A portion of this post deals with UCLA Hillel. Before I launched into the post, I wanted to juxtapose my own experience as a graduate student at this Hillel back in the 1970s with today’s reality.
Then, I was pursuing an MA in Comparative Literature. The campus Hillel, led by Rabbis David Berner and Chaim Seidler-Feller, was my Jewish home. Each week, I davened at the Westwood minyan, an egalitarian service attended by faculty, staff and graduate students. It was a spiritual, intellectually challenging place of Jewish worship. I have even heard from some former members of the minyan decades later via this blog. On the High Holidays, I attended the services at Hillel and still remember the chazan’s hauntingly beautiful rendition of Hineni. I helped organize the annual Jewish Culture Festival at which I arranged for Israeli poet, Dan Pagis, to give a poetry reading.
My real goal had been to engage Leonard Cohen to offer a concert, but his agent said he was off at a Buddhist monastery, dividing his life between spiritual retreat and engagement with the real world.
In those days, Hillel was a tolerant, diverse place both spiritually and politically. It was made so because of the leadership offered by Rabbis like Chaim. But I gather that those days are over, perhaps long over. Rabbi Seidler-Feller clearly approved of the shenanigans described below and I know from a source he was furious at the negative coverage Hillel received in the media. I don’t believe the Chaim I knew decades ago would have participated in this scheme (though perhaps I am wrong and didn’t know him as well as I thought).
He is retiring and will be succeeded by a young doctrinaire Orthodx rabbi, Aaron Lerner, who earned smicha at a New York Orthodox seminary. Lerner does not believe in Jewish diversity. He’s an implacable ideologue as proven in this email he sent to the Hillel mailing list describing the Jewish community’s enemies on campus. He’s as much an Islamophobe as Milstein. In fact, UCLA Hillel rejected the application of the student Jewish Voice for Peace chapter to become part of the official Jewish community. JVP isn’t Jewish enough; or perhaps Zionist enough. When I participated in the UCLA Hillel community there was no Zionist litmus test. Now there is. And even worse things too.
I e mailed Rabbi Lerner with a series of questions about matters described below. He did not reply.
* *
I published a post a few days ago about Los Angeles real estate investor and pro-Israel philanthropist, Adam Milstein. It delved into his past as a convicted felon, his funding of pro-Israel UCLA student government candidates, and his family foundation, which funds NGOs devoted to Islamophobia and pro-Israel advocacy. Among them, he gives six-figure gifts to Aipac’s program to bring the national political elite on Israel junkets, and to StandWithUs. He gives five-figure gifts to a host of others of similar ideological outlook.
A glowing profile of Milstein published recently noted that he began his real immersion in the Jewish world with the cult-like group, Aish HaTorah. It seeks out wealthy Jewish corporate executives and pairs them with rabbis who engage in Jewish study. The learning comes with a strong dose of pro-Israel political indoctrination. This is how Aish has built its settler empire which includes a yeshiva next to the Kotel which is preparing for the destruction of the Haram al-Sharif and its replacement with the Third Temple. Aish also spawned the Clarion Project and its series of Islamophobic film productions. Milstein’s family foundation gave $60,000 to Aish according to its 2013 IRS 990.
According to a confidential source I interviewed who has knowledge of these matters, Milstein’s interest in UCLA and its campus politics relates to an obsession with defeating the BDS movement (a pro-BDS motion passed the UC Student Association, of which UCLA is a part, last month; UCLA too passed such a motion in 2014). He, like his allies at SWU, believe that BDS is an anti-Semitic movement, a sort of Trojan Horse, whose goal is to destroy Israel. For this reason, he believes it must be fought intensively and with all the resources the pro-Israelists can muster.
For at least the past three years, Milstein has donated funds via UCLA Hillel (another comprehensive review of the entire scandal is here) to support the pro-Israel student government slate Bruins United, an affiliate of Bruins for Israel. Though we know that Milstein personally donated $1,000 to the slate (e-mails confirming this are published here), he also solicited funding from other pro-Israel donors. Both he, Hillel, and the slate have refused to reveal how much external funding was given.
