| Bingo tycoon subsidizes extremism in
Israel
By MARGOT PATTERSON
An impoverished small town in Southern California would seem an
improbable venue for funding settlements in the occupied territories of
Palestine, but physician and financier Irving Moskowitz has by many accounts
funneled millions of dollars into settlements on the West Bank and in East
Jerusalem from the proceeds of a charitable bingo operation in Hawaiian
Gardens, Calif.
In 1988 Moskowitz bought a faltering bingo parlor in the
ramshackle town of Hawaiian Gardens, a largely Latino community of
approximately 15,000 that in 1990 had an average per capita income of $8,500.
California state law demands that bingo be run on a not-for-profit basis, and
Moskowitz established the Irving I. Moskowitz Foundation to administer the
bingo operation. Open 363 days a year, the bingo parlor is staffed by
“volunteers,” many of them reported to be undocumented workers, often
working six or seven days a week for tips. In recent years, the foundation has
raked in between $30 million and $40 million in revenues. So successful has the
bingo parlor become that many charities offering bingo in neighboring
communities have been unable to compete and have closed their doors.
Using revenue from the bingo operation as well as in some cases
his own private funds, Moskowitz has won a reputation both in this country and
in Israel for funding extremist settlers on the West Bank and in East
Jerusalem. In addition to aiding Jewish settlers in Hebron, Moskowitz helped
finance the controversial restoration of an ancient tunnel that leads from
Jerusalem’s Western Wall Plaza to the Muslim quarter of the Old City. The
opening of the tunnel in 1996 sparked Palestinian fears for the security of the
Muslim shrines in Jerusalem and led to riots in which 70 people were
killed.
Beryl Weiner, Moskowitz’s attorney in Los Angeles, denied
that the Moskowitz foundation gives money to settlements. Weiner said the
foundation gives to Jewish charities and secular causes. “Dr. Moskowitz
has purchased with his personal money a lot of property in East Jerusalem, and
he’s made these purchases over the last 20 to 25 years,” he
added.
Increasing Jewish presence
If arguably the Moskowitz foundation does not give directly to
settlers, it does give to groups that support them. Tax records and published
reports indicate that the Moskowitz Foundation has been a major contributor to
the American Friends of Ateret Cohanim, donating $5 million over the years to
the American arm of an ultra-nationalist group whose goal is to Judaicize the
Arab quarter of East Jerusalem and drive out Arab residents living there.
Ateret Cohanim -- the name means Crown of the Priest -- agitates for rebuilding
the ancient Jewish temple and reinstituting animal sacrifices as in the time of
King Solomon. In 1978 it opened a militant yeshiva in the heart of the Muslim
quarter of the Old City to train students to become priests for the as-yet
unbuilt temple. Jews believe the ruins of the old temple lie underneath the
Dome of the Rock, Islam’s third-holiest site, and it’s widely assumed
that construction of a new temple on the spot Jews call the Temple Mount would
almost inevitably involve the destruction of the mosque and inflame Muslims
around the world.
Moskowitz recently built a Jewish neighborhood of more than a
hundred apartments in the heart of Ras el Amud, an Arab neighborhood of 11,000
in East Jerusalem, and is building more units in Abu-Dis, an Arab village
outside Jerusalem that has been discussed as a possible capital for a future
Palestinian state.
Geoffrey Aronson, director of the Foundation for Middle East
Peace, said Moskowitz prides himself on his role in increasing the Jewish
presence in the Old City of Jerusalem. “He’s donated millions of
dollars to buy and build properties in some of the hottest spots in East
Jerusalem and the Old City,” Aronson said.
From scrutinizing the 990 tax forms that all foundations are
required to file, Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak, coordinator of the Coalition for
Justice in Hawaiian Gardens and Jerusalem, calculates that the Moskowitz
Foundation has given fundamentalist settlers somewhere between $70 million and
$80 million dollars. “That’s money we can track on the 990s. Then
there is stuff that he has given under his personal name,” said
Beliak.
The Coalition for Justice in Hawaiian Gardens and Jerusalem is an
alliance of Jewish activists and Latino residents of Hawaiian Gardens who
charge that Moskowitz has exploited the town of Hawaiian Gardens and funneled
bingo proceeds meant for charity to Israel to disrupt the peace process there.
The coalition is pressing for passage of a state law that would place bingo
operations under the auspices of the state’s gaming commission and is
recommending that the commission deny Moskowitz’s application for a
permanent license for the gambling casino he built next to the bingo parlor.
The coalition supports a class action suit filed by the Mexican American Legal
Defense and Educational Fund that charges that the Moskowitz bingo operation
withheld wages to employees fraudulently described as volunteers.
Beliak is one of many voices charging that the Israeli occupation
of Palestinian land is being funded by monies from here in the United States,
not only in the form of extensive U.S. military and economic aid that allows
Israel to put its resources into settlements built in violation of U.N.
resolutions, but by allowing private individuals to circumvent its rules
regarding charitable giving.
“Settlements are blatantly political. These are people who
are breaking international law, breaking American policy, breaking American law
when they support settlements. The fact that the American polity has not
recognized that is part of the double standard. How is it that you close up
Muslim charities, one right after the other, without any due process when
Moskowitz’s foundations are allowed to run unchallenged?” asked
Beliak.
