As spelled out here, Pro Israel & Settlement builder, the I. Moskowitz Foundation has made into the Hillary Clinton email archives over at WikiLeaks.
What Hillary wanted with Moskowitz is anyone's guess...
I doubt it was a thank you note.
Check this out:
RE:
UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05789856 Date: 10/30/2015
RELEASE IN PART
B6
Quite a character this guy.
Worth reading.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/12/irving-moskowitz-israeli-settlements-anti-obama-super-pao_n_1416041.html
Ci
Paul Blumenthal
paulblumenthal@huffingtonriost.com
Irving Moskowitz, Controversial Backer Of
Israeli Settlements, Gives $1 Million To Anti-
Obama Super PAC
Posted: 04/12/2012 9:21 am
By Paul Blumenthal
WASHINGTON -- Even in the era of unbridled campaign contributions, Irving Moskowitz's $i million
donation in February to American Crossroads, the Karl Rove-linked super PAC, is eye-catching.
A retired physician who made a fortune purchasing hospitals and running bingo and casino
operations in the economically depressed California town of Hawaiian Gardens, Moskowitz is well-
known to those who follow the Israel-Palestine conflict. His contributions to far-right Jewish settler
groups, questionable archaeological projects and widespread land purchases in East Jerusalem and
the West Bank have routinely inflamed the region over the past four decades and, according to many
familiar with the conflict, made him a key obstacle to peace in the Middle East.
Now, at age 83, Moskowitz has turned his money on the American political realm in a more
prominent fashion than ever before, funding "birther" groups that question the legitimacy of
President Barack Obama's U.S. citizenship and others that stoke fears about the president's alleged
ties to "radical Islam."
UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05789856 Date: 10/30/2015
Although he has funded Republican politicians and organizations in the past, his $1 million donation
to American Crossroads is his biggest contribution to U.S. electoral politics to date. Moskowitz did not
respond to requests for comment from The Huffington Post. American Crossroads told HuffPost that
it does not comment on its donors.
Moskowitz's contribution was made possible by the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling and a
subsequent lower court decision that freed corporations, unions and individuals to make unlimited
contributions to independent electoral efforts.
And it indicates that supporters of Israel's right to control the West Bank, occupied since the end of
the 1967 war, will vigorously oppose President Obama in his campaign for reelection.
**********
Moskowitz's long-held desire, as he told the Washington Post in the 1980s, has been to "do everything
I possibly can to help reclaim Jerusalem for the Jewish people."
Born in New York City in 1928 to Polish immigrants, Moskowitz spent most of his childhood and
teenage years in Milwaukee. Coming of age as a Jewish teenager in a largely German immigrant city
family members in the
helped shape his personal Jewish identity, as did the loss of at least20
Holocaust, according to speeches and writings by Moskowitz over the years.
After graduating from the University of Wisconsin Medical School, Moskowitz moved to Southern
California to launch his career as a doctor. Soon, he started buying up hospitals, which he would flip,
beginning as early as 1969, to pay for land purchases in Jerusalem and for donations to settlers in the
West Bank and Gaza.
In 2010, President Obama witnessed firsthand Moskowitz's ability to stir up controversy when the
administration attempted to keep pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to
impose a freeze on settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
At the time, Moskowitz was planning to demolish the Shepherd Hotel in East Jerusalem, which he
had purchased in 1985, to make way for a new apartment complex for settlers. The Israeli government
had long resisted his efforts to bulldoze the building, which had been home to the Muslim grand mufti
of Jerusalem who supported Hitler during World War II.
But then, just prior to a meeting between Obama and Netanyahu at the White House, the Jerusalem
city government approved the destruction of the hotel and construction of the new settlement.
Israel had already been thumbing its nose at the president's call for a settlement freeze by authorizing
new settlements throughout the West Bank. The approval of Moskowitz's development prompted
harsh statements of rebuke from the White House and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The destruction of the Shepherd Hotel is just the latest in Moskowitz's long history of support for
Israeli settlements. Since 2008, his foundations have given more than $15 million to the cause.
Those donations have gone to some of the most controversial settler activists. In2010, the latest year
for which records are available, Moskowitz and his wife's foundation contributed $1.93 million to the
Central Fund of Israel, according to Internal Revenue Service records. Money from the fund has gone
to support settlements in the West Bank, according to the New York Times --including to Rabbi
Yitzhak Shapira, who wrote a book justifying the killing of Palestinian babies because of "the future
danger that will arise if they are allowed to grow into evil people like their parents."
2010 to Friends of Ir David Inc., a Brooklyn-based nonprofit. The
The Moskowitzes gave $2 million in
group funnels money to efforts in the historic City of David, located in East Jerusalem, to purchase
land and embark on archaeological projects to prove prior Jewish residency in an effort to reclaim
land.
In 2010, the Moskowitzes also donated to groups supporting West Bank or near-West Bank
settlements in Itamar, Afula, Hebron and Gush Etzion.
Groups pushing for a two-state solution and a peace treaty between Israel and the occupied
Palestinian territories consider Moskowitz's contributions a major roadblock to peace.
"The purchases and grants that [Moskowitz has] given to organizations here in Jerusalem,
particularly in East Jerusalem, have made it more difficult to implement a future peace agreement in
Jerusalem and has therefore made a future peace between Israel and the Palestinians more difficult,"
says Ori Nir, the spokesman for Americans for Peace Now.
UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05789856 Date: 10/30/2015
**********
While Moskowitz's influence in the Middle East is well known, he is not solely focused overseas. He
has been making charitable contributions to nonprofits in the U.S. that promote conspiracy theories
about President Obama's birthplace and the rising influence of Islam in American society.
