A foundation run by Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, cut off funding to an Afghan women’s sewing circle in Milwaukee because of its organizer’s views on the war in Gaza.
Janan Najeeb, the executive director of the Muslim Women’s Coalition in Milwaukee, published an opinion piece more than a year ago in the Wisconsin Muslim Journal using the contentious phrase, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
According to tax filings, the Archewell Foundation awarded the Muslim Women’s Coalition a $27,960 grant in 2023 to operate a support group and sewing circle for Afghan evacuee women in Milwaukee. The group planned to meet weekly to complete sewing projects and take part in “restorative” conversations that address the women’s trauma.
The foundation gave the coalition another grant of a similar amount in 2024, Najeeb said. An online fundraiser for the women’s coalition reproduced a letter from the Archewell Foundation, which the Journal Sentinel independently verified.
“We have recently been notified of an online opinion piece you wrote that goes against the values of The Archewell Foundation,” the letter told Najeeb. “We have zero tolerance for hateful words, actions, or propaganda.”
She pushed back against the foundation in a letter of her own to the Beverly Hills-based charity.
“I make no apology for standing up for human rights and speaking out against dehumanization of all people, including Palestinians,” she said in the letter on April 17.
A spokesman for Harry and Meghan declined to comment on the record.
It appears an article from the news outlet NewsNation prompted the foundation to halt funding. A reporter there asked the foundation about Najeeb’s opinion piece in the Wisconsin Muslim Journal — an outlet run by Najeeb — with the title, “From the sea to the river, Palestine will live forever!”
Najeeb also called for a permanent ceasefire, an end to “arming the apartheid state of Israel and the liberation of Palestine” in the piece.
The meaning of the phrase “from the river to the sea” is highly contested. Some suggest it means Palestinians should be able to live freely and without Israeli-imposed restrictions. Many Jewish people consider the slogan antisemitic, a call for a Palestinian state extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. They see it as advocating for the removal of the Jewish state.
After NewsNation called attention to Najeeb’s views, Archewell Foundation staff told her April 9 that the Muslim Women’s Coalition was being removed from its network and it would not award the coalition additional grants.
Najeeb told the Journal Sentinel she viewed the funding cut as part of a broader trend of organizations distancing themselves from pro-Palestinian views for fear of retribution. She said she’s also heard that boards she serves on in Milwaukee have been asked to remove her.
“It’s unfortunate that a funder like the Archewell decided to cave in so quickly,” she said. “This is not unusual. This is in line with what’s happening around the country.”
Najeeb, in a public letter to foundation executives James Holt and Shauna Nep, rejected the characterization of her opinion piece as hateful or antisemitic.
“If your foundation stipulates that grant recipients must sit idly by as a genocide is broadcast live on their television screens, then we too regret to inform you that our values do not align,” Najeeb said in her response. “In choosing PR over principle, you betray the communities you claim to uplift.”
And she posited that the executives’ issues were actually with another opinion piece she wrote for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last May, in which she argued that student protesters “know truth about Israel’s genocide in Gaza.” That piece does not mention the phrase “from the river to the sea.”
Before she was notified Archewell cut the funding, a foundation staffer called to ask about her opinion piece, Najeeb said. The staff member only ever mentioned the piece in the Journal Sentinel — not the Muslim Journal piece, Najeeb said. The NewsNation article frames the foundation’s concerns around the wording in the Muslim Journal piece.
Najeeb also said the staffer never voiced concerns with the phrase “from the river to the sea,” which she said she views as a rallying cry for “a democratic Palestine where all people live as equal citizens” similar to the term “we shall overcome” from the Civil Rights movement.
Najeeb is part of a prominent Palestinian-American family in Milwaukee. Her brother, Othman Atta, is the executive director of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s largest mosque. Another brother, landlord Ihsan Atta, drew wide condemnation in September for putting a mural of a swastika intertwined with a Star of David on a building he owned.
She also said her organization is confident that other donors would fund the Afghan sewing group. An online fundraiser for the women’s coalition seeks $27,800 to make up for lost grant funds. It has already raised more than $11,000.
The women’s coalition was one of 10 refugee aid groups that received grants of similar amounts from the foundation, according to 2023 tax filings.
This story was updated to add new information.
Sophie Carson is a general assignment reporter who reports on religion and faith, immigrants and refugees and more. Contact her at scarson@gannett.com or 920-323-5758.