Now here is an item on a man - this guy is into gambling and from such a
poor boy persecuted by the Nazis in America during WWII? What a lot of
crap but here is another tax free foundation and here is the man who
builds gambling houses with Larry Flynt and Flynt pours money also into
ADL and numerous other fronts?
Barry Chamish being destroyed because of his work to get the guy behind
the Rabin assassination - take another look at this man and I think of
these jewish docors here hooked up to the hit man of Meyer Lansky who
left body bag counts but only tried for one? Murder of another doctor.
So this is the man whom I believe caused the breakdown of a peace
process in Israel and it is the land grab so if the Feds want to
investigate someone - start with this man......he is the man who put
Sharon in Office and cui bono?
Saba
September 26, 1997
Is Irving Moskowitz a hero or just a rogue?
MATTHEW DORF
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
WASHINGTON -- 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.
For years Netanyahu supported Moskowitz's Jerusalem land purchases.
The two have been close ever since Moskowitz was instrumental in opening
a research institute named after Netanyahu's brother, Yonatan, who died
during the famous Entebbe rescue in 1976.
Now, Netanyahu's longtime political supporter and friend has put the
prime minister on the defensive and thrown yet another wrench into
Israeli efforts to restart peace talks with the Palestinians.
To Frager, the president of the American Friends of Ateret Cohanim,
which supports a yeshiva and land purchases in eastern Jerusalem, this
makes Moskowitz "a champion, a hero in my eyes."
But to many Israelis, the soft-spoken Orthodox American Jew is no hero.
The Israeli press has vilified Moskowitz for using his money to pressure
the government on Jerusalem.
Editorial cartoons last week depicted Moskowitz as a "Daddy Warbucks"
figure, tossing matches from afar into the tinderbox of
Israeli-Palestinian relations. Israeli peace groups hoisted banners
asking, "How many wars have you fought in, Moskowitz?"
[Remember Sharon said he had the match while Arabs had the oil - did
Moskowitz light it then and now????Saba note]
It was Moskowitz, after all, who is credited with pressing Netanyahu
into opening the tunnel alongside the Temple Mount in Jerusalem last
year. The move led to days of Palestinian rioting and the deaths of more
than 70 people, including 15 Israelis.
A plaque with his name hangs in the tunnel.
As Israelis examine how one man can so dramatically set their agenda,
last week's incident has many wondering aloud, "Who is Irving
Moskowitz?"
In short, he's a 69-year-old retired doctor of internal medicine who has
lived in Miami Beach since 1980.
But as Netanyahu and others can testify, there is nothing short or
simple about Moskowitz.
For years, he toiled in the background, supporting Jewish organizations
seeking to strengthen Israel's sovereignty in Jerusalem.
He has given at least $2.5 million to American Friends of Ateret
Cohanim, a group dedicated to rebuilding the destroyed temple, where the
Dome of the Rock stands today.
But few Americans or Israelis had ever heard of him until recently.
Moskowitz, who has shunned publicity, refused numerous requests to be
interviewed for this article. But as he continues to work on his
political agenda, Moskowitz cannot escape the spotlight.
Born in New York City and raised in Milwaukee, Moskowitz is the ninth of
12 children.
In a handful of interviews and speeches over the years, Moskowitz has
said that his experiences in Milwaukee had a profound impact on his
life.
A city with a large German population, Milwaukee was not a very
comfortable place for a Jewish teen during World War II, he has said.
Moskowitz's older brother, a letter carrier, regularly delivered
anti-Semitic newspapers to homes along his route.
Like many teens, Moskowitz used sports as an escape. After excelling as
a star center fielder with a powerful bat, a local minor league team
tried in vain to sign him.
By then, Moskowitz had decided that medicine was his ticket to escape
poverty.
He graduated from the University of Wisconsin Medical School in 1952.
Then 23, Moskowitz moved to Southern California to begin his career as a
doctor.
A few years later, Moskowitz bought his first hospital in California,
the first in a series of shrewd business decisions.
Soon after, he visited Israel with his wife, Cherna. It would be the
first of dozens of trips. Of his eight children, two live in Israel.
Cherna owns a Judaica shop in a Miami mall.
As early as 1969, Moskowitz began to sell his hospitals to buy property
for yeshivot in Jerusalem.
Moskowitz took great pride in his 1985 purchase of the Shepherd Hotel,
just outside the Old City, for more than $1 million.
The mufti of Jerusalem once lived there, and Israeli police leased the
building from Moskowitz during the intifada, the Palestinian uprising.
Just as he began running out of hospitals to sell to increase his
holdings in Israel, he was offered a cash cow beyond his wildest dreams,
earning him the label "bingo king."
Through the connections he built in the hospital business, Moskowitz
came to Hawaiian Gardens, a tiny city near Los Angeles that sits on less
than one square mile of land and has about 14,000 residents.
