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The Coalition for Justice in Hawaiian Gardens and Jerusalem
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Los Angeles CA
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310 910-9153
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In This Section: Moskowitz
and Settler Violence | Moskowitz Supports
Domestic Right-Wing Groups
Moskowitz's anti-peace activities have
been a frequent subject for reporters |
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Moskowitz uses money from his "non-profit"
bingo club to fund violence-prone Israeli settlers and right-wing
U.S. political groups.
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Rather than taking the millions of dollars his
bingo and card clubs generate each year and pumping them back
into the poor community of Hawaiian Gardens, as he promised
to do, Moskowitz sends them halfway around the world.
Over the years Irving Moskowitz
has spent millions of dollars – from the Hawaiian Gardens
bingo parlor he operates and from his private wealth -- to
establish a Jewish settler presence in East Jerusalem’s
predominantly Palestinian neighborhoods. Moskowitz supports
these strategically placed projects to prevent specific land-for-peace
agreements that would give Palestinians the dignity of a presence
in Jerusalem.
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Ras-Al Amud |
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 The
projects have provoked violence.
Over 70 people died in riots following the 1996 opening of
a controversial Moskowitz-funded tunnel to the Temple Mount.
Moskowitz also channels millions to violence-prone, anti-peace
settler organizations."Moskowitz's
rise to prominence stems not so much from the size of the
funds he puts at the disposal of land-purchasing groups…but
from his unerring choice of super-sensitive sites…"
wrote a Jewish Telegraphic Agency analyst in September of
1997. The US government, which views settlements as "obstacles
to peace,” has several times appealed to Israeli leaders
to stop Moskowitz's intrusions into Palestinian areas.
Why
the tunnel was opened by Benjamin Netanyahu is key question
28 September 1996, Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
"Netanyahu opened the tunnel for the right wing,'' says
Eitan Haber, the former top aide to slain Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin. The tunnel not only opens a new Jewish-controlled link
in the Old City, but creates a sheltered passageway to the
Western Wall from a well-known Jewish yeshiva, or religious
school, in the Muslim quarter of the Old City.
Is
peace dead? Days of bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians
darken Middle East hopes
7 October 1996, Maclean's
"We, who had chosen peace, were shocked that our former
enemies had chosen to negate our very modest achievement,
the Oslo accords, by choosing a government which was against
these accords," says one Palestinian. "Since then,
everything has been downhill." By last weekend, at least
56 Palestinians and 14 Israelis were dead and more than 1,000
people were wounded.
Jewish
American sparks furor in Israel
21 September 1997, Daily News (Los Angeles)
Irving Moskowitz adds to the Mideast violence. "This
is an American citizen doing this, and it's not only interfering
with our business, it is really poking into our flesh, playing
with our lives.''
The news reports and other materials
in this section detail how in the late 1980s Moskowitz began
to support Jewish settlers by funding the secret purchase
of Palestinian homes in traditionally Palestinian neighborhoods.
Once they had moved in, these settlers intimidated local Palestinians
and vandalized their property. This section of the website
also includes reports on how, in recent years, Moskowitz has
built two apartment developments in locations that are key
to Palestinian aspirations in Jerusalem. Now he is populating
the developments, Ras al-Amud and Abu Dis, with settlers,
using his clout with the current right-wing government, to
establish peace-killing "facts on the ground."
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Checkpoints
in the territories - and Jerusalem
by Akiva Eldar
21 February 2002
Ha'aretz
The roads of Jerusalem are interrupted
by police checkpoints. The streets are filled with people fearing
the next suicide attacks. And the struggle between Jews and
Palestinians for land is not getting any more peaceful, thanks
to Moskowitz's Ras Al-Amud settler development. Eldar reports
that a newly disclosed government proposal includes a subsidy
for settlers who buy apartments in Moskowitz's anti-peace colony.
Abu Dis
Bingo Chief
Threatens East Jerusalem Peace
by Phil Reeves
11 March 2001
The Independent
Reporting on Moskowitz's Ras al-Amud development,
Reeves writes: "The 132-flat complex is part of the long
campaign by fanatically ultra-nationalist Jewish groups to change
the demographics of Arab East Jerusalem, which was occupied
by Israel in 1967 and later, in a move never recognized by the
international community, annexed. Soon, the block will be ready
to receive the first residents, ideologically driven settlers
striving to secure Israel's control over all Jerusalem. The
vanguard of three families moved into a house next door several
years ago.”
"Their Palestinian neighbors are preparing for the worst.
'We really feel in danger here,' said Azzam Abu Saud, director
of Jerusalem's Arab Chamber of Commerce, who lives next to the
site. 'Our friends are too frightened to come to visit us.'
But he stresses that he and his family will never leave."
