In October 2018, Saudi Arabian dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, 59, was ambushed and murdered by his own government at its consulate in Turkey while picking up a legal divorce document. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman signed off on the assassination of the Washington Post writer, according to a U.S. intelligence report declassified in 2021.
Now, Democracy for the Arab World Now, a nonprofit group in the United States that Khashoggi founded to support “democracy and human rights in the Middle East and North Africa,” has established itself as a key cog in the anti-Israel movement accusing the Jewish state of war crimes for retaliating against Hamas after its Oct. 7, 2023, attack. And DAWN has done so thanks to influential left-wing foundations helping to keep its lights on, tax documents show.
“So long as apartheid and occupation continue, there will be acts of resistance,” Sarah Leah Whitson, an anti-Israel activist who leads DAWN, told the Washington Examiner. “Sadly, some of that will constitute atrocities and war crimes like the Oct. 7 attack. I don’t think there’s a way to secure Israel and Israelis by entering into yet another round of warfare against a captive civilian population. I don’t think Israel will succeed in its stated goal, just as it has not for the past four months to destroy Hamas.”
Whitson, former director of the left-of-center Human Rights Watch charity’s Middle East and North Africa division, added that “there will never be an end to the insecurity that first and foremost Palestinians experience every single day” so long as Gaza is under what she called “military occupation.” She notably came under scrutiny in 2020 for appearing to lament a lack of violence in Israel while she was working as managing director for research and policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft think tank.
Khashoggi, who had a documented history of antisemitic posts on social media, founded DAWN in 2018 — though he was murdered before publicly announcing the group. Since that time, DAWN has cashed checks from the likes of the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, George Soros-backed Open Society Foundations, and progressive Arca Foundation tied to the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco fortune, according to federal filings.
Following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre that killed over 1,200 Israelis, DAWN is heavily focused on one initiative in particular: fundraising “for a ceasefire and accountability for Israeli and U.S. officials responsible for war crimes in Gaza,” according to its website.
On Oct. 9, DAWN organizers demanded a ceasefire and, while slamming Hamas for “gross violations of international humanitarian law,” said the world must address “the root causes” of Israel’s “apartheid, occupation, and siege.” Then, in December, DAWN pressed the International Criminal Court, a powerful intergovernmental group, to investigate 40 Israeli military commanders who DAWN alleged committed “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity.”
DAWN has a page on its website listing these 40 “prime suspects,” along with their photos, names, and titles. One is Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff. Another is Col. Ami Biton, commanding officer of Israel’s elite Paratroopers Brigade.
Asked by the Washington Examiner if DAWN has any fundraisers in connection to the rapes, murders, and kidnappings committed by Palestinian terrorists in Israel, Whitson said her group is solely focused on Middle Eastern governments “with the closest ties to the United States and receiving the most aid and assistance and support from the United States.”
“We don’t focus on governments or certainly armed groups that are not receiving support and protection from the United States,” Whitson said. “They are not a priority of our organization. Obviously, we condemn Hamas and the attacks on civilians. And it’s good to know that Hamas has said they will cooperate with the International Criminal Courts. Israel has said it’s not going to comply.”
The Trump administration notably sanctioned personnel for the ICC over its targeting of U.S. soldiers for alleged war crimes, though the Biden administration rolled the sanctions back in 2021.
To Gerald Steinberg, president of the Israeli NGO Monitor watchdog group, DAWN is “promoting Hamas using the cover of international law.”
Still, DAWN’s latest campaign is a reflection of the anti-Israel activists affiliated with the group. Whitson has likened Israel to the Islamic State group, or ISIS, and, in November 2023, asserted that the idea of Israel dismantling Hamas “is a bad end game.”
Esam Omeish, a DAWN co-founder also listed on its recently filed tax forms as a board member, resigned from Virginia’s Commission on Immigration in 2007 after videos surfaced of him stating, “You have learned the way, that you have known that the jihad way is the way to liberate your land.”
Omeish submitted a letter to the Washington Post in 2004, which the outlet never published, in which he wrote, “The influence of Muslim Brotherhood ideas has been instrumental in defining our understanding of Islam within the American and Western context in order to espouse the values of human dialogue, tolerance and moderation,” archived records show.
DAWN board chairman Nihad Awad is the executive director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which was named by federal prosecutors as an “unindicted co-conspirator” of Hamas in a 2009 terrorism financing case. Awad said in November 2023 that he was pleased to see Palestinians “break the siege” on Oct. 7, leading to the White House calling his rhetoric “antisemitic.”
Meanwhile, Adam Shapiro, DAWN’s director of advocacy for Israeli and Palestinian matters, said on Oct. 17, 2023, “There may be an #Israeli-made humanitarian crisis in #Gaza today, but tomorrow & for the last 75 years there’s been an #Israeli-made freedom crisis in all #Palestine. Getting supplies in now is critical; freedom for Palestinians is essential. #FreePalestine #EndIsraeliApartheid.”
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Steinberg said DAWN is, unfortunately, one of the many radical groups boosting Hamas talking points after Oct. 7.
“The organization and its agenda of attempting to criminalize IDF soldiers is a major escalation in the [non-governmental organization]- and [United Nations]-led soft-power war that accompanies and amplifies the terror war, and is reflected in the increasingly violent antisemitic attacks in universities and major cities.”
