The Coalition for Justice in Hawaiian Gardens and Jerusalem Responds to Rebuttal by Moskowitz Representatives Before the California Gambling Control Commission on January 9, 2004

Representatives of settler funder Irving Moskowitz failed to rebut evidence that Moskowitz does not qualify for a casino license, instead using their rebuttal period at a January 9th hearing to attack critics and mislead the California Gambling Control Commission. Our Coalition, which has led the opposition to Moskowitz's license bid invites you to read the Moskowitz "rebuttal" and our responses to it, which we recently submitted to the Commission. (To go directly to the rebuttal-response PDF document, click here.)

The casino is in the small Los Angeles County city of Hawaiian Gardens, where Moskowitz also operates a bingo hall and uses its profits to support militantly anti-peace Israeli settlers. For more background information, please read our illustrated brochure or our report, Gambling on Extremism.

In the Moskowitz rebuttal:

  • His representatives acknowledged that the New York business which we testified that Moskowitz had failed to disclose was, indeed, a bingo, as we had suggested to the Commission.
  • Moskowitz's attorney claimed that a Moskowitz webmaster had posted a violent Internet assassination game without authorization of Moskowitz's wife and business partner Cherna Moskowitz and that Mrs. Moskowitz had sued the webmaster. We obtained the lawsuit, which we analyze in our response. (We are skeptical.)
  • The attorney, Beryl Weiner, also said that Moskowitz terminated the food concession at his bingo because the operators, Ron and Linda Silverman, "did not meet appropriate health standards." We note in our response that the Silverman's never had anything but a top, "A" health rating.
The hearing on January 9th was the Gambling Control Commission's second round of public testimony on Moskowitz's license application. Soon afterwards we sent you an email summarizing the testimony of representatives of the Coalition and other speakers opposed to licensing Moskowitz. We followed a similar summary of license opponents at the first hearing, held December 18th, with a summary of pro-Moskowitz speakers. (Please click here to read the December summary and click here to read the January summary.)

But we have decided not to do that again because Moskowitz's January witnesses generally echoed those who spoke in favor of the license in December, praising him for donating to their programs or predicting dire times for Hawaiian Gardens without the casino - as if to suggest that denying Moskowitz a license would force closure of the casino, rather than its sale. Instead, we are presenting our response to the rebuttal which the Commission allowed the Moskowitz side to put on at the close of testimony.

We did this because the Moskowitz rebuttal was so loaded with misleading assertions that we felt impelled to transcribe it and respond statement by statement. As we wrote to the Commission when we submitted our response, "Given that several former Hawaiian Gardens officials decided not to testify because of fear [of retaliation], we were dismayed that Moskowitz's speakers availed themselves of the privilege of your forum to smear and falsely malign the few who were courageous enough testify."

Three men presented the Moskowitz rebuttal: attorney Robert Sullivan; Dr. David Moskowitz, Irving Moskowitz's son and assistant casino manager; and Beryl Weiner, Moskowitz's longtime attorney and operative in Hawaiian Gardens. We have transcribed their statements from audio tapes supplied by the Commission; in several instances where we have not been able to understand a word or two, we've indicated that. We have used italics to set off the three men's statements. Our responses are in straight-up typeface.

Please click here to read the rebuttal and our response (a PDF document).
© 2003 design by elbop for the Coalition for Justice in Hawaiian Gardens and Jerusalem