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Ateret
Cohanim to Make Trouble Again: Jewish Settlers to Move into
House in Disputed East Jerusalem
by AFP
26 September 2000
AFP
Ateret Cohanim, the militant settler group
Moskowitz supports, plans to move families into a house near
the Mount of Olives cemetery in Palestinian East Jerusalem.
Building
in Arab Neighborhood Will Begin Soon, Developer Says
by Naomi Segal
13 January 1999
JTA Online
During a 1999 visit to Israel, Moskowitz
discussed his Ras Al-Amud development with then Prime Minister
Netanyahu and said that, after Israel halted the project in
1997 under pressure from the US State Department, he believed
that Netanyahu would let it go forward. Noted the Jewish Telegraphic
Agency (JTA): “Attempts by Moskowitz and his supporters
to build Jewish homes in Jerusalem’s mostly Arab neighborhood
of Ras al-Amud have been a repeated source of strain between
Israel and the Palestinian Authority.” JTA also reported:
"Moskowitz's status as a champion of Jewish settlements was
affirmed when he visited Hebron on Wednesday. Children danced
while settlers sang nationalist songs to welcome Moskowitz to
the often volatile West Bank town."
Between 1991 and 2001, Moskowitz gave $754,300 to the Hebron
Fund. Only 520 heavily-guarded settlers live in an enclave in
Hebron's Old City. Another 6,500 settlers live on Hebron's eastern
border, in the settlement of Kiryat Arba. The Palestinian population
of Hebron, or Al Khalil, is around 170,000. Israeli authorities
often impose a curfew on the Palestinians for the settlers'
security.
California
Bingo Hall Plays on World Stage
by Charlie LeDuff
25 November 2002
The New York Times
“This is a rundown town in the rundown eastern corner
of Los Angeles County. Besides the palm trees, little here
suggests Hawaii,” begins the report, which focuses on
the massive, purportedly charitable Hawaiian Gardens bingo
operated by "the reclusive and wealthy doctor, Irving I. Moskowitz,"
and the poor, predominantly Latino city, where Moskowitz also
has a for-profit casino.
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The
Clinton administration makes Moskowitz pull back
by U.S. Department of State
17 September 1997
Daily Press Briefing Transcripts
In 1997, when Moskowitz moved militant
settlers into his strategically placed property in Ras Al-Amud,
the Clinton State Department termed Moskowitz’s actions
“a lightening rod for an increase in tensions” that
might harm the peace process and the state of Israel. The US
and Israeli governments negotiated a stand-down to the diplomatic
problem Moskowitz created.
In 2003 Moskowitz
challenges the Bush Administration
In 2003, just as the US launched its war against Iraq Moskowitz
repeated his 1997 Ras Al - Amud provocation disregarding the
U.S. State Department , Now, as the Financial Times reported,
Moskowitz was challenging the Bush Administration as he moved
settlers into Abu Dis.
Cold
truths of freezing Jewish settlements
By Sharmila Devi
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
Financial Times Limited
Pro-settler
website confirms Ras-Al Amud designed to block peace and reveals
that settlers never really moved out.
Mt. of Olives
Jewish Neighborhood Thriving
by Arutz Sheva Israel Broadcasting Network
21 May 2003
www.arutz7.net
About a month ago, after four years of
building, the Jerusalem neighborhood of Maaleh Zeitim was reborn.
Located just east of the Old City in Ras al-Amud, Maaleh Zeitim
has been populated once again by Jews - this time in permanent
homes.
Ras-al
Amud: Been there, done that
19 September 1997
The Jerusalem Post
Dead-of-night entry, outrage, demonstrations. Police presence,
politicians holding forth, international outcries. High Court
rulings, evictions, re-entries. The controversy over Ras al-Amud
is playing itself out according to a well-worn scenario.
Ras-Al Amud
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Moskowitz
and settler violence
In these days when Muslim charities are shut
down on the basis of accusations of supporting violent organizations,
Moskowitz continues to fund settlers in Jerusalem and Hebron
who are known for terrorizing Palestinians and destroying
their property. We have seen no evidence that Moskowitz has
ever condemned settler violence and, in several instances
the Coalition has found, he appears to condone it. more...
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The
Coalition corresponds with Ateret Cohanim
When a leader of one of the most militant
settler groups, Ateret Cohanim, emailed our co-director, we
decided to respond. Ateret Cohanim runs a yeshiva where it
prepares priests for the rebuilding of the ancient Jewish
temple on Jerusalem's Temple Mount - a site currently occupied
by two revered mosques. The group is perhaps best known for
its involvement with apocalyptic Christian ranchers trying
to breed a pure red sacrificial heifer.
Irving Moskowitz has given Ateret Cohanim
$5.62 million from his Hawaiian Gardens bingo and group members
have participated in his purchases and occupations of Palestinian
properties in sensitive areas of Jerusalem. We hoped to have
a discussion about the purpose of Moskowitz's land buys. Instead,
we got wafts of the rhetoric of pathogenic religion. We have
published the emails because we believe they provide an important
window into the thinking of the minority of settlers implacably
opposed to an equitable land-for-peace agreement. To explain
Ateret Cohanim's coded rhetoric, we have published commentary
by three scholars, as well as a brief introductory overview
by Coalition Co-Director and Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak.
