as deputy director of UHWC, a PFLP “civil society” affiliate, has long overseen MECA’s Gaza-based humanitarian projects, according to its website.
Doing so “demonstrates an overlapping, interconnected structure across organizations,” the report says. “This is especially true given the fact that MECA has funded the UHWC, El-Farra’s former group.”
In addition to Waters, an 18-term Congresswoman who represents California’s 43rd District, MECA previously included poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou, who died in 2014, on its advisory board.
MECA also has links to anti-Israel organizations financed by China-based US tech millionaire Neville Singham.
Last week, the powerful House Ways and Means Committee subpoenaed three nonprofits connected to Singham, including the People’s Forum and Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, for failing to cough up a “single responsive document” in response to the committee’s prior requests for information over the fate of $39 million routed from China-based Singham to the US groups.
The Department of Justice has also separately opened up a probe into the Marxist millionaire’s personal dealings, according to reports.
Meanwhile, MECA was on the founding committee of the ANSWER Coalition, a Marxist-Leninist antiwar group created days after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, according to the NCRI
ANSWER coordinated many of the pro-Hamas protests in the US after Oct. 7. Lubin, who died last year, was known as a “leading ANSWER activist.” MECA had paid ANSWER $1,000 for a stage rental in 2004, according to public filings.
In 2004, ANSWER was behind the creation of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which is bankrolled by Singham and also conducts fundraising for MECA, the report claims.
Singham did not respond to a request for comment.
George Soros’s Open Society Foundations gave MECA a total of $900,000 between 2017 and 2024 while Singham’s New York-based People’s Forum gave MECA $16,420 in 2024 after “a humanitarian relief fundraiser,” according to public filings.