In 1972, the city celebrated "Irving Moskowitz Day" when he opened its
first hospital. Even today, he is one of the city's major benefactors,
donating more than $500,000 a year to social service agencies and a food
bank.
So when the city faced the prospect of losing $200,000 in revenue from
its bingo parlor, the commissioners turned to Moskowitz and asked him to
take over.
Under the arrangement, the city would get 1 percent of the gross
receipts and Moskowitz's nonprofit Moskowitz Foundation would reap any
profits.
On Sept. 13, 1988 -- exactly five years before Israel and the
Palestinians signed their first peace accord -- Moskowitz took over the
bingo hall.
It was a move that changed his life -- and ultimately, he hopes, the
character of Jerusalem.
Through bingo profits, Moskowitz's charitable giving has soared from the
thousands to the millions, propelling his foundation to one of the top
1,000 private foundations in the United States.
Moskowitz's foundation gave away $57,000 in 1987. [Like Meyer Lansky and
doctors and drugs go hand and hand - saba note]
In 1991, he gave away $1.5 million, according to the foundation's tax
returns. By 1994, he had given $4.3 million and about $6 million in
1995. More current figures are not available.
Although his relations with Hawaiian Gardens -- he never actually lived
there -- have suffered over the years, his bingo contract is not in
danger. In fact, Moskowitz stands poised to win his current battle to
open a card hall. If successful, the Moskowitz Foundation's income could
once again soar.
An examination of the foundation's 1994 tax return shows his close
financial ties to U.S. groups sympathetic to Israel's right wing.
In 1994, Moskowitz gave more than $1 million to American Friends of
Everest, a group he formed to purchase land in Jerusalem.
Among the other largest recipients were American Friends of Ateret
Cohanim, $576,000; National Council of Young Israel, $514,000; Zionist
Organization of American, $200,000; PRO-Israel, $157,000; Center for
Security Policy, $85,000; and Americans for a Safe Israel, $73,000.
In a 1996 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Moskowitz minced no
words when he talked about Israeli politics, calling the peace process
"a slide toward concessions, surrender and Israeli suicide."
I'm doing the "natural thing for a Jew," he said, trying to "save our
nation."
The year before, he compared slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
to Britain's Neville Chamberlain, who sought to appease the Nazis.
[Think Barry Chamish barking up wrong tree for here is the man he seeks
maybe?? Saba note]
"I was 10 years old at the time and still vividly remember the profound
sadness that enveloped our home in the wake of the Munich signing. There
was an atmosphere of mourning for the tragedy we knew would follow,
since belligerent dictators can never be truly appeased," he told the
Jerusalem Post two years ago.
"Under political pressure at home and abroad or in the hope of being
remembered in the history books -- or simply out of sheer desperation --
prime ministers can take steps in the name of `peace´ that actually
lead to war."
More recently Moskowitz has defended his right to build in an Arab
neighborhood of Jerusalem.
"If the peace process is incapable of digesting the presence of 50
Jewish families 860 yards from the Western Wall and barely a mile from
the King David Hotel, then its fragility is indeed beyond repair,"
Moskowitz wrote in a letter to the editor of the Washington Post last
week.
"To rule out the construction of a 50-unit Jewish apartment project on
Mount of Olives because of its proximity to Arab residences is to
enfranchise Yasser Arafat's thesis that Palestinians are incapable of
living on common ground with Israelis in Jerusalem. That would be
defined as racism anywhere outside the Middle East."
For now, Moskowitz has promised to continue his fight for the city.
When he visited the families in his Ras al-Amud building before they
left, Moskowitz signed the guest book, "The people of Israel build their
nation."
Moskowitz is also sitting on several other properties in Arab
neighborhoods.
Moskowitz has sought government approval to build in Abu Dis, which was
considered by some peace activists as a possible site of a future
Palestinian capital.
He also owns a now-closed hotel in the Sheik Jarah neighborhood that he
reportedly wants to renovate and reopen.
[Wonder if anyone has blown this up yet - Saba Note]
Even if Moskowitz delays some of his projects, Netanyahu may soon be
faced with another housing controversy in Jerusalem.
Ronn Torrosian, a spokesman for the families who moved into Ras al-Amud
last week, said in a telephone interview from Israel that there is
another Jewish American businessman who will turn over land in an Arab
Jerusalem neighborhood to Jews. [what about Larry Silverstein who just
got a 99 year lease settled and boom - no more World Trade Center for he
had a deal the Israelis had the guts to refuse]
"There's another Ras al-Amud to come in the next few weeks," he said.
Copyright Notice (c) 1997, San Francisco Jewish Community Publications
Inc., dba Jewish Bulletin of Northern California. All rights reserved.
This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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