Coalition Protests Card Club Owner’s Funding of Israel Projects

A group of Southern California rabbis and Middle East peace activists is making an unusual challenge to plans by a Hawaiian Gardens bingo and card casino operator to build new Jewish settlements in Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.

Based on the belief that the gambling revenues from the Hawaiian Gardens clubs are financing those Jerusalem settlements, the group wants the California state attorney general to rescind Dr. Irving Moskowitz’s bingo and casino licenses.

“The place to stop the Jerusalem problems is Hawaiian Gardens,” proclaimed Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak of Downey, in an e-mail message being widely distributed.

Moskowitz, through his attorney, denies that funds from the Hawaiian Gardens clubs are financing the 132-unit housing settlement in East Jerusalem’s Ras al-Amud neighborhood. An Orthodox Jewish millionaire from Miami, Moskowitz is allied with right-wing political interests in Israel and has financed previous Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem.

Beliak’s group supports peace between Israel and the Palestinians and contends that Moskowitz’s latest project would inflame Arab-Israeli tensions. The recent electoral victory of Prime Minister-elect Ehud Barak has encouraged the anti-Moskowitz campaign that a new Israeli government may be less friendly to Moskowitz than was outgoing prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The controversy got hotter last week when bulldozers broke ground for the Ras al-Amud settlement the day after the Israeli election. In Israel, that was interpreted as a challenge to Barak and how he will handle relations with Orthodox Jewish settlers in Palestinian neighborhoods.

So far, the efforts against Moskowitz’s gambling license are at an early stage and have not produced any results in Hawaiian Gardens, one of Los Angeles County’s smallest and poorest communities.

Although Moskowitz concedes that he is financing the settlement, his attorney, Beryl Weiner of Los Angeles, said the money comes from his personal fortune and not from bingo or casino earnings.

“These are Dr. Moskowitz’s personal funds,” Weiner said.

Beliak has organized scores of other rabbis and community activists into the Committee for Justice in Hawaiian Gardens and Jerusalem.

“The millions Moskowitz pours into Israel can still potentially disrupt the political balance in Jerusalem and the Middle East,” said Beliak, who leads Temple Ner Tamid, a Reform congregation in Downey. “When we first began, we misunderstood the situation. We thought the problem was in East Jerusalem. But it is also in Hawaiian Gardens.”

“This money is tainted,” Beliak said. “It comes from poor people. It comes from gambling. Every rabbi understands that we are talking about ill-gotten gains.”

Weiner called Beliak’s assertions “pure unadulterated, fabricated fiction.”

In Hawaiian Gardens, Moskowitz is in the process of enlarging a small card casino with five tables into one licensed for 240 tables. He also controls a separate bingo parlor, operated by a nonprofit entity called the Irving I. Moskowitz Foundation. Weiner said all the permits are in order.