Billionaire Jeff Yass linked to $16m in donations to anti-Muslim and pro-Israel groups

Top Republican donor and TikTok investor Jeff Yass is connected to over $16m in funding to anti-Muslim and pro-Israel groups that have advocated for a US war with Iran and other militaristic policies in the Middle East, according to an investigation by the Guardian and Responsible Statecraft.

Media reports on Yass, the billionaire co-founder of Susquehanna International Group, a trading and technology firm, have focused on his outsized role in the Republican party, to which he is now the largest political donor in the 2024 election cycle, contributing more than $46m thus far.

Yass has also emerged as the biggest funder of a group targeting progressive representative Summer Lee in her primary race, suggesting an interest in influencing Democratic primary outcomes, not just in boosting Republicans.

But little has been reported about his involvement in funding groups advocating a pro-Israel US foreign policy, hawkish US policies in the Middle East andsupport for theorists whom experts described as extreme anti-Muslim conspiracists.

Leading Yass’s philanthropy in the foreign policy space is $7.9m contributed to Jerusalem Online University between 2014 and 2019 by a grant-making group at which he once served as one of three directors.

A Jewish Daily Forward investigation into the group in 2011 found that the website promotes itself as a source of educational materials about the Middle East and Israel, but the website’s actual message is far more biased, the Forward found.

“On its website and its promotional materials, Jerusalem Online U hardly portrays itself as a center for neutral academic inquiry,” the Forward wrote. “In fact, it boasts an explicitly pro-Israel mission that seems distinctly at odds with academic principles. In