The Coalition for Justice in Hawaiian Gardens and Jerusalem has found columns in Jewish newspapers by Irving Moskowitz and Cherna Moskowitz extolling and justifying assassinations and violent political means to thwart Israeli-Palestinian peace. Cherna Moskowitz, Irving's wife and partner in the Hawaiian Gardens Casino, also sponsored the assassination video "game" played by exploding the heads of pro-peace leaders, which is featured on our website (at www.stopmoskowitz.org/assassination.shtml). The columns and the assassination "game," show that the Moskowitzes lack the good character California requires for a gambling license. These statements, together with the Moskowitzes' financial support of violence-prone Israeli settlers and the "neocons," such as Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, who led the call for the invasion of Iraq, make Irving and Cherna Moskowitz a power couple of extremism.

We do not dispute the Moskowitzes' right, under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, to proclaim their extremist pro-violence views -- and even to fund settlers who violently attack Palestinians. But the Moskowitzes have millions of dollars (some from deplorable activities in Hawaiian Gardens, California (click here for details: link to www.stopmoskowitz.org/looting.shtml) to spend on their political expression, thus their advocacy predictably results in death and injury. In the analysis that follows our discussion of the columns we conclude that the Moskowitzes have a pattern of embracing violent political ends.

Columnist Cherna Moskowitz blesses assassins
Cherna Moskowitz wrote a column in the Jewish Chronicle of Long Beach, California, under the heading "Ha Matsav (the Situation)" from the mid 1970s to the early 1980s. On January 22, 1975 she wrote in copious praise of two members of the Jewish terrorist group Lehi, also known as the "Stern Gang," who assassinated Britain's Middle East Minister, Lord Moyne, in Egypt in 1944 and were hanged in Cairo the following year. "Blessed is their memory," Moskowitz wrote of the gunmen Eliahu Hakim and Eliahy Beit-Tzuri.

According to a summary by the Jewish Agency (www.jafi.org.il/education/100/act/41zion.html), instead of joining the war against the Axis, "Lehi members considered Britain Zionism's main enemy, and therefore believed that they ought to use terror against the British administration." The summary also notes:

In an attempt to expel the British from Palestine, Lehi attempted in 1940 to make contact with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany with the objective of finding an ally that would allow the establishment of a Jewish state within its historic borders of the land of Israel.

and:

To acquire funds for its activities, Lehi members robbed banks. Lehi ran its own radio station, where it broadcast verbal attacks on the British and their immigration policies and expressed strong opposition to volunteering for the British army.

"The climax of Lehi terror was the murder of Lord Moyne," states the Jewish Agency summary.

Lord Moyne -- Walter Edward Guinness, heir to the beer fortune - had held several government posts before being named to his last: Minister of State and British Minister Resident in the Middle East. Assassins Hakim and Beit-Tzuri ambushed him on November 6, 1944, as his car arrived at his Cairo residence.

The Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Moyne, signs a Bristol Blenheim bomber of No 139 (Jamaica) Squadron during a visit in September 1941. Courtesy of: Imperial War Museum.

In a 1975 retrospective the London Daily Mirror interviewed Major Andrew Hughes Onslow, Moyne's aide-de-camp, who recounted the assassination: "I got out of the car to open the front door when the two men came up. The chauffeur was walking round the car to let Lord Moyne out when one gunman pulled open the car door and shot Lord Moyne. The second man came up and shot the chauffeur. I gave chase, but they jumped onto bicycles. I was able to stop an Egyptian policeman on a motor cycle, and although they shot at him he was able overcome them."

Concluded Ounslow: "No doubt Lord Moyne could have been regarded as a target for political assassination, but the shooting of the chauffeur was pure murder."

The Daily Mirror quoted the contemporaneous statement of the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, Dr. J. H. Hertz, who termed the assassination "a most detestable crime in the eyes of Jews."

In her column, Cherna Moskowitz scoffed at similar condemnations from Jewish leaders of the day, terming it "curious." She justified the assassination as a fitting response to Britain's refusal to admit Jewish victims of Nazism to Palestine, remarking: "And so [the Jews] died and on November 6, 1944 Lord Moyne also died."

Moskowitz's column and the Daily Mirror article were inspired by an Egyptian-Israeli prisoner trade that repatriated the assassins' bodies. Moskowitz concludes:

Before he was hung Beit-Tzuri said, "Some people live short lives in which nothing significant occurs. That is a tragedy. But to live a short life that includes a deed for one's homeland -- that is a triumph."

Eliahu Hakim and Eliahy Beit-Tzuri. Blessed is their memory.

Irving Moskowitz defends infamous massacre perpetrator
Irving Moskowitz, too, has condoned political violence. In March 1994 he wrote a column in the Brooklyn-based Jewish Press, defending settler physician Baruch Goldstein's assault rifle massacre of 29 Palestinians as they prayed at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

In his column Moskowitz wrote:

[Yet] when Arabs murder and maim Jews every day in Israel and a lone Jewish man, overwhelmed by his grief over Arab terrorism, strikes at the Arabs - the hue and cry from around the world is deafening. Accusing fingers are pointed at all of Israel. The Israeli government is pressured to make concessions to the Arabs to "atone" for a deed it did not commit. There are calls to expel all Jews from Hebron and from all of Judea and Samaria.

