George Soros funded 'Drop Site News,' a pro-Hamas news portal

George Soros's left-leaning philanthropic organization, Open Society Foundations (OSF), awarded a grant in 2024 of $250,000 for the purpose of supporting the creation of an office for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) for the anti-Israel news portal Drop Site News.

According to an exclusive from The Washington Free Beacon (WFB), the foundation of the Hungarian tycoon channeled its contribution to this news portal through the Social Security Works Education Fund, a nonprofit organization whose mission it says is to "educate the general public, media, and policy-makers about the benefits of protecting social security benefits."

The Washington Free Beacon revealed that the media outlet has never made public the funding received from Open Society Foundations. However, the anti-Israel news portal solicits donations through the Social Security Works Education Fund, intended "to support establishing a Drop Site News MENA desk to to [sic] bridge a critical information gap in independent journalism," according to OSF's spending database.

This organization acts as a "fiscal sponsor" of Drop Site News, which allows donors to make tax-deductible contributions to this media outlet, which does not enjoy tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), WFB reported.

According to The Washington Free Beacon research, the news portal's main source of revenue has been coverage of the war in Gaza, from an anti-Israel point of view, and has reported little on Social Security or any other welfare benefit program.

In official statements with Hamas

Drop Site News was founded in July 2024 by journalists Ryan Grim and Jeremy Scahill. One of its first articles was titled 'On the Record with Hamas', a series of interviews Scahill conducted with the terrorist group's leaders, in which they "discuss their motivations, political objectives, and the human costs of their armed uprising against Israel."

"The past nine months of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza have spurred an unprecedented global awakening to the plight of the Palestinian people," reads the first line of Scahill's article.

"I hope that these articles give the public deeper insight into their decision to launch the October 7 attacks in Israel and how the group views the past nine months of the U.S.-backed Israeli war of annihilation against the Palestinians of Gaza,"Jeremy Scahill wrote in the entry in his news portal bio.

Pro-Hamas and pro-Hezbollah reporting

The Washington Free Beacon also reported that the Middle East section of Drop Site News is run by Sharif Abdel Kouddous, a reporter who works from Egypt and New York. WFB explained that Kouddous wrote a story for the portal from the funeral of the leader of Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrallah. In another article, Kouddous condemned the killing earlier this year of Anas Al-Sharif, a suspected Hamas member who worked for the Al Jazeera news channel.

Grim and Scahill worked until 2022 for The Intercept, the left-leaning media outlet funded by the founder of eBay, Pierre Omidyar.

According to The Washington Free Beacon, the Social Security Works Education Fund, Drop Site News and Open Society Foundations did not respond to a request to comment.