“The U.S. government has aided and abetted the settlement
movement from the get-go,” added Beliak. “All the time it is verbally
saying it’s a bad idea, the government has done nothing to stop it and has
always backed off when it is asked to do specific things.”
Disrupting the peace process
While Moskowitz has won notoriety for planting settlements in the
most sensitive and provocative spots in East Jerusalem, this is no great
achievement, according to Lewis Roth, president of Americans for Peace Now. The
American Zionist organization partners with Peace Now, an Israeli grassroots
movement established in 1978 by 300 reserve soldiers in the Israeli Defense
Forces that advocates a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.
“Anything that disrupts the status quo in Jerusalem is going
to set off fireworks, and a lot of the efforts he’s backed over the years
have been Jerusalem-focused,” Roth said. The issue is not just
Muslim-Jewish relations, Roth explained. The large number of Christian churches
in the Old City of Jerusalem makes changes there a touchy issue for Christians
as well.
“Anything that pertains to East Jerusalem and particularly
the Old City and the Temple Mount is very sensitive,” Roth said.
Danny Seidemann, a Jerusalem lawyer who has opposed settlers in
court, told NCR that the settlement movement in East Jerusalem would not
have anything approaching its current achievement without the active assistance
of Moskowitz. “Even though his activities are limited geographically and
in terms of members, they are qualitatively of a highly inflammatory
potential,” he said.
About 1,600 Jewish settlers live in East Jerusalem. Asked if it
would be fair to describe them as extremists, Seidemann said that while a mix
of individuals are involved, they are clearly in favor of a Jewish Jerusalem as
opposed to a binational one. “There are those involved who have clear
Messianic aspirations on the Temple Mount and they are characterized by a
strong hostility to any peace process with the Palestinians. If you take those
three elements of Jewish hegemony in Jerusalem, if that’s not extreme, I
don’t know what is,” Seidemann said.
Beliak said Moskowitz, an opponent of the Oslo Accords, is working
to foreclose any meaningful peace negotiations between Israelis and
Palestinians. “By alienating the land in and around Jerusalem and other
places on the West Bank, essentially he’s creating a sense of panic among
the Palestinians. Soon there will be nothing left to negotiate over.
“If by a systematic process you force Arabs out of their
homes in East Jerusalem and in the villages surrounding Jerusalem, what you are
doing is essentially ethnic cleansing by means of creating the kinds of
conditions where people can’t live,” Beliak said. “If an Arab
moves out of East Jerusalem for a certain period of time, they lose their
residence permit. If they can never get a permit to build a house because the
city will not give them any permits, they have constant pressure to sell their
land. They have a complete wall of city officials and government officials and
now private individuals working to push them off the land.”
The demography of Jerusalem
The American Committee on Jerusalem is an Arab-American
organization founded to preserve the interests of both Jews and Palestinians
living in Jerusalem. The committee notes that since 1967, 80 percent of Jewish
residents settling in the city have chosen to reside in newly built settlements
constructed on confiscated Palestinian land. “By encouraging
Jewish-Israeli building and discouraging Palestinian construction, Israel has
been successful in altering the demographic balance in its favor,” a 2001
report by the American Committee on Jerusalem concluded.
Beliak said not only ideology but personal profit drives
Moskowitz’s land developments in Israel, which he claimed were frequently
gained through subterfuge, government collusion or bribery. “Whatever
Zionism stands for, Zionism cannot be the result of the theft of land, which is
what Moskowitz is about,” Beliak said. “As far as I know, the command
‘Thou shalt not steal’ has not been repealed.”
Moskowitz’s activities in Hawaiian Gardens and Israel’s
occupied territories have received considerable press over the years, as has
his friendship with Israeli Prime Ministers Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel
Sharon. He has been written about in the Los Angeles Times, New
York’s Jewish Week, Mother Jones, the Jerusalem
Post, New Times Los Angeles, the Israeli newspapers
Ha’aretz, Yediot Aharonot and others.
A report by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee of the
California Legislature cited a series of “questionable practices” the
Moskowitz Foundation perpetrated in its bingo operation in California, and the
Central Conference of American Rabbis protested the Moskowitz Foundation’s
“documented methods of political manipulation and labor exploitation
perpetrated against the impoverished community of Hawaiian Gardens, utilizing
ill-gained profits from gambling for the apparent purpose of funding activities
that cause agitation and threaten peace in the holy city of
Jerusalem.”
Still, Moskowitz’s funding of extremist Jewish causes
continues, as does his ability to deduct this from his taxes as charitable
contributions.
“The Ashcroft people are more interested in violations by
Muslims than in violations by Jews, and this prominent American Jew is
protected by the prime minister of Israel,” observed Beliak. “America
does not have yet a desire to be an honest broker between the Palestinians and
the Israelis.”
Moskowitz’s lawyer said that the Moskowitz foundation had
been audited by the government each of the last five years and found in full
compliance with federal and state laws.
National Catholic Reporter, October 18,
2002
|