Of course all violence and killings are bad. In an ideal world, one could simply condemn all such behavior and that would suffice. But we don't live in an ideal world. We live in a world in which Israeli Jews are constantly victimized…

If last week's events in Hebron were to be judged by an American court the results would not be black and white. The American justice system, quite properly, takes into consideration the factors that drove the perpetrator to commit his deed. Those factors do not absolve the perpetrator of guilt - but they do define the level and quality of guilt. There was a hung jury in the trial of the Mendez (sic) brothers because of evidence that they acted out of fear and desperation due to years of abuse. Lorena Bobbitt was declared not guilty by reason of temporary insanity, after the jury found that what drove her to extreme behavior was the violence she suffered from her husband. Surely a Jewish doctor who constantly treated victims of Arab terrorism, and who literally held in his arms his dying friends, would be found to have experienced as much suffering as the Lyle Mendezes (sic) and Lorena Bobbitts of this world.

Moskowitz's reference to "dying friends" is astonishingly disingenuousness. The Hebron settlers, to which Goldstein belonged, were and are notorious for violently attacking Palestinians, and destroying their property. These highly ideological settler marauders greatly exacerbate the inequity created by the Israeli government's expropriation of the Palestinians' land and water to create the settlements. They live as a tiny minority behind heavy military guard.

Hebron settlers protest and try to force closure of Palestinian businesses: above, a gas station, below a market.

In October 2003, Newsweek reported that Israeli police seized a large stockpile of weapons from Hebron settlers and linked some of the rifles to settler attacks on Palestinians. Moskowitz continues to send donations from his Hawaiian Gardens Bingo to these settlers' Hebron Fund. (See www.stopmoskowitz.org/bingobucks.pdf)

In his Jewish Press column, Moskowitz goes on for several paragraphs lambasting the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin for its moves toward peace with the Palestinians. Moskowitz's expressions here give credence to a 2000 report in Mother Jones Magazine that he justified to a friend Rabin's 1995 assassination. (click here to read link: www.stopmoskowitz.org/settlerViolence.shtml) Last June, Israel's Attorney General threatened to charge the author of a book justifying Goldstein's act with incitement to racism.

Cherna Moskowitz's writings, especially her column on Lord Moyne's assassins, underscore the political extremism of the Internet assassination video game she sponsored in 2000. According to the Israeli newspaper, Yediot Aharanot Moskowitz's "game" was condemned by then Prime Minister Barak's spokesperson, who called it an incitement to violence of the type that brought about the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. The internet host company quickly removed the game, so the Coalition cached it for reference purposes. (Click here for more about Moskowitz's assassination "game.")

As we stated above, we do not dispute the Moskowitzes' Constitutional rights to political speech and association. But that does not absolve them of responsibility for the consequences of their extremism. The all too predictable results of the Moskowitzes' inciteful political speech, backed as it is with millions of dollars from the Hawaiian Gardens Bingo and from their private fortune, has already included death and injury.

In 1996 riots sparked by the opening of a Moskowitz-sponsored tunnel near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem took over 70 Israeli and Palestinian lives. The tunnel provides a shortcut to the Western Wall for the militant settler yeshiva Ateret Cohanim, a major Moskowitz bingo beneficiary. According to a Miami Herald report (9/28/96) the Netanyahu government opened the tunnel as a "political payoff to several key American campaign contributors, including Irving Moscowitz, 69, a leading Netanyahu supporter in South Florida and one of the top bankrollers of Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank and Gaza Strip." Eitan Haber, a top aide to the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, told the paper that Rabin decided not to open the tunnel because of "alarming intelligence reports" about the consequences. "Security said the whole West Bank will burn because of it,'' Haber said.

As the Herald noted, Moskowitz attended the ceremony, but was back home in Miami before the predictable reaction occurred. The Moskowitzes' political "expression" will no doubt take a painful toll for years to come.

Moskowitz shows he knows the difference between real charities and his causes
We can cite no instance when the Moskowitzes have shown restraint. But we do note with interest that, on one of his websites, Irving Moskowitz shows he clearly knows the difference between real charities and the violence-prone efforts he funds. That website, (www.moskowitzfoundation.org) owned by the Irving I. Moskowitz Foundation through which Moskowitz runs the Hawaiian Gardens Bingo tries to spin Moskowitz and his works as charitable. He showcases the foundation's relatively puny gifts to a handful of legitimate charities - local youth sports, Long Beach City College, and so forth -- while carefully avoiding mention of the extremist and violence prone groups on which Moskowitz bestows millions of dollars from the bingo.

