Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

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Later this month, one of the leading U.S. fundraising groups supporting the most extreme settlement groups, will host its annual fundraising gala at the New York Mets’ new Citi Field. David Ignatius wrote a few months ago in the Washington Post that the Fund and other pro-settler groups raised $33.5-million over a three-year period to support Israeli (Bernard Avishai calls them “Judean”) colonists who live on Palestinian land in violation of international law. Peace Now, the most formidable source for documentary evidence on the subject, estimates that the vast majority of settlements sit on privately-owned Palestinian land expropriated from their legal owners.

Adalah-NY and other anti-Occupation groups have raised their voices against this gruesome party and demanded that the Mets cancel the event. They did the same last year and the midtown hotel which was serving as host ignored the protest and the event went ahead as planned, raising hundreds of thousands more for settler racists. Adalah’s protest largely revolves around the fact that one of the settlers’ primary objectives is to make the land free for Jews and to rid it of Arabs. Given that Jackie Robinson is closely identified with N.Y. Mets history (the stadium rotunda under the club where the gala will be held is named in his honor), a protest aimed at the Hebron Fund’s racist mission is particularly apt.

But Adalah doesn’t mention other salient facts that cause the Hebron Fund and other pro settler fundraisers to violate both U.S. and international law and their tax-exempt status. Some of the funding supports settlement security. In other words, it may be used to buy guns, ammunition, communication gear, dogs, vehicles and other paraphanelia settlers use to terrorize their Palestinian neighbors. U.S. law specifically bars funds from U.S. citizens being used for acts of terror.

Clearly, Jack Teitel, accused settler mass-murderer (of Jews and Palestinians), and others have engaged in such acts of terror. Residents of other settlements have engaged in terror as well. It is high time that we American Jews stop this abuse by refusing to support it and by ostracizing those who do. I am waiting in vain for New York Jewish leaders to call for an end to support for the Hebron Fund and calling on the Mets to eject pro-settler donors from the luxury boxes at Citi Field. It is high time that the IRS review Hebron Fund’s 501c3 status and revoke it if it can be found that their funds were used to support terror.

Max Blumenthal has also written about the Moskowitz Foundation, another tax-exempt pro-settler vehicle for funding the Judaization of East Jerusalem, awarding $50,000 to Ronit Shuker, founder of Shvut Rachel. Shuker is documented on video calling for the expulsion of Arabs from the Land of Israel, which is nothing less than a call for ethnic cleansing. Once again, U.S. taxpayer subsidized funds should not be supporting calls for ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.

Phil Weiss has also documented on audiotape another settler leader, Nadia Matar of Women in Green, calling for the assassination of Mahmoud Abbas during a talk she gave at a fundraiser held for her group, Women in Green, held at a Manhattan synagogue. Yet another example, of settlers supporting terror on our dime. When will we wise up?