Uri Blau :Netanyahu Allies Donated to Groups Pushing for Third Temple
Haaretz
investigation reveals deputy defense minister and a key Netanyahu
supporter in the U.S. donated to groups campaigning to impose Israeli
sovereignty…
haaretz.com
Israel's deputy defense minister
and a key U.S. donor of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have donated
to efforts aimed at re-establishing Jewish sovereignty on the Temple
Mount, a Haaretz investigation has revealed.
The
flashpoint site has been at the heart of the violence in the region over
the past few months, amid Palestinian claims that Israel is trying to
change the status quo at the site, holy to Jews and Muslims.
Netanyahu
insists that Israel is committed to the status quo and that claims to
the contrary are part of a campaign of incitement. But a Haaretz
investigation shows that Netanyahu's deputy defense minister, as well as
one of his key donors in the United States have financially supported
those who wish to impose Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount.
The probe reveals for the first time that Deputy Defense Minister Eli Ben-Dahan donated 50,000 shekels ($12,000) to the Temple Institute, an organization that promotes the construction of the Third Temple.
Ben-Dahan,
from the right-wing Habayit Hayehudi party, made the donation together
with his wife in 2010 when he was head of Israel's Rabbinical courts,
according to reports filed by the institute to Israel's Registrar for
Non-profit Organizations.
Ben-Dahan's
office said in response to a request for comment that the donation had
gone to support the publication of a new edition of the Gemara, part of
the body of commentaries that make up the Talmud.
"The
deputy minister contributed to the publication of a Gemara tractate
with new and elucidated commentary, which adds pictures and
illustrations to the elucidation of the Gemara," Ben-Dahan's office
wrote in an email. It did not respond to questions on whether Ben-Dahan
shares the institute's views.
Netanyahu's office did not respond to requests for comment.
Since
capturing the Old City of Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel has
left responsibility for the Temple Mount compound, revered by Muslims as
the Noble Sanctuary, to Jordan, through a Muslim religious trust known
as the Waqf. Under the status quo, non-Muslims are allowed to visit,
but not to pray at the site. Over the last years any fears, real or
imaginary, of changes to this arrangement have sparked violent
Palestinian protests.
While
mainstream Orthodox Judaism bans Jews from visiting the Mount and
believes the rebuilding of the Temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE
can only occur after the arrival of the Messiah, some groups do not
share this view and are eager to re-establish a Jewish presence on the
site, even if that risks igniting conflict.
Ben-Dahan's
contribution is just a fraction of the flow of money uncovered by the
Haaretz investigation into donations to these groups.
The harp and the High Priest
The
Temple Institute has been operating in the Old City of Jerusalem for
decades. Established in 1987 by Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, its mission is to
bring the issue of rebuilding the Jewish Temple on the Mount to the
forefront of Jewish public awareness and action.
The
institute’s activities include the construction of a Temple model and
the manufacture of vessels used in ancient rites. It is also active in
education – for 1,800 shekels ($480) it will provide 100 children with
wooden blocks with which to build a model of the Temple, complete with a
separate women’s section, the roof of the sanctuary and vessels used
there.
Young
children can also produce oil for a “special Hasmonean lamp,”
participate in creative workshops or attend a play called “Micah, the
cute harp,” during which they learn some catchy tunes about the Temple.
“The institute regards it as being of prime importance that increasing
numbers of Jews learn about and work towards establishing the Temple,
based on the concept that this is the center of Jewish life, comprising a
living link between the Jewish people and our heavenly father,” says
the institute’s website.
In
past years – on Tisha B'Av, when Jews commemorate the destruction of
the Temple – the institute has launched a video campaign titled “The
Children are Ready,” promoting the construction of the Third Temple.
It has also participated in efforts to raise a red heifer, a cow whose sacrifice is deemed necessary to rebuild the Temple.
“May we
be blessed again with seeing a High Priest emerge unscathed from the
Holy of Holies sanctuary, knowing that our sins have been expunged,”
said Mordechai Persoff, educational director of the College for Temple
Studies, which operates in schools and kindergartens under the auspices
of the institute, in an interview he gave last year.
The
official Israeli position is that it opposes any change in the status
quo on the Temple Mount, yet it finances the Temple Institute and sends
girls doing their national service to work there. The Ministry of
Education has supported the college to the tune of 2.2 million shekels
($600,000) over the last five years, according to a recent article by Haaretz correspondent Or Kashti.
The
United States, which also strongly opposes any change to the status quo
at the site, is tacitly supporting the Temple Institute by granting
tax-exempt status to U.S. groups that funnel donations to it. In 2013,
the institute received donations from the United States for over 200,000
shekels from two American organizations –180,000 shekels ($46,000) from
the One Israel Fund and $10,000 from the Texas-based Temple Institute.
A year
earlier the institute reported it received 2.86 million shekels in
donations, including 195,000 shekels ($50,000) from the One Israel Fund
and $20,000 from an anonymous source. The fund, as well as the Temple
Institute, both in Israel and the U.S., did not respond to requests for
comment.
Queries
to the Temple Institute in Jerusalem about making donations with
U.S.-based money were directed to two American charitable organizations,
both of which are recognized for tax purposes. Donors on the East Coast
were directed to P.E.F. Israel Endowment Funds Inc., while others were
directed to an organization called Biblical Faith Ministries.
