by Adam Horowitz on December 22, 2009 · 41 comments
Thanks to the Palestine Note for posting the above video. It is an interview from Israeli television with Rabbi Dov Wolpe, the head of "The Task Force to Save the Nation and the Land" an organization which gives money to Israeli soldiers to refuse orders to evacuate settlers from the occupied territories.
The Forward recently did an expose on Wolpe and his work, pointing out that he is raising tax deductible funds in the US, and may be breaking US law in the process. The Forward:
Wolpe presented the money to the two soldiers in an elaborate ceremony that took place at Jerusalem’s Finjan restaurant. At the time, Wolpe had told the press that the money was the gift of an anonymous American donor. Though the source of these particular funds is unclear, what is not in dispute — by even Wolpe himself — is that he has been misrepresenting the nature of his organization to the Internal Revenue Service, claiming that it is a religious institution when it is little more than a post office box, a ruse that allows him to maintain tax-exempt status.
Ironically, Wolpe might not be brought down because of the racism and hatred displayed in the interview above, but because he is registered as a "church" in the US and doesn’t meet the legal requirement. Sorta like getting Al Capone on tax evasion. It’s also interesting to note that the Rabbi’s "gift" for Obama at the end of the piece echoes the same language the Hebron Fund’s Executive Director Yossi Baumol used in defending their recent New York fundraiser.
(If the English subtitles on the video don’t start automatically click on the arrow in the lower right hand corner and choose ‘cc’ from the menu.)
by Adam Horowitz on December 16, 2009 · 10 comments
A little over a year ago we began an investigation on this site into the Central Fund for Israel, a New York-based non profit foundation that raises tax deductible donations in the U.S. to support the Israeli settler movement. We found that they are funding settlermilitias, and that they have some very well know donors.
Writing in Haaretz, Akiva Eldar has now expanded upon the story by uncovering that the Central Fund is also supporting the the Od Yosef Chai Shechem yeshiva in the West Bank settlement Yitzhar near Nablus. The head of a yeshiva, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, recently made headlines when he wrote a book justifying the murder of non-Jews if they pose a theoretical threat to Israel. Eldar writes:
How can President Barack Obama object to furthering education in a settlement like Yitzhar, located in the heart of the West Bank? After all, his own tax revenues contribute to the flourishing of the Od Yosef Chai Shechem yeshiva, the settlement’s crowning glory.
This is the same yeshiva whose rabbi said it is permissible to kill gentile babies because of "the future danger that will arise if they are allowed to grow into evil people like their parents." In his latest book, the head of the yeshiva, Yitzhak Shapira, who bears the honorable title of rabbi, even permits killing anyone "who, through his remarks and so forth, weakens our kingdom" (Obama, beware!).
On November 17, this column reported that the Education Ministry’s division for Torah institutions transferred more than NIS 1 million to this yeshiva in 2006 and 2007. The Welfare Ministry made do with a mere NIS 150,000.
A report on donations submitted by the yeshiva to the registrar of nonprofit organizations revealed that the American public also participates in financing the message coming out of Yitzhar. It states that in 2007 and 2008, the yeshiva received NIS 102,547 from an American foundation known as the Central Fund of Israel.
Eldar is right to point out the contradiction in US policy that criticizes Israeli settlements on one hand, and helps subsidize their growth with the other. Luckily there are organizations like the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee working to change this. Please support this important work.
From Adalah-NY:
New York, NY, November 4, 2009 – Eleven organizations from the US, Palestine and Israel have called on baseball’s New York Mets to cancel a November 21st dinner at the Caesars Club at Citi Field for the Brooklyn-based Hebron Fund. The dinner is a fundraiser for Israeli settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank City [...]
Yaakov "Jack" Teitel, a resident of the Jewish settlement outpost Shvut Rachel, was arrested by Israel’s Shabak for his alleged murder of two Palestinians and planned terrorist attacks on a left-wing academic and homosexuals. Teitel, an immigrant from Florida who was granted Israeli citizenship through the country’s "right of return" policy for Jews, is the [...]
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‘This Time We Went Too Far’
Norman Finkelstein has just published an important new book on the Gaza conflict of 2008-2009, 'This Time We Went Too Far.' Go to orbooks.com to get it.
