Short answer: No, not in the way the term is usually meant. George Soros is Jewish by birth and a Holocaust survivor, but he has said explicitly that his Jewish identity does not translate into "tribal loyalty" to Israel, he has largely kept Israel out of his major philanthropy, and his Open Society Foundations have funded groups that Israeli officials say overlap with BDS and anti-Israel advocacy. As of August 2026, he is alive, age 95.
What George Soros has actually said and done
1991: In his book "Underwriting Democracy," Soros wrote that "my Jewishness did not express itself in a sense of tribal loyalty that would have led me to support Israel," and said he took pride in being "an outsider who was capable of seeing the other point of view," according to Moment Magazine.
1995: In a New Yorker profile, Soros said, "I don't deny the Jews their right to a national existence, but I don't want to be part of it," and added that he did not think antisemitism could be overcome "if you behave as a tribe." The profile also reported that he had largely excluded Israel and Jewish causes from his philanthropy up to that point, in Connie Bruck's 1995 New Yorker profile "The World According to George Soros." Moment Magazine has since described how he largely excluded Israel and Jewish causes from his philanthropy in that era.
May 2014: The Palestinian-led BDS National Committee called for a boycott of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Foundations, but not because Soros was seen as anti-Israel. It was the opposite: BDS activists targeted him for holding personal investments in Israeli companies SodaStream and Teva Pharmaceuticals, according to the BDS Movement's own site.
August 25, 2022: Soros gave $1 million to the J Street Action Fund, the largest donation to that PAC to date. J Street is a liberal, pro-two-state lobby that supports Israel's existence but pushes for territorial concessions. AIPAC publicly criticized the gift, saying Soros "has a long history of backing anti-Israel groups," as reported by the Times of Israel.
December 3, 2023: Israel's UN ambassador Gilad Erdan publicly accused Soros of funneling more than $15 million to organizations that back the BDS movement and, in Erdan's words, "seek the destruction of the State of Israel as a Jewish state," including grants that reached groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow via the Tides Center, according to Fox News.
May 13, 2026: Soros's Open Society Foundations announced a $30 million, three-year commitment to groups fighting antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate, citing rising hate tied to the Israel-Hamas war and the Israel-Iran conflict. OSF president Binaifer Nowrojee said "the deep injustices occurring in the Middle East are fueling indiscriminate prejudice, dehumanization, and violence directed against both Muslims and Jews," per the Times of Israel. The announcement did not include a statement of support for Israeli government policy.
The fuller picture
Soros, born August 12, 1930, in Budapest, is a Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor: as a boy under Nazi occupation, his family survived by hiding their Jewish identity behind false papers. That biography is well documented. What is also well documented is that Soros has spent decades deliberately separating his Jewishness from any sense of obligation to Israel specifically. His own words, in 1991 and again in a widely cited 1995 New Yorker profile, describe declining to feel "tribal loyalty" toward the Jewish state and choosing to keep Israel largely out of his philanthropy.
His Open Society Foundations have instead funded human rights and civil liberties organizations, some of which (Human Rights Watch, Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, and BDS-adjacent groups reached via the Tides Center) are outspoken critics of Israeli policy in the West Bank and Gaza. That funding is the basis for Israel's own UN ambassador accusing Soros, in 2023, of backing groups that seek the Jewish state's "destruction," a characterization Soros and OSF representatives dispute. OSF frames its posture as pro-democracy and pro-human-rights rather than anti-Israel.
At the same time, Soros has personally donated to J Street, a pro-two-state, pro-Israel-existing lobby, not an anti-Israel one, and has held direct investments in Israeli companies (SodaStream, Teva), which is precisely why the BDS movement itself moved to boycott him in 2014. In 2026, against the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas war and its aftermath, OSF's $30 million antisemitism initiative shows continued engagement with Jewish community concerns, but it is framed jointly with anti-Muslim hate and stops short of endorsing Israeli government policy.
The bottom line
Soros is not a supporter of Israel in any straightforward sense. He is Jewish and a Holocaust survivor, he supports a two-state solution and has funded pro-two-state groups like J Street, and his foundation has recently put money toward fighting antisemitism. But by his own repeated statements, he does not feel "tribal loyalty" to the Jewish state, has largely kept Israel out of his main philanthropy, and has funded organizations Israeli officials say overlap with BDS and anti-Israel advocacy. The honest read is "critical and disengaged," not "supportive," though also not a personal Israel boycotter, since he has invested directly in Israeli companies.
Show your own support, plainly
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Last updated August 2026. We update these profiles as the record changes.
