Chinese Communist Party-allied group behind Hamas-friendly protests in United States

A little-known “socialist” activist hub in New York City pushing pro-China talking points is helping to organize protests against Israel in the United States alongside shadowy dark money groups sympathetic to Hamas and other Palestinian terror factions, records show.

The People’s Forum, which dubs itself “a movement incubator for working class and marginalized communities to build unity across historic lines of division at home and abroad,” is co-leading a “Shut it down for Palestine” event Thursday in Manhattan and marched in Washington, D.C., last Saturday with tens of thousands of protesters boosting Hamas, whose Oct. 7 attacks against the Jewish state have since killed more than 1,400 Israelis. That same charity hosts events with entities downplaying China‘s genocide against ethnic Uyghurs and has pocketed millions of dollars combined from groups tied to a reported “Chinese propaganda” influence operation, according to tax forms reviewed by the Washington Examiner.

The People’s Forum’s leading involvement in the pro-Palestinian movement amid the bloody Middle East conflict further underscores how China-allied organizations are sowing discord in the U.S. while officials in China, Russia, and Iran leverage social media to proliferate disinformation in connection to the war.

In interviews, members of Congress and foreign policy experts raised national security concerns over the apparent influence on the Israel issue of the People’s Forum, a nonprofit group that, on its latest publicly available financial disclosures, lists an address for a New York City space featuring a cafe, theater, library, and “media laboratory.”

“Their funding train depends in part on American progressives entrenched in the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda apparatus,” said Michael Sobolik, senior fellow for Indo-Pacific studies at the American Foreign Policy Council think tank. “That this organization is now organizing anti-Israel political demonstrations in America shouldn’t surprise anyone. It should, however, be a wake-up call to Americans, many of whom are unwittingly parroting Beijing’s talking points about Israel and Gaza.”

House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) told the Washington Examiner she supports “immediately investigating the People’s Forum and organizations like it to determine what level of funding and coordination these pro-Hamas rallies have received from America’s adversaries.”

The People’s Forum was granted tax-exempt status in October 2017, an IRS determination letter shows. Since that time, the charity has been intent on “bringing socialist ideas to the new generations of organizers and activists,” according to its website’s donation page.

This has meant the People’s Forum hailing China’s “new era led by Xi Jinping,” the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian general secretary, as well as hosting events to support China’s “revolutionary struggle” and push back against America’s “political persecution of overseas Chinese people, and economic and trade aggression against China.” It’s also meant hosting events with Code Pink, a left-wing antiwar group that has sought to justify CCP genocide against Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang region, and Qiao Collective, which “aims to challenge rising U.S. aggression towards the People’s Republic of China” and promotes CCP narratives on social media, according to the New York Times and New Lines Magazine.

Lately, it’s meant the People’s Forum protesting “in solidarity” for Palestinians on the heels of Hamas launching the deadliest terror attack against the Jewish people since the Holocaust. And the People’s Forum’s efforts to prop up terror is a window into how the “radical pro-Hamas left and Communist China” share the same goal of desiring “to wipe America and Israel off the map,” according to Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), who sits on the House Select CCP Committee.

‘Wipe America and Israel off the map’

The People’s Forum is listed on a flyer posted on social media for last Saturday’s national pro-Palestinian march, and it assisted ANSWER, a left-wing coalition that justified Oct. 7, in fundraising and providing transportation details to the public, a Google form shows. The event saw statues defaced and other acts of vandalism, including red paint smeared on the White House gates as protesters chanted “F*** Joe Biden” and tried to climb the fence, according to social media posts.

The New York group also coordinated with pro-Palestinian partners for an October rally in Newark, New Jersey, among other locations, and on Thursday is demanding a ceasefire and end to U.S. aid to Israel at New York City’s Bryant Park, flyers show.

In late October, the People’s Forum even reposted a video on social media of Leila Khaled, a convicted Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist, talking about “the unbreakable resistance of the Palestinian people to the Zionist project.”

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