Milstein was much more than a mere donor. He held strategy sessions with the executive candidates. He held a gala fundraising event at his home attended by Hillel staff, prospective donors, and UCLA faculty and staff. The purpose was to encourage donors to participate in the project to benefit both Hillel and Bruins United and to oppose BDS. One wonders at the propriety of UCLA faculty and staff attending a fundraising event whose goal was to combat BDS, when such a subject might be a subject of discussion in courses, with some students likely to take positions supporting the movement.
NO #ISRAEL FLAG @ UCLA Center for Near East Studies that gets Federal Funding 4 Israel Studies http://t.co/5HNMW8d0tf pic.twitter.com/wVB9XWYdhm
— Adam Milstein (@AdamMilstein) September 19, 2014
The tweet above suggests Milstein’s enmity towards UCLA’s Center for Near East Studies, which offers courses in a wide-range of fields of study encompassing the varied societies of the Middle East including Israel and Arab states. His Twitter feed is filled with tweets that broadcast repugnant Islamophobia as well. Milstein makes common cause with pro-Israel advocates like the Amcha Initiative, which accuse the Center of sponsoring programming that amounts to anti-Semitism in targeting Israel for special opprobrium.
Milstein doesn’t, however, have the same feelings for another UCLA academic unit, the Center for Middle East Development, which is a project founded by, and largely featuring Prof. Steven Spiegel. In fact, Milstein’s son-in-law Benjamin Radparvar, a member of the local Iranian Jewish community, is a PhD candidate affiliated with the Center. Milstein gives $50,000 to it each year.
Previous reporting on this story noted that UCLA Hillel likely violated IRS regulations by acting as a conduit for the funds to student government candidates, because the ultimate recipient had no 501c3 status or charitable purpose. Here is what the Daily Cal had to say:
The UCLA Hillel is classified under Internal Revenue Code (26 U.S.C & 501(c)) as a 501(c) 3 non profit. As a 501(c)(3) non-profit these organizations [ed., and their donors] enjoy exemption from federal income taxes. However as clearly delineated in the IRS website under The Restriction of Political Campaign, Intervention by Section 501(c)(3) Tax-Exempt Organizations;
“Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. Contributions to political campaign funds … clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity. Violating this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.”
…If these elements qualify student elections at the UC as political campaigns for public office, then the donations to Oved’s [Bruin’s United] campaign violated federal law.
I consulted a lawyer who specializes in non-profit governance and tax regulations. She said that there is another possible IRS violation involving the Foundation’s designation of its donation on behalf of Bruins United. Such donations may not be directed to a non-charitable entity. Donors may suggest gifts be directed to such entity, but the charity is under no obligation to do so. Since in this case Hillel accepted the gift with the explicit understanding it would be passed-through to Bruins United, this is another possible IRS violation.
The tax lawyer also noted that the Bruins United candidates who accepted the funds, Avi Oved and Avinoam Baral, may be liable for tax penalties. Officers of the UCLA Hillel board may be subject to financial penalties for approving the pass-through “gift.” I sent Baral a message via his Facebook account asking if he’d answer a series of questions I posed. He did not reply.
I also noted in my earlier post Milstein’s felonious abuse of IRS non-profit regulations in the Spinka scam. There, he and his business partner (along with many other Los Angeles Jews) donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to a Hasidic sect, received a tax deduction, and then got most of the money back for their personal use.
The profile of the former felon features his own criminal defense lawyer singing his praises (and minimizing his legal offenses) seems part of a public relations “rebranding” effort. It included this gem:
Milstein says he takes full accountability for his conviction, which originated when he voluntarily took responsibility for a past violation to help a friend. Ed M. Robbins, Jr., Milstein’s attorney, adds, “In retrospect, Adam finds it hard to explain why he would do it when the amount that he was writing off represented a very small fraction of the taxes that he paid.”
This self-serving verbiage sent me to the final legal agreement the defendant made with the Department of Justice. Here in language clearly drafted by defense counsel, he explained his behavior is greater detail:
Through David [Hager], Adam also began giving to Spinka, the Orthodox Hasidic organization at issue in this case. As Adam admits, David was forwarding Adam’s checks to Spinka and was receiving a kickback from Spinka that he returned to Adam. According to Adam, David Hager, as a child of Holocaust survivors (Mr. Hager’s wife is also a child of Holocaust survivors) felt compelled to have money “put away” in order to survive future catastrophic events…
Hager also helped Adam rationalize that his contributions to Spinka, notwithstanding the fact that these cash kickbacks were stored, were a way of offsetting the nondeductible donations he was making to his family and others in the United States and Israel. In retrospect, Adam finds it hard to explain why he would do it when the amount that he was writing off represented a very small fraction of the taxes that he paid. Although Adam takes full responsibility for his actions, he was clearly swayed by the high esteem in which holds David Hager.
