Soros hands control of his billion pound foundation to son Alex
Picked by George Soros to take over his foundation, Alex has written of being the 'son of a Hungarian Jew' adding 'my politics are shaped by my family history and being Jewish'
Lee Harpin is the Jewish News's political editor
The billionaire philanthropist George Soros has confirmed he is passing control of his multi-billion dollar foundation on to his 37-year-old son Alexander.
In an interview on Sunday, the 92 year-old financier, and frequent target of antisemitic conspiracy theories, said he was handing control of his Open Society Foundations (OSF) and the rest of his £25 billion empire to his son from his second marriage because “he’s earned it.”
Alex has previously written of how “I am the son of a Hungarian Jew who survived the Nazis… my politics are shaped by my family history and being Jewish.”
He has also been fiercely critical of the current Israeli government.
“I worry when Jews in America start to support policies in Israel which they wouldn’t support in America,” he told Philanthropy News Digest, “which don’t allow for separation of church and state, which don’t give full rights to people who are technically living under occupation, and which don’t allow for immigration of people who aren’t Jews, or for non-Jews to become citizens.”
He added, “I will always support Israel as a nation state, but I don’t live there.”
Alex admitted:” In the end, I don’t believe in a Jewish world and a non-Jewish world.”
Soros has remained one of the largest donors to the US Democratic Party, and Alex, a 37-year-old history graduate, is the second-youngest of his five children, across two marriages.
He is the only family member sitting on the investment committee for Soros Fund Management.
A founding chair of Bend the Arc Jewish Action, a progressive organisation raising issues around inequality and racism, Alex is also on the board of the Centre for Jewish History.
In 2012 he donated £180,000 to the Jewish Council for Education and Research, a group that strongly aligned itself with former US president Barack Obama.
Alex has also written the he was “raised to sympathise with other minorities and targets of bigotry.”He was deeply critical of former US president Donald Trump, at one stage accusing him of creating an environment during his election camapign that led to the bomb threats targeting his father in 2018.
Interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Alex said he was “more political” than his father and that he plans to continue donating family money to left-leaning U.S. political candidates.
It was noted that Alex has visited Israel several times, and he “celebrates such Jewish religious holidays as Rosh Hashanah and Passover, which his father doesn’t.”
He vowed to broaden the foundation’s priorities to include voting and abortion rights as well as gender equity.
In an article for CNN last week, Alex wrote that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has “adopted increasingly aggressive and hostile policies towards its Arab population, elevating extremists to cabinet rank, authorizing new settlements in the occupied West Bank and proposing dramatic new curbs on the independence of the judiciary.”
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