A contributing writer for Drop Site News, the left-wing investigative outlet bankrolled by George Soros's Open Society Foundations, posted on Instagram calling for "wiping out Israel off the planet" and declaring that Israelis "must be removed from our planet." The outlet's co-founder, Ryan Grim, refused to condemn the language, telling Fox News Digital he would "never" police the speech of "anyone who survived a genocide."
The post, published Monday by Palestinian journalist Abubaker Abed, did not land in a vacuum. It arrived from a writer whose work appears regularly on a publication that received a quarter-million-dollar grant from Soros-linked foundations, money earmarked specifically for Middle East coverage. And it drew a response from the outlet's leadership that amounted to a shrug.
That combination, incendiary rhetoric, deep-pocketed backing, and institutional indifference, tells a story about the state of left-wing media that no amount of "non-aligned" branding can paper over.
Abed, who describes himself as an "accidental war correspondent," took to Instagram on Monday with a message that went well beyond criticism of Israeli government policy. Fox News Digital's Brian Flood reported the full text of the post:
"Wiping out Israel off the planet is not enough revenge. Israelis mustn't feel safe anymore. Haunt them and go after them where they go. These terrorist parasites must be removed from our planet."
Read that again. This is not a call for Palestinian statehood. It is not a demand for a ceasefire or a critique of military operations. It is a call for the complete elimination of a nation and the hunting of its people across the globe. The word "parasites", applied to an entire national population, carries a specific historical weight that any journalist should recognize.
Drop Site bills itself as "a non-aligned, investigative news organization dedicated to exposing the crimes of the powerful, particularly in overt and secret conflicts where the U.S. government is playing a key role." Fox News Digital noted the outlet is primarily known for its anti-Israel coverage of the Gaza war.
When Fox News Digital reached out for comment, Drop Site co-founder Ryan Grim directed the outlet to a statement and then wrote on X that Abed's message does not represent the organization's editorial position. That much is standard crisis management. What came next was not.
Grim wrote on X:
"We also are never going to police the language of anyone who survived a genocide."
Set aside, for the moment, whether Abed's post constitutes "language" that merely needs a little grace, or whether it constitutes an open call for the destruction of a sovereign state and the persecution of its citizens. Grim's framing treats the post as a matter of tone rather than substance. It reduces a demand to "remove" an entire people "from our planet" to a question of word choice by a trauma survivor.
That framing does real work. It shields the outlet from accountability while signaling to its audience that such rhetoric falls within the bounds of acceptable discourse. A news organization that refuses to draw a line at "haunt them and go after them where they go" has, in effect, drawn the line nowhere.
Drop Site's editorial posture takes on a different dimension when you follow the money. Open Society Foundations, the grant-making network funded by George Soros, gave Drop Site a $250,000 grant in 2024 to establish a Middle East desk, according to a listing on Open Society's own website.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that Soros's money was funneled to Drop Site through the Social Security Works Education Fund. That routing, billionaire foundation to fiscal intermediary to media startup, is a familiar architecture in progressive media funding. It is not illegal. But it is worth knowing who is paying for the Middle East desk that publishes Abubaker Abed's work.
Soros-funded organizations have a long track record of shaping media narratives and political messaging infrastructure, as seen in recent controversies over nonprofit influence on social media platforms. The pattern is consistent: large grants flow to outlets and organizations that amplify progressive priorities, and the funding relationships receive little scrutiny from the outlets that benefit from them.
Abed's Monday Instagram post was not his first foray into rhetoric that goes far beyond conventional criticism of Israel. The Washington Free Beacon reported that Abed also publicly justified a Michigan synagogue car-bomb attack as "self-defense." In a post on X, Abed reportedly wrote:
"A person is not criminally responsible if they act reasonably to defend themselves against an imminent and unlawful use of force."
He went further, arguing that the targeted synagogue, Temple Israel in Michigan, was itself "guilty of a crime" because of its pro-Israel affiliations. "Temple Israel in Michigan actively promotes donations to ARZA and its parent organisation [URJ]," Abed wrote, according to the Free Beacon, as part of his argument that the house of worship was complicit.
This is not a writer who made one intemperate post in a moment of anguish. This is a pattern of statements that justify violence against Jewish institutions and call for the elimination of the Jewish state and its people. And Drop Site has maintained its relationship with him throughout.
The Free Beacon also noted that Drop Site co-founder Jeremy Scahill has said he and Abed "talk every night." That level of contact suggests Abed is not a distant freelancer whose views caught the outlet off guard. He is, by the organization's own description, a contributor whose work and perspective are well known to its leadership.
Drop Site's self-description as "non-aligned" deserves scrutiny in light of these facts. The outlet takes a $250,000 grant from one of the most politically active foundations on the American left. It employs a contributor who calls for the elimination of a U.S. ally and justifies attacks on American synagogues. And its co-founder responds to the controversy not with a condemnation but with a blanket refusal to "police the language" of anyone the outlet deems a genocide survivor.
"Non-aligned" is a branding choice. The funding, the personnel, the coverage focus, and the leadership's response to open calls for violence all point in one direction.
Consider the double standard. If a contributor to a right-of-center outlet posted a call to "wipe out" any nation and declared its people "parasites" who "must be removed from our planet," the response from mainstream media, advertisers, and social media platforms would be immediate and severe. There would be no grace period for trauma. There would be no statement about refusing to "police language." There would be termination, condemnation, and a week of cable news panels.
Abed's post, by contrast, drew a statement from Grim that reads more like a defense than a rebuke. Fox News reported that Grim acknowledged the post did not represent Drop Site's editorial position, but the refusal to go further speaks volumes about what the outlet considers within bounds.
The open questions here are straightforward. Will Open Society Foundations continue to fund an outlet that refuses to condemn calls for the elimination of Israel and the hunting of its citizens? Will the Social Security Works Education Fund, which reportedly served as the fiscal conduit for Soros's grant, take any action? Will Drop Site continue to publish Abed's work?
None of these questions have been answered. Grim's statement on X is, so far, the only public response from the outlet's leadership. No advertiser pressure, no platform action, and no funder response have been reported.
That silence is itself a data point. It tells you something about the ecosystem in which Drop Site operates, an ecosystem where a quarter-million dollars in foundation money flows to a publication that platforms a writer who calls for the elimination of a nation, and the only consequence is a news cycle.
When the money keeps flowing and the contributor keeps writing, the statement about "not policing language" stops being a defense. It becomes a policy.