There are several aspects of this passage that are remarkably disingenuous. First, the idea that a Jew can justify committing a crime based on his experience as the child of Holocaust survivors is offensive. Second, the notion that Milstein felt justification in taking an illegal tax break because he subsidized his Israeli family is, if you take it at face value, incredibly naive. The U.S. tax system doesn’t make such allowances and he clearly knew this. But it didn’t deter him because he felt his own good deeds entitled him to cheat the government. It shows a man easily swayed by his own inner logic.
Milstein’s counsel here does a neat job of blaming his partner for his predicament, while at the same time denying he’s doing so. At a later point in the legal agreement, the defense claims that his client came forward despite the fact that the government had not yet approached or questioned him. The real truth here is that Milstein feared that once they had Hager in their sights, it would just be a matter of time before they discovered Milstein’s wrongdoing. Going to the feds voluntarily and before you’ve been implicated in a crime was a clear motive to avoid a harsher sentence (Hager served six months in federal prison and Milstein three).
His history of gifts to UCLA Hillel given through his foundation also seem to skirt the law, since the money he was laundered through the non-profit and then passed through for a purely political purpose. This funding helped the Bruin slate win the student election. Its president, Avinoam Baral, used his new position to spearhead the campus crusade against BDS, which eventually lost.
To exemplify Milstein’s tenuous relationship to the truth, in this profile he takes issue with Abe Greenhouse’s Electronic Intifada piece, which says that the State of Israel formally intervened in the legal case on his behalf. EI notes that the then-Israeli consul general wrote a letter on official Ministry of Foreign Affairs stationery to the judge requesting leniency. Milstein replies:
…The letter was written by the Consul General of Israel in Los Angeles but was simply a personal letter of support and far from an official Israeli government intervention, as The Electronic Intifada claimed.
Any high school senior can explain the difference between a personal and official letter. Indeed, Milstein solicited hundreds of letters as part of his campaign for leniency. Many are personal letters, not written on corporate or government letterhead. A number are written on company or organizational stationary. But the consul general’s letter is the only one written by any government representative, and it is clearly an official communication (page 207 of the plea agreement).
Milstein has introduced another ‘innovation’ to the pro-Israel toolbox: the Pro-Israel Mentor Student Network (PIMS). It’s an ingenious program that potentially offers great political benefit to the founder’s political agenda, and material benefit to the student. His Foundation identifies and recruits potential student leaders who will give pro-Israel campus activism the greatest boost. As part of the terms of the mentorship agreement, PIMS and the family foundation provide pro-Israel training to the mentee. They encourage him or her to participate in campus activities, political groups, etc. And if they run for office, they even offer financial support. It goes without saying that key elements of expected student activism will involve fighting BDS on campus and pro-Palestinian activists as well.
Here are the guidelines:
Student Eligibility:
Any full-time college student currently enrolled at UCLA who is interested in a “mentorship” program, which will help them towards reaching their career goals.1. Students must demonstrate that they are (or willing to become) Pro Israel activists.
2. Students must be members of a civic organization on campus.
3. Students will go through an application and interview process to determine eligibility.Expectation of Students:
1. To initiate the communication with assigned mentors
2. To provide a monthly report about their work with their mentor and their Pro Israel activity.
3. To attend 2 PIMS networking events.
4. To engage in Pro Israel activity on campus.
5. Be a member of a civic organization on campus.
Student participants derive enormous material benefit: they’re teamed up with a successful entrepreneur in his field of professional interest. The entrepreneur offers job training, mentoring, networking, resume writing and general career guidance. The value this offers to an enterprising student is incalculable. Given this fact, it’s entirely possible students will be drawn to this program more for the benefit it offers them, and less for the ideological indoctrination/lobbying which Milstein expects. Presumably, that’s why candidates are vetted by staff and undergo an application process.
