The Milsteinian candidate

The other day we ran a post on the ongoing controversy involving Adam Milstein, an Israeli-American real estate developer in LA, who financed candidates for student government offices at University of California campuses so as to try and thwart the divestment movement on campus. Here are two other important developments in the matter.

First, the New Jersey Jewish News had an article, “Israelis in America,” explaining why Milstein helped found the Israeli American Council to strengthen ties between Israel and the U.S. Jewish community. Milstein says American Jews are “naive” and just don’t understand the threats:

With Israel under attack from the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, American Jews who have roots in Israel are being seen as an enormous asset. “I think the Israeli people are best equipped to communicate the truth about Israel, because they are not naive like many in the American-Jewish community,” Adam Milstein, one of IAC’s founders, told JNS.org. “They know the Israeli people, they know that we have very high standards of human rights and freedom, they know the propaganda war of Hamas and Iran.”

And Electronic Intifada has a fascinating investigative report on Milstein by Abraham Greenhouse. Greenhouse shows that when Milstein got into felony tax trouble with the US government, the Israeli government went to bat for him. The real estate magnate goes by the name Tuvia Milsztein on some legal documents.

Since arriving in the United States from Israel in 1981, he has amassed a net worth estimated in 2009 at $147 million, according to government filings in his legal case.

Milstein has poured a considerable amount of his vast wealth into conservative and anti-Palestinian causes, primarily through his private charity, the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation….

Greenhouse unearthed a record of the tax case, “United States v. Milsztein.” At the link you can see a redacted copy of a judgment resulting from Milstein’s 2009 conviction for felony tax evasion.

Milstein was sentenced to three months imprisonment, 600 hours of community service, three years of supervised release, a $30,000 fine and repayment of taxes owed.

He served his three-month term at the Taft Correctional Institution, a minimum security federal facility in Southern California….
Noteworthy among the list of officials who intervened on Milstein’s behalf was Jacob Dayan, who was at that time Israel’s consul-general in Los Angeles .

Writing on official Israeli-government letterhead, Dayan praised Milstein as a “virtuous” individual who “honors the revered trust between civil society and individual generosity.”

“I have known Mr. Milstein to be an integral part of the greater community through his remarkable compassion and extensive philanthropic activities,” Dayan wrote, adding that Milstein “has personally assured me that in the future he will follow the precise letter of the law.”

Prosecutors acknowledged the extent of Milstein’s charitable giving, but warned of “an obvious concern that much of his philanthropy appears to have been merely a device to defraud the government.”…

As EI reminds us, “this is the person…  who is bankrolling much of the anti-Palestinian movement on California campuses” and trying to deceive folks about his activities (including Alex Kane and student newspapers at the University of Calfiornia). Whether or not Milstein has been following the precise letter of the law, as the Israeli consul promised he would, that seems to me the real issue here, that a pro-Israel zealot has been funneling money into student elections to push pro-Israel candidates so that they will block chiefly-symbolic measures to press their schools to divest from companies serving the occupation. This is more evidence of the Israel lobby’s corruption of political institutions. I still don’t get why this isn’t a national story, why the New York Times isn’t scrutinizing this activity.