Palestine News Network (PNN) : "Tax records reveal extremist Americans who finance illegal settlements in Jerusalem"

Tax records reveal extremist Americans who finance illegal settlements in Jerusalem

04.08.09 - 11:23

Bethlehem / PNN – Even as US President Barack Obama insists that the Israelis stop settlement building in Jerusalem, tax documents reveal that US donors gave 24.5 million USD over five years to build Jewish settlements in Palestinian areas of the city.

The growth of settlements in East Jerusalem is considered a major hindrance to “peace talks” between Palestinians and Israelis.

Following the Money

US tax records reveal that the contributions have gone to Jewish groups such as Ateret Cohanim, a religious Zionist organization.

Ateret Cohanim purchased at least 45 properties in and around the Muslim Quarter of East Jerusalem’s Old City, where it operates in unmarked offices. The organization intends to populate the area with settler families and establish a Jewish majority in what is now a Palestinian neighborhood.

Several news outlets are reporting that money for these purchases came from wealthy American donors such as Ira Rennert, founder of the New York-based investment company Renco Group; and bingo entrepreneur Irving Moskowitz, who lives in Florida but claims his birthplace as Jerusalem.

The Elad Association received 2.5 million USD from the New York-based group Friends of Ir David, which receives significant funding from Moskowitz. Elad will use the money to settle about 60 Jewish families among the 3,000 Palestinians already living in the Al Bustan area of the Silwan neighborhood, according to Ir Amim, a Palestinian rights organization in Jerusalem.

IRS records in the US showed that the Friends of Ir David raised three million United States Dollars in 2007, and 14.7 million USD between 2003 and 2006. The New York-based Friends of Ateret Cohanim raised 2.1 million USD in 2007 and 5.6 million USD between 2003 and 2006, according to its tax filings.
US tax records also indicated that the Irving Moskowitz Foundation gave 405,000 USD to Elad in 2007, and 50,000 USD to Ateret Cohanim that same year.

The Guardian of Zion prize, funded by Rennert, was awarded in 2008 to Elad Founder Be’eri and Vice President Yehuda Maly, who each received $50,000.

Moskowitz and Rennert were also honorary chairmen at a fundraising gala in New York last year for the Jerusalem Reclamation Project, which supports Ateret Cohanim. Admission to the event cost $300 per person and included 43 honorary chairs, as well as 41 associate chairs. 

Illegal overtaking of Jerusalem

Jerusalem is a religiously significant city for Muslims, Christians and Jews, and an area of long-standing contention. Palestinians have East Jerusalem as their rightful capital, while the west is contentious. However, the Israelis are still trying to take them both as their own. Jewish settlers have taken over several historic sites there and built on land confiscated from Palestinians. This has been condemned by the US, Britain, France, the EU, and the United Nations among others as a violation of international law, which forbids an occupying power such as the Israelis from setting up residency in its occupied territory.
Gurenberg Gershon, author of "Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of Settlements," said, that while US contributions assist settlements throughout the West Bank, Jerusalem is the current focus of unrest in the region.

The status of Jerusalem is a serious sticking point in “peace negotiations” between Palestine and the Israelis. In the last couple of weeks, the US has sent political envoys to Palestine, Syria and to the Israelis in an attempt to resume negotiations between the three. Palestinians are demanding an independent state and equal rights, as well as a halt to illegal Jewish settlements in Jerusalem and elsewhere. Syria is involved partly because of the Israeli occupied Golan Heights — a fertile mountainous area known by the international community, including the UN, US, European Union, Red Cross and others to be Syrian territory occupied by Israel. However, the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights is home to thousands of Israeli settlers, governed mostly by Israeli law, and the source of 25 percent of Israel’s water supply.

The Right to Build in Jerusalem

These US donations have also helped fund plans for home construction on the site of the historic Shepherd Hotel, in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. Built in the 1930s for Palestinian leader Haj Amin Al-Husayni, the hotel became contested “Israeli property” after the so-called Six-Day War in 1967. It is now in the hands of a private company that wants to raze most of the building to make way for apartments for Jewish settlers.

The US State Department tried to halt the project two weeks ago, when the European Union, France, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that the construction plans would threaten chances for talks with Palestine.

In a recent US news conference, Israeli Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barket said that every Jerusalem resident was permitted to build anywhere in the city, “as long as they meet the building codes of the city.” This caveat creates endless problems for Palestinians, who often must build homes illegally because they cannot get the necessary permit. According to the UN, nearly one-third of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem do not have such permits. This leaves them under constant threat of being demolished, at cost to the Palestinian family living in the home.

Salim Shawamreh, of the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions (ICAHD), recently told the American Task Force on Palestine that the system is “Kafkaesque,” adding that “the whole legislation is designed so as not to give Palestinians building permits.”

Tourism and Ideology

In its agreement with the Israeli Authority of Nature and Parks, Elad says it wants to promote tourism in the region known as The City of David — a narrow promontory to the south of Jerusalem's Old City, generally considered to be the original site of Jerusalem. This is actually the southern side of Al Aqsa Mosque, the site of a Muslim cemetery, and across the street from the Palestinian Silwan neighborhood. Moskowitz, Russian-American oil tycoon Eugene Shvidler, and Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich have all partnered up for such enterprises in the region. 
 
"They are trying to erase the fact that Jerusalem is an Arab town and turn it into an Israeli tourist attraction,” said 39-year-old Jawad Siyam, an activist who helped Palestinians fight in Israeli courts to keep their homes. “When visitors come to town, they don’t have any idea who actually lives there.” 
 
Doron Spielman, a spokesperson for Elad, said that their efforts are about preservation: "The conservation and development of the City of David has attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors to the neighborhood in recent years. There are improvements to the infrastructure used by Arabs and Jews alike, in addition to the opening of Arab-owned stores in the region."
 
John Dillard, a spokesman for Renco, said that its founder did not want to comment on any real estate deals in Jerusalem. Shvidler also refused to respond, according to spokesperson John Mann. Representatives from the California-based Irving Moskowitz Foundation did not reply to a message sent through the website, and a phone number listed on its 2007 tax return was disconnected.

A Clash of Holy Sites

None of the tax contributions were against the law. But tensions in Jerusalem continue to rise, as Muslims and Christians decry what they is stated by the Israeli government and others as a campaign by Jewish Israelis to remove Christianity and Islam from the city. The idea is to increase the number of Jews over Arabs, including that Israeli officials are trying to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque through excavations near the structure, as well as changing the names of non-Jewish holy and historic sites there.
Netanyahu, in his first term as Israeli minister in 1996, destroyed areas under the Al Aqsa Mosque compound. As a result more than 80 Palestinians were killed and 12 Israelis died. 
 
The American Jews Moskowitz and Rennert contributed funding to the tunnel complex, which is one of the Old City’s biggest tourist attractions, according to the Web site of the “Western Wall Heritage Foundation,” a Zionist endeavor.

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