The PIMS website is exceedingly vague about its actual activity. It notes that there were mentor relationships during the 2014-2015 academic year. But it doesn’t list any mentors or even company names. It doesn’t given even general examples of student mentees or their campus activities. The website appears to be a well-kept secret with an Alexa ranking of 8-million. But an informed source tells me there have been PIMS parings for the past two years at UCLA.
I’ve researched whether PIMS offers paid mentorships and I am not aware of any. I’ve emailed a series of questions about the project to the Milstein Family Foundation which did not respond.
PIMS is a profoundly troubling phenomenon. It’s one thing for Rotary International or Kiwanis to offer college scholarships to worthy students. But to offer young people career advancement in return for turning campuses into ideological free-fire zones appears to be a perversion of the academic process. I do welcome the college environment as a free-wheeling market of ideas. I expect vigorous debate about these ideas. But I don’t expect the Israel Lobby to “fix” this contest by offering blandishments and material benefits to those who will take up the cudgels for Israel.
Thanks to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, we’ve sold our political process to the highest corporate bidders (like Sheldon Adelson). Is that what we want to happen on campus as well? Do we want Sheldon & Miriam Adelson Pro-Israel Fellowships disbursed to students at many of the major U.S. universities by StandWithUs and under the watchful eye of Adam Milstein? Do we want paid internships for pro-Israel students with UCLA Hillel, SWU, etc. This is what is in the offing if we allow things to play out as they have been.
Speaking of Sheldon Adelson, he’s a pal of Adam Milstein, who co-founded the Israeli-American Council. The Council had its annual fundraising gala last week and raised over twice as much as it’s ever raised, $23-million. A very sizable portion of that total came from Adelson himself. We know from Connie Bruck’s New Yorker profile some years back that Adelson thinks Aipac is a bleeding-heart liberal outfit. There can be only one reason Adelson would be willing to sink such substantial sums into IAC. He sees it as the successor to Aipac; as the real hard-core pro-Israel Lobby.
It’s worth noting that Milstein and his friends at SWU will be struttin’ their anti-BDS stuff at a Los Angeles conference next week. For a mere $400 you too can savor five “gourmet” kosher meals while rubbing shoulders with the ‘intellectual’ elite of the anti-BDS movement like Roz Rothstein, Ken Marcus, Alan Dershowitz, Noah Pollak and Gerald Steinberg.
On a special note, SWU has recruited a “moderate” Palestinian, Bassam Eid, who broke away from B’Tselem to found his own Palestinian “human rights” group, which is apparently in favor with the SWU and the Lobby. Eid opposes BDS (natch’), UNWRA, and the Right of Return as well, making him an exceedingly pliant Palestinian. It wouldn’t surprise me to see some of our major pro-Israel donors funding his NGO. I searched for his NGO, the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group and its website is defunct. It does make one wonder…
No mention of the fact that three of the four UCLA student/thugs who questioned a sophomore Student Government applicant for being Jewish are pro-BDS activists.
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.646175
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/3/13/staff-ucla-board-beyda/
Maybe Milstein is onto something.
@ Hefe: No mention in your comment that the students who questioned Rachel Beyda approved her nomination and she is now on the committee she was seeking to join? No mention that the confusion of ignorant non-Jews about the difference between “Jew” and “Israel” is caused by megalomaniac Israelis like Bibi who deliberately conflate the two. Why not?
No. Beyda’s nomination was initially denied. Only after a faculty advisor (a ‘grown up’) interceded did the students reverse their decision.
‘Ignorant non-Jews’?
Really?
The (Jewish) student President of the Undergraduate Students Association Council immediately interrupted the interrogation and pointed out the questions directed at Beyda were discriminatory. Nonetheless the Student Association went ahead and voted down Beyda anyway.
As I said, 3 of 4 of the students who initially voted down Beyda were BDS members. Doesn’t BDS explain to it’s student members the difference between “Jew” and “Israel”? They really should make that point.
@ Hefe: READ CAREFULLY WHAT I WROTE and do not claim I said anything that isn’t true. Everything I wrote is true. Of course I know the first vote rejected her. But the second vote approved her. The students didn’t have to reconsider even at the behest of the faculty advisor. But they did. She is now on the board. Only hysterics, Likudists and lachrymose Zionists have turned this molehill into a mountain.