Here are two examples of the contrast, based on data obtained from the Forms 990 the Moskowitz Foundation files with the IRS:

• "Moskowitz gave $1,000 in 2001 and $3,500 in 2000 to Heritage Pointe, a very nice Jewish retirement community in Orange County. According to Heritage Pointe's website, contributions subsidize the rents of low-income seniors. So Moskowitz's contributions would not help very many seniors for many months. Moreover, they comprise only 0.06 percent (less than one-tenth of one percent) of the $7.3 million he contributed from the bingo in 2000 and 2001. By contrast, Moskowitz gave well over $4 million in those two years to extreme settler, anti-peace and neoconservatives organizations. He gave $205,000 to the Hebron Fund, which supports settlers who have terrorized local Palestinians. (For more on Moskowitz's use of the bingo funds, see www.stopmoskowitz.org/militants.shtml)
  
  
• "Moskowitz also calls attention to his donation to the Red Cross of $25,000 for victims of the recent wildfires in California, hundreds of whom lost their homes. The amount is certainly more respectable than the $500 donations he occasionally made in years past. Nevertheless, it pales in comparison to the $1.75 million in bingo dollars that in 2001 alone he gave to his family-controlled American Friends of Everest Foundation which makes purchases of Palestinian properties aimed at thwarting peace.

Moskowitz's other website
In stark contrast, Moskowitz's other website, "ourjerusalem.com" features the extremist and violence-prone organizations that consume the bulk of his distribution of funds from his Hawaiian Gardens bingo. These are the organizations he doesn't mention on the Moskowitz Foundation site, which, we assume, he wants the Gambling Commission to review. On "ourjerusalem," however, Moskowitz gives voice to the most extreme advocacy. On several occasions, he has posted columns calling for the "transfer" or expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. We have excerpted the most recent of such columns here - along with a column advocating the assassination of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

Transfer Means Peace
by Boris Shusteff Arutz Sheva November 17, 2003

One must understand that an Arab state on the minuscule land areas of Judea, Samaria [settler terms for the West Bank] and Gaza will be the most densely populated country in the world, with millions of people living in dreary substandard conditions, with rapidly dwindling last available resources of drinking water, in a surrogate semi-state that will not be independent. This option does not even deserve a comparison with Jordan, a real state of Palestinian Arabs (who comprise more than 65% of its population), which is not only 20 times bigger in size, but is already a full-fledged independent country. …

At the same time, it is easy to demonstrate that the transfer of the Arab population from Judea, Samaria, and Gaza will substantially increase Israel's defense capabilities, achieving true separation between the Arabs and the Jews, and giving realistic chances for lasting peace in the region.

The raging fire of the Israeli-Arab confrontation can indeed be extinguished by means of population transfer. Instead of running away from this option, it is time to look at this legitimate mechanism of achieving peace in the Middle East. The suggested International Transfer Conference must commence a series of deliberations on serious issues. Freedom of speech does not prohibit any kinds of discussions, especially with peace between the Arabs and the Jews as the incentive. The blood of the victims on both sides of this continuing conflict demands that all people of good will work to start the ball rolling. It is a task of the utmost urgency. (read the entire column at www.ourjerusalem.com/opinion/story/opinion20031118.html )

Another column on Moskowitz's website called for violent destruction of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation.

by Gary M. Cooperberg October 29, 2003

…[S]ome Arabs wish to call themselves "Palestinians" that is their right. But we Jews are under no obligation either to recognize that contrived entity, or to find them a place to live. It is high time for our leaders to worry at least as much about the Jewish population of Israel as it does about our Arab enemies. Consistent terror is not something one learns to live with. It is something which our government is obligated to completely destroy. No normal government will sit down and negotiate anything with murderers. Let us, at long last, understand that we are at war with those whose only goal is to destroy us. Our only option is to destroy them first. So let's stop fooling ourselves and stop wasting lives and money. We don't need a wall. We need a quick and ruthless war.

Read the full text at (www.ourjerusalem.com/opinion/story/opinion20031031.html)

Yet another column on Moskowitz's website called for the murder of Palestinian President Arafat.

Don't expel Arafat...
by Joseph Farah September 17, 2003

There's a debate raging in Jerusalem and in Washington about whether it is appropriate to exile Yasser Arafat to expel him from the Palestinian Authority.
I say don't expel him... shoot him.
Yasser Arafat is responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent Israeli citizens, the lynching deaths of untold Arabs and the killing of more than 100 U.S. citizens, including two U.S. diplomats assassinated in cold blood.
Exile is far too good for him.
Some people get squeamish about calling for violence against "foreign leaders." Arafat is no more a legitimate foreign leader than Adolf Hitler or Saddam Hussein were. If we got a chance to knock off one or both of those tyrants, can anyone honestly say we shouldn't have done it?
Some people say we can't eliminate Arafat because to do so would only make him a martyr to his people. Would we hesitate for a moment to kill Osama bin Laden for the same reason? No way. Therefore, that argument holds no water.
Some people insist there is nobody better to work with in the Palestinian Authority than Arafat. Maybe that's true. I doubt it. But one thing is certain: Nobody in the Palestinian Authority has more innocent blood on his hands than Arafat.
Arafat is the father of modern terrorism.
If we're serious about fighting a war against terrorism particularly the brand of Islamo-fascism he represents there's no better place to start than by offing Arafat.
It's justice. It's the right thing to do.
If you want to give him a fair trial first, that's fine with me. But he needs to pay for his crimes with his life…

(Read the whole column at www.ourjerusalem.com/opinion/story/opinion20030918a.html)