Click
here to begin reading
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Moskowitz
supports domestic right wing groups
Rather than using the proceeds of his Hawaiian
Gardens "non-profit" bingo to alleviate the city's
widespread poverty, Irving Moskowitz gives the "bingo
bucks" to violence-prone Israeli settlers and right-wing
U.S. political groups. Read
more about this
Coalition requests that Attorney General
determine how much of Israeli right-wing funding Moskowitz
provides. January 16, 2001: Coalition cheers victory over
stalled Hawaiian Gardens casino application [in
.pdf format]
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Irving
& Cherna Moskowitz, Power Couple of Extremism
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. 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 to spend on their political expression,
thus their advocacy predictably results in death and injury.
Click
here to read more
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Moskowitz's
anti-peace activities
have been a frequent subject for reporters
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A
Tale Of Two Cities
by Lawrence Cohler-Esses
26 September 1997
www.thejewishweek.com
Irving Moskowitz, who shakes Jerusalem
politics to its roots, also dominates a tiny Latino enclave
in California. It's the beginning of his money pipeline to the
Holy City.
HAWAIIAN GARDENS, CALIFORNIA Francelia Morales, a 36-year-old
Mexican immigrant living in a roach-infested apartment with
mildewed walls, has been thinking a lot about the crisis in
the Middle East lately.
"I feel a link to the Palestinians I never knew before." she
said as she sat with her husband and three children amid the
cardboard storage boxes. childrens toys and English-language
instruction video cassettes that crowd her small living room.
Her neighbor from just a few doors down feels similarly.
"I feel like I understand what the Palestinians are going through."
nodded Arturo Perez. Its the same thing like what we are going
through here."
Like 16 other families in this row of clapboard apartment units
set on a narrow asphalt alleyway outside Los Angeles the Morales
and Perez families have received 30-day eviction notices from
their landlord, Dr. Irving I. Moskowitz, the controversial right-wing
Jerusalem developer who emerged last week at the center of the
Israeli-Palestinian crisis. But unlike most of them, the Morales
and Perez families, and three others, are defying him.
An Uncomfortable
Line
by Eric Silver
26 September 1997
www.jewishjournal.com
The door of Irving Moskowitz's home near
the Montefiore windmill in Yemin Moshe, Jerusalem's first Jewish
neighborhood built outside the ancient walls a century ago,
was barred and bolted. The shutters were sealed. A gossipy neighbor
said the owners were seldom there, two or three days at a time,
then off again.
It was noon on Friday, Sept. 19, barely 14 hours after three
Jewish tenant families had evacuated houses bought by the Miami-based
bingo magnate in the Arab neighborhood of Ras al-Amud on the
other, eastern side of the Old City.
Earlier in the week, Moskowitz had stood in that gritty, neglected
urban village on the flank of the Mount of Olives, hammering
a mezuzah on a door post and telling the world's TV cameras
that this was where "we" are making "our" home. Yet the truth
was that as soon as he had signed a face-saving deal with the
government of Israel, he was on the plane back to Florida in
time for Shabbat.
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Bingo
King Aids Israeli Right Wing
by Hope Hamashige and Paul Lieberman
and Mary Curtius
09 May 1996
Los Angeles Times
Dr. Irving Moskowitz Has Sent Millions
From Hawaiian Gardens Club To Groups Trying To Thwart Mideast
Peace By Buying Land In Contested Areas. His Activities Raise
Controversy At Home And Abroad.
Although the article excerpted here was published over six years
ago, it remains the most comprehensive account of gambling mogul
Irving Moskowitz’s activities in Hawaiian Gardens. We
have interspersed the excerpts with updated information in italic
typeface
Just who
is Irving Moskowitz? A retired doctor-turned-bingo-king
by Matthew Dorf
23 September 1997
JTA News
An Israeli doctor working in a Manhattan
hospital asked his colleague last week, "Who's the prime minister
of Israel?"
"This week, of course, it's Dr. Irving Moskowitz," Joseph Frager
told his questioner.
While they laughed, the real Israeli prime minister, Benjamin
Netanyahu, locked horns with Moskowitz, the Miami millionaire
who at least for the moment is setting Israel's political agenda.
Moskowitz threw Netanyahu's government into turmoil last week
when he opened the doors of a house he had purchased in Ras
al-Amud to three Jewish families.
After heated negotiations, Netanyahu convinced Moskowitz to
kick the families out of the Arab neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem,
on the Mount of Olives. Instead 10 yeshiva students will guard
and maintain the property.
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Ras-Al Amud
Shepherd
Beit Orot
Ras-Al Amud
Silowan
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