BDS does not have “members.” Is it now a cabal, a secret society like the Freemasons or Elders of Zion??
You expect that because Avi Oved, a paid (with Milstein money) pro-Israel hasbara operative tells them something they’re going to believe him? Why would they?
You may not expect BDS to make a distinction between Jews and Israel when your own prime minister refuses to do so.
@RS
“The students didn’t have to reconsider even at the behest of the faculty advisor. But they did. ”
Yes they did have to reconsider, “..after a faculty member stepped in to elaborate on the USAC’s conflict of interest policy, according to a copy of the minutes”.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/06/ucla-jewish-student-video_n_6817918.html
@ Hefe: This is tiring. They didn’t “have” to reconsider. They chose to do so. You’re done in this thread. Don’t post here again.
Re: Do we want paid internships for pro-Israel students with UCLA Hillel?
Richard you’ve done a good job of outlining that problem, but you may have overlooked the fact that the government of Israel’s parastatal agencies help staff Campus Hillels with their own political operatives (shlichim), See for example this article about The Jewish Agency Israel Fellows to Hillel http://www.jewishagency.org/shlichim-israeli-emissaries/program/291
Re: No mention of the fact that three of the four UCLA student/thugs who questioned a sophomore Student Government applicant for being Jewish are pro-BDS activists.
They didn’t question her for being Jewish. They asked if she could be unbiased given her involvement in Jewish community organizations like Hillel? After all, Hillel International has threaten lawsuits against the Swarthmore Open Hillel for simply staging the “Social Justice Then and Now: Lessons from the Civil Rights Movement” event, featuring three activists who worked for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s. Hillel’s President readily admits that its paid professional staff and volunteers are “combating” perfectly legal BDS student activities on campuses and encouraging officials to engage in blatant viewpoint discrimination on behalf of a foreign power, e.g. See “Hillel is taking on BDS’s circus of hate” http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/hillel-takes-on-bdss-circus-of-hate/ One thing is for certain, the US Supreme Court has ruled that universities cannot provide a public forum or invoke state meeting laws while engaging in viewpoint discrimination.
So let’s summarize: Hillel and the other Jewish community organizations in question, including a sorority, dispatch students to Israel in order to receive propaganda training or employ paid professional Israeli agents here in the USA to staff Hillels and conduct agit-prop activities on behalf of the State of Israel. They have also filed a number of meritless lawsuits against the UC system and the BDS movement that have been dismissed by the state and federal courts. It isn’t as if these organizations are above suspicion, they openly admit that they do all of these things, and then complain that it is anti-Semitic to ask if their members can remain unbiased when confronted with a viewpoint discrimination case.
@Haver said:
“They didn’t question her for being Jewish.”
“Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community, how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?” Fabienne Roth asked.
No mention of Hillel or other Jewish organizations in that question.
Haver said: “They asked if she could be unbiased given her involvement in Jewish community organizations like Hillel? ”
Haver. Should Ms Beyda’s Jewishness or involvement in Jewish organizations have been an obstacle?
Well. Two of the four who voted against Beyda were themselves active members of faith- and ethnic-based organizations. Negeen Sadeghi-Movahed is vice chair in the Iranian student group and Sofia Moreno Haq is active in UCLA’s Muslim Students Association (MSA).
Should Negeen’s Iranian roots and activism have been an obstacle to her getting elected? No.
Should Sofia’s activism and Muslim faith have been an obstacle to her getting elected? No.
We know that Negeen Sadeghi-Movahed and Manjot Singh were among the co-sponsors of the BDS resolution, while Sofia Moreno Haq has publicly endorsed BDS on Facebook.
So really. Whose biases got in the way of their impartiality when considering this Jewish student’s appointment?
Re: “Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community, how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?” Fabienne Roth asked. … No mention of Hillel or other Jewish organizations in that question.
