The Forward has published its list of the top salaries of executives at Jewish non-profits in the U.S. and the stark message of the numbers is, It sure pays to be pro-Israel!
Richard Joel, famous for smiling on a Yeshiva University stage as Sheldon Adelson said Obama should nuke Iran, topped the list at $855,000. The top ten also include Abe Foxman of the ADL, Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (famous for putting a museum of “tolerance” atop a historic Muslim graveyard in Jerusalem), Fred Lawrence of Brandeis (famous for a rash decision to end Brandeis’s relationship with Al Quds University), Howard Kohr (head of the infamous organization AIPAC), and young Matthew Brooks (of the Republican Jewish Coalition, at a meager $563,000; he was reportedly hammered by Eric Cantor when it came out that he made $700,000 four years ago).
David Harris of the AJC just misses the top ten at $504,000, and at #24, Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents makes a piddling $400,000; but these two along with Kohr and Foxman were in the “small coterie” of Jewish leaders who met with the President last month to promote Israel’s interests re Iran. And presumably a number of these execs on the list were on Obama’s conference call to Jewish leaders about Iran.
Eric Fingerhut, who is coming down on Swarthmore Hillel for seeking to allow anti-Zionist speakers, makes $316,000.
Josh Block of the Israel Project, who helped launch a smear campaign against critics of Israel inside the Democratic establishment, $212,000.
Jeremy Ben-Ami of the formerly upstart J Street, now a member in good standing of the Israel lobby, $207,000.
Roz Rothstein of StandWithUs, which paints Islam as foreign and threatening, $180,000.
Michael Makovsky of the neoconservative JINSA group, who says Iran is Nazi Germany redux and Israel will likely strike, $212,000.
Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America (whose vice chair says that Jews who criticize Israel are “mutants” who should have been aborted), $435,000.
Barry Shrage, who wants to send hundreds of thousands of American Jewish kids to Israel on propaganda tours, $428,000.
Ruth Messinger, who reportedly bowed to pressure from a Zionist funder, to sponsor a propaganda tour of Israel at the American Jewish World Service, $301,000.
I’ve left out countless other Israel supporters on that list. And I imagine there are some nonprofit leaders on the Forward list who don’t advocate actively for Israel (maybe even Ruth Messinger). But I can’t spot one non-Zionist, let alone an anti-. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
And, let the word go forth, from this time and place, ask what Israel can do for you!
Piece originally stated that the Robert Wexler cited by the Forward is the former Florida congressman. He’s actually president of the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. I apologize for the error.
Think about the fact for a second that these are non-profit organizations that are paying these types of salaries. So these are non-profits whose funding is solely through private donations, and the salaries that these charities pay is comparable to some CEO’s at American companies.
The obvious question: how is it that private donors can afford to pay these kind salaries? How loaded are these donors? Which leads to a mostly unspoken but still crucial realization: which is that your community is astronomically wealthy– certainly multiple times more wealthy than any other ethnicity in the US, providing it with immense power to get its message across in the public square so that any and all competing voices have very few possibilities for responding in any meaningful way.
There was recently a story about how the CIA was funding anti-Zionist propaganda in the 50’s and early 60’s, a story which was met with scorn by the MSM, and I generally hold the CIA in low regard, but in the end, one wonders what other entity could hope to counter such financial power other than those of the US government.
Unfortunately the Forward figures are inconsistent and misleading. In many cases, the column labeled “2012 Salary” displays salaries for 2011 or even 2010. Clicking on individual names in the Forward table will lead to separate pages that note this discrepancy.
However, outdated figures are provided even in cases where more recent figures are publicly available.
The salary for Abe Foxman has been adjusted by the Forward without any indication. Foxman is paid for a 20-hour work week, so the Forward has doubled this (originally $344,140, but reported by the Forward as $688,280) in order to compare his salary to those who work 40 hours. At the same time, this reported pay is based on the 2011 figure, not 2012.
According to the most recent ADL tax filings, Foxman received a total reportable compensation of $1,866,965 for 2012, while maintaining an average 20-hour work week. This amount includes the 2012 “actuarial value” of a supplemental executive retirement plan.
If these non-profits are also tax-deductible to contributors, then those OUTRAGEOUS SALARIES are being paid by all taxpayers.
And, worse, I assume that these “very, very few very, very rich” (Jewish) people use their considerable (and tax-payer subsidized) wealth to, YES!, lobby and otherwise affect legislation and administrative decision-making.
It is time to make such over-the-top excessive salaries fully taxable to the institutions [even if the institutions do not pay any other tax], and even to forbid them in the case of tax-deductible institutions.
The most overpaid and underpaid Jewish Charity Chiefs:
http://forward.com/articles/189187/the-most-overpaid-and-underpaid-jewish-charity-chi/
Is that Shmuley on the right?
For all the money they can’t come up with any fresh hasbara. Ya haram.