According to IRS records, the Irving I. Moskowitz Foundation gave $50,000 in 2010 to the Western
Center for Journalism, a nonprofit founded by World Net Daily editor Joseph Farah, a prominent
proponent of birther conspiracies. The center's website currently touts the "investigation" into the
president's birth certificate by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, calling it "ForgeryGate."
Moskowitz also provided $100,000 to the Center for Security Policy, a nonprofit warning of the
imminent danger of radical Islam in America. The center's founder and president is Frank Gaffney, a
neoconservative who has publicly questioned whether the president was born in the U.S. and stated
that Obama, in his 2008 campaign, was seeking "the Jihadist vote."
The Norwegian Christian conservative terrorist Anders Breivik -- who last year detonated a bomb in
downtown Oslo, killing eight, and then massacred 68 more, mostly children and teenagers, on a
nearby island -- cited, among others, Gaffney's writings and publications from the Center for Security
Policy in his manifesto against the "Islamic colonization of Europe."
Another $20,000 from Moskowitz's foundations went to the Windsor Hills Baptist Church in
Oklahoma City. The Southern Poverty Law Center recently listed the church as an anti-gay hate group
after the church's pastor testified before the Oklahoma City council that over half of the murders in
U.S. cities were committed by gay people. The church is also a strong supporter of the Israeli settler
movement and currently has a video on its website arguing why Israel must permanently occupy
territory reaching to the Jordan Rift Valley.
The former pastor of the church (and father of the current pastor) runs Yedidim of Israel, a Christian
Zionist organization founded to counter the George W. Bush administration's "road map" for peace.
The group, which opposes what it calls "land for peace" deals with the "so-called Palestinians," ran a
public relations campaign within the evangelical community and in Washington newspapers against
then-President Bush's push for a peace agreement.
But Moskowitz's $1 million donation to American Crossroads is his single biggest contribution to U.S.
electoral politics by far.
* * * * * * * * * *
Most of Moskowitz's money comes from an unlikely source: bingo. In 1988, he took over a bingo night
in Hawaiian Gardens, where he owned a hospital. The bingo night was a cash cow for the city, and
Moskowitz built it up into one of the biggest bingo operations in the country.
Moskowitz was required by law to run the game, like all bingo operations, as a nonprofit organization.
The nonprofit that runs the bingo night is the same Irving I. Moskowitz Foundation that funds the
controversial settler groups. Although Moskowitz had been donating to Israeli causes for years, the
bingo money pushed his giving to another level, and he soon became one of the biggest benefactors of
Israeli settlements, giving millions of dollars each year through his foundation.
The city of Hawaiian Gardens allowed Moskowitz to open a for-profit card game casino, which further
contributed to his personal fortune and helped him to fund activities in Israel and the occupied
territories.
Those donations have been controversial not just because of the eventual recipients of the funds, but
also because of their tax-exempt status. In 2010, The New York Times found that the money
contributed to American nonprofits that gave money to the settlements, while providing legally
appropriate funds for schools, food, recreation centers and synagogues, "has also paid for more legally
questionable commodities: housing as well as guard dogs, bulletproof vests, rifle scopes and vehicles
to secure outposts deep in occupied areas."
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, a nonprofit that tracks discrimination against
Arab Americans in the United States and researches nonprofits funding Israeli settlements, wants to
stop Moskowitz and others from giving money to groups in the U.S. that provide money to the
settlers. The ADC is pressuring the IRS to revoke the tax-exempt status of these groups.
UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05789856 Date: 10/30/2015
"Our argument is that a nonprofit should not engage in activities that are in opposition to American
policy," says Abed Ayoub, legal director for the ADC. "We want to raise enough doubt to have the IRS
have an audit."
American policy under President Obama has been broadly supportive of Israel, with certain
reservations -- among them, the construction of settlements in disputed areas -- and Republicans
have used those cracks in the U.S.-Israel alliance to attack Obama in the presidential campaign. While
some of the most generous super PAC donors have concentrated their efforts on supporting specific
GOP candidates, those whose sole interest is making Obama a one-term president have no better
place to put their money than American Crossroads.
The group heads a network of independent Republican groups -- essentially, the "shadow Republican
Party" -- organized to beat both President Obama and congressional Democrats in the fall.
"The primary mission of the group is going to be to move Obama out of the White House," says Viveca
Novak, communications director for the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit that tracks money
in politics. "It's also a group with strong ties to the more ferocious Republicans who are very
aggressive about their politics."
Those aggressive Republican operatives also happen to be some of the most respected and well
connected in the country. Major figures connected to American Crossroads include Karl Rove, former
Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie and former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour.
Moskowitz, with his $1 million contribution, appears more than happy to help them.
"Moskowitz is interested in one thing, and that is supporting people who will unquestionably do the
bidding of the most extreme elements of the American Jewish and Israeli polity," says Rabbi Haim
-dissolved Coalition for Justice in Hawaiian Gardens and Jerusalem,
Dov Beliak, a member of the now
an organization that opposed Moskowitz's use of bingo and casino operations to fund settlements in
Israel.
"Whatever he gives to the Republican Party or this PAC are in service of pouring the most oil on the
fire.
Paul Blumenthal is a reporter for the Huffington Post covering money and influence in politics. He previously worked as
the Senior Writer for the Sunlight Foundation covering influence, lobbying, and transparency issues. His work has been
and National Journal. He can be reached at paulblumenthal@huffingtonpost.com can follow him on Twitterw York Times,
@PaulBIu.
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