You said “they” and claimed that three individuals were BDS supporters who were doing the questioning. That’s only one person. FYI, according to the written minutes of the meeting Beyda had just brought up the subject of her role in the Jewish community organizations, including her vice-presidency of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Pi Sorority, as part of her introductory remarks. The follow-up questions dealt with that subject and asked if should could be unbiased, i.e. “Sadeghi-Movahed says maybe possible to rephrase the question. Given that the recent judicial board cases dealt with conflicts of interests leaning a particular way, how would you be able to keep an unbiased view? https://www.usac.ucla.edu/documents/minutes/Minutes%202%2010%2015.pdf
Please note that Movahed didn’t mention the word “Jewish”. The Judicial board cases in question were conflicts of interest over funding of trips to Israel and that was certainly a proper subject for discussion, since both Hillel and the national philanthropy that her sorority is officially affiliated with (American Jewish World Service) sponsor paid trips to Israel.
Re: Haver. Should Ms Beyda’s Jewishness or involvement in Jewish organizations have been an obstacle?
That depends on how she defines and applies Jewishness to the issues. In this case it didn’t, but only because (a) she answered for the record indicating that she would apply the law, not personal opinions; and that (b) that if she felt like she could not be unbiased, she would remove herself, but that she doesn’t think she will be in that position.
I’ve already pointed out, Hillel International is actively involved in Israeli propaganda activities and campus lawfare activities. It has even threatened to sue or shutdown its own chapters over the issue of BDS, anti-Zionism, and discussions about equal civil rights for Palestinians. Unlike the State and Federal Courts or The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Hillel International and other pro-Zionist organizations have adopted an official position that anti-Zionism, the BDS Movement, or any other anti-Israel campaigns on campus are inherently anti-Semitic and violate Jewish students right to an educational experience free from intimidation, i.e. See Hillel International Partners with Simon Wiesenthal Center to Combat Anti-Semitism on More Than 550 College Campuses” http://www.hillel.org/about/news-views/news-views—blog/news-and-views/2014/12/11/hillel-international-partners-with-simon-wiesenthal-center-to-combat-anti-semitism-on-more-than-550-college-campuses and “Students and professors: If you are aware of anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli incidents on your college or university campus, please contact lawyers at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.” http://brandeiscenter.com/
The head of the Brandies Center, Ken Marcus, initially admitted in a journal article that political speech critical of the State of Israel’s policies is constitutionally protected and is not prohibited by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but you’d never know that by visiting the LDB Center website today. See Kenneth L. Marcus, Anti-Zionism as Racism: Campus Anti-Semitism and the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
15 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 837 (2007), http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmborj/vol15/iss3/4
Once again, there have been cases and lawsuits in the recent past over conflicts of interest or involving positions taken-up regarding the BDS movement on campuses that are shared by the State of Israel and Hillel, but not by our national Courts or the Department of Education Civil Rights division. There is nothing wrong with asking a candidate if they can apply the law impartially despite membership in a organization that disagrees with it.
@ Hefe: I’m with Haver on this one. If Iranian & Muslim campus groups were receiving funding either directly from Iran or Saudi Arabian official or quasi-official sources; if they were sent on paid junkets to those countries; or if they were sent on paid junkets to organizing conferences at which pro-Iran or pro-Saudi Arabia hasbara would be offered–then you bet questioning them would be totally appropriate. That happens at UCLA regarding Hillel, Aipac, Standwithus, CAMERA, & a myriad of other campus hasbara groups that spend tons of money on such pro-Israel advocacy.
Richard, Thanks for this interesting and important reportage. Send it to the Obama and the IRS. Don’t expect much action tho. pro-Israel IRS-violations are probably too hot to handle.
@ Richard
Concerning the photo posted by Adam Milstein: the guy in the photo is the owner of the Facebook account, Mashhoor Qasem (at least two other photos taken on another occasion where he’s wearing the same black t-shirt with the blue print), this is definitely NOT from Gaza (the cut rocks used for the construction is not Gaza-style anyhow, and contrary to what Milstein says they’re not hanging on a fence but directly beneath the window on the wall). Anyway, here’s one of many photos of Mashhoor Qasem wearing the uniform of the Palestinian National Security Forces (wiki has an entry where people can verify), only operating in the West Bank, and affiliated with the PA: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=408175492609930&set=a.103595533067929.5895.100002524479831&type=3&theater
(It seems he was ‘playing’ with his nephews)
@ Deir Yassin: Thanks so much!