Based in
New York, P.E.F. was established in 1922 by founders who included
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and Rabbi Stephen Wise. It is one
of the most significant institutions sending money to Israel, having
donated more than $1 billion since its establishment, according to its website.
“P.E.F.
invites gifts, bequests and contributions for specific purposes and
institutions,” its website says. “As specifically requested by
contributors, P.E.F. grants have touched almost every facet of Israeli
life.”
P.E.F.
supports over 1,000 organizations in Israel, many of which operate
across the Green Line. One of them is the Temple Institute.
In 2014,
P.E.F. transferred $68 million to Israel, though supporting documents do
not include a breakdown according to recipient. However, during its
investigation into U.S. funding of West Bank settlements, Haaretz
analyzed the reports filed by the Israeli non-profit organizations that
received donations from American groups. These documents show that, for
example, the Eretz Hatzvi yeshiva in the settlement of Peduel received
250,000 shekels ($63,000) from P.E.F. in 2013. The Bnei David
Pre-Military Yeshiva in the settlement of Eli received more than 400,000
shekels ($100,000) between 2009 and 2013, while the Temple Institute
received 204,000 shekels ($52,000) in 2010.
P.E.F's
president, Geoffrey Stern, wrote in response to a request for comment
that the organization "is a tax exempt public charity under Code
501(c)(3) which provides grants to Israeli charities which comply both
with U.S. tax law and Israeli tax law and are under Israeli
jurisdiction."
Biblical
Faith Ministries, the other U.S. group that collects donations for the
Temple Institute, is a Texas-based organization that says it promotes
“Jewish education.” In forms filed with the U.S. Internal Revenue
Service in 2014, it stated – without specifying the exact amount – that
part of the $337,000 it transferred to Israel went to the Temple
Institute. It also funded the institute in previous years. According to
the Israeli file of the Temple Institute, Biblical Faith Ministries –
which did not return calls seeking comment - donated to it more than
140,000 shekels ($36,000) in 2010. In 2009 the institute received a
grant of $175,000 from a different American based non-profit, the
Lillian Jean Kaplan Foundation. In a phone call to the foundation, a
person who identified himself as the head of the organization declined
to provide further details about that donation.
“Clear Israeli sovereignty”
Rabbi
Yehuda Glick, probably the most recognizable face among the Temple
devotees, is also supported by American organizations recognized for tax
purposes. Glick, who was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt
last year, works through two Israeli non-profit groups – the Temple
Mount and Temple Heritage Fund, established in 2013, and HaLiba (the
Hebrew acronym for Jewish Freedom on the Temple Mount,) which
was set up last year. Its activity is entirely funded by an Israeli
non-profit group called the Keren Nahlat Atzmaut Yisrael (Israel
Independence Fund), which in turn gets all its donations from its sister
organization in the United States, also called the Israel Independence
Fund, which was established in New York in 2008. In 2011-2013, the Keren
Nahlat Atzmaut Yisrael received almost 5 million shekels ($1.3 million)
from its American counterpart.
The
U.S. incarnation of the Israel Independence Fund is run out of the
offices of American businessman Kenneth Abramowitz, a close associate of
Netanyahu and the chairman of the American Friends of Likud. Abramowitz
sits on the fund’s board and is listed as its treasurer. In a phone
call during a visit to Israel, Abramowitz explained that the fund chose
and supports 15 different organizations. “People who contribute to the
Israel Independence Fund decide which organizations they want to
contribute to and we just follow their orders,” he said. He himself,
Abramowitz confirmed, is one of the contributors, and chose different
organizations to support based on their needs at a particular time.
He said
Israeli groups need his fund to act as a pipeline in the U.S. because
"they are generally small and sometimes American donors won’t know they
exist.” He would not elaborate on the identity of the group's donors,
saying only that donations range from $18 to $5,000.
Ahead of
the 2015 elections in Israel, Abramowitz donated 40,000 shekels
($10,000) to Netanyahu, as well as making a donation to the primaries
campaign of Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon. Before the 2013 elections,
he donated money to Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely, who in
October was rebuked by Netanyahu for saying in an interview that her "dream is to see the Israeli flag flying over the Temple Mount.”
Hotovely
also received campaign donations from two other members of the Israel
Independence Fund’s board – Douglas Altabef and Helen Freedman.
Abramowitz
has donated in the past to Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan,
Israel’s United Nations ambassador Danny Danon and Transportation
Minister Israel Katz. He was on the list of “Bibi’s millionaires,” a
list of potential donors to Netanyahu’s 2007 Likud primaries campaign
that was exposed by the daily Yedioth Ahronoth in 2010.
Abramowitz
also funds an annual media prize given by Israel’s Media Watch (known
in Hebrew as the Association for the Public’s Right to Know,) of which
Dafna Netanyahu, the prime minister’s sister-in-law, is a member. The
money finances a prize bearing Abramowitz’s name, awarded annually to
journalists. Abramovitz expressed his worldview in a speech he gave at
the 2010 award ceremony, in which he stated that the only objective
paper in the Israeli media panorama is Yisrael Hayom, the pro-Netanyahu
free daily funded by U.S. billionaire Sheldon Adelson.
HaLiba, which is funded by the Israel Independence Fund,
is working to change the status quo on the Mount through a massive
media campaign and activities such