Crisis Reveals Rift in Israel Over Role of Diaspora Jews

JERUSALEM —  Irving Moskowitz, the American financier behind the recent settling of Jewish families in two East Jerusalem homes, was portrayed in an Israeli newspaper cartoon on Thursday as a Daddy Warbucks, sitting on an armchair made of dollars, smoking a cigar and flicking matches into a can of gasoline called Ras al Amud.

Moskowitz, an Orthodox Jew based in Miami and with strong Southern California connections, has sparked a political crisis in Israel by moving the settlers into the Arab neighborhood of Ras al Amud--despite a government decision to postpone his plans for building Jewish housing there, and in defiance of international pressure against acts that could spark clashes with the Palestinians.

And he has reignited a debate among Israelis and diaspora Jews over the appropriate role for American Jews in Israeli politics.

“The situation today, that some Jew from Miami who bought property in Jerusalem . . . can determine our political future, is unacceptable,” former Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek said in the newspaper Maariv.

“Mr. Moskowitz, you aren’t a Zionist. You are a provocateur,” Carmi Gillon, former chief of Israel’s General Security Service, or Shin Bet, wrote in the newspaper Yediot Aharonot. “As a citizen, I have a problem with the fact that the prime minister is even negotiating with you.”

Extreme right-wing leader Geula Cohen countered in the newspaper Maariv that complaints about Moskowitz’s role in Israel are “phony,” given that virtually the entire Jewish state has been built with help from abroad.

“With what money was land bought in the country of Israel, were houses built, factories opened, universities established, airplanes bought and immigrants absorbed, if not also from the money of Jews who . . . live in the diaspora?” she wrote.

Indeed, diaspora Jews from the Rothschild barons of Europe to U.S. “bingo kings” such as Moskowitz have helped to buy and build the state of Israel since its founding nearly 50 years ago. Moskowitz, a retired doctor and developer, has funneled millions of dollars from bingo halls in Southern California through his Irving I. Moskowitz Foundation to purchase property in the occupied West Bank and disputed East Jerusalem, including the Muslim quarter of the Old City.

He financed the renovation of the Hasmonean tunnel in the Old City last year and was with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the opening of a new door to it that sparked Palestinian riots and clashes between Palestinian police and Israeli soldiers that left at least 75 dead.

Amid the recent turmoil, Moskowitz has denied that his activities are politically motivated. “We came here to live. We’re not political. We came here because we want to live on the Mount of Olives,” he said during a visit this week to the settlers in Ras al Amud, which sits at the foot of the mount.

But Moskowitz has openly condemned the U.S.-backed Israeli-Palestinian peace process as a “slide toward concessions, surrender and Israeli suicide” and said he is a Jew trying to “save our nation.” For that reason, several American Jewish leaders argued that he should not be allowed to claim U.S. tax deductions for some of his land purchases in Israel.

Netanyahu spokesman David Bar-Illan said that in the case of Ras al Amud the government did not object in principle to Moskowitz’s settling Jews in East Jerusalem but to the timing of his actions.

“The government should be the one to decide at this sensitive juncture who does what to whom and when,” Bar-Illan said.

Bar-Illan too insisted that the public criticism of Moskowitz is disingenuous, because if he or any other American Jew had forced the government’s hand in the opposite direction--to the left--”I don’t think anyone would have complained.”

American Jews have long served as lobbyists for Israel before the U.S. government, which gives the Jewish state political support and about $4 billion a year in aid. In recent years, they have even lobbied in the United States on behalf of the Israeli opposition: Americans for Peace Now campaigned against Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, launched in 1982 by a government headed by Netanyahu’s Likud Party; the Zionist Organization of America and other groups blasted the 1993 peace agreement made by the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, of the Labor Party, with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

American Jews also have been politically active inside Israel. In one way or another, they have contributed heavily to political parties and electoral campaigns and, unlike recent alleged political contributions in the United States from China and other foreign countries, it has usually been without public controversy.

Diaspora Jews have funded countless cultural, religious and political institutions. And yet leaders of American Jewish organizations argue that Moskowitz’s brand of activism is unprecedented, representing a new level of American Jewish involvement in Israeli politics.

“This action on the ground is an escalation,” said Rabbi David Clayman, Jerusalem representative for the American Jewish Congress, in an interview Thursday. “It is a partisan action by an American Jew that runs counter to the express policy of the Israeli government and the will of Israeli society as expressed by its institutions.”

There is some disagreement in Israel as to whether the settlers backed by Moskowitz really acted against the wishes of the government. In July, Netanyahu delayed Moskowitz’s plans to build a two-story apartment complex on the Ras al Amud property he had purchased, arguing that the construction could inflame Israeli-Palestinian relations.

But Netanyahu was warned that the settlers might try to take possession of the buildings anyway, and did nothing to prevent it. And several members of his government subsequently supported the move, which they said would help block Palestinian efforts to secure East Jerusalem for the capital of an independent Palestinian state.

Nonetheless, Netanyahu canceled a scheduled trip to Europe this week because of the crisis, and his ministers spent two days and nights in negotiations with Moskowitz to arrive Thursday at the “compromise” of evicting the families and leaving 10 Jewish seminary students to guard the buildings.

“Moskowitz has no constituency and represents no organized collective voice within American Jewry, and the prime minister is negotiating with him and he is exercising a voice in Israel,” said Lawrence Rubin, executive vice chairman of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council, an umbrella group for about 120 American organizations.

“It is appropriate for American Jews to have and express points of view in Israel and, yes, they have done so historically. But when one acts like a Lone Ranger, it can be harmful and dangerous,” Rubin said.

Other Americans have acted independently of Israeli government policy. Los Angeles philanthropist Stanley Sheinbaum and a small group of American Jews met with Arafat in 1988, long before any Israeli government from the left or right would consider sitting down with the Palestine Liberation Organization chief.

In a telephone interview from Washington, Sheinbaum argued that his 1988 meeting with Arafat was different from what Moskowitz is doing in East Jerusalem today.

“I was not taking an action to do anything on the ground to change circumstances. I was trying to persuade Arafat to recognize Israel and stop terrorism,” Sheinbaum said. “Moskowitz is changing circumstances on the ground to make it more difficult for them [the government] to implement policy.”

That, argued Peace Now activist Galia Golan, is the essence of the matter. In her mind, the issue is not whether Moskowitz has a right to be active in Israel, but what he is doing with that right.

“It is legitimate for Jews abroad to have a say in internal Israeli politics. That doesn’t mean whatever they do is justified. There is still right and wrong,” Golan said. “What they are doing here now is threatening our lives and could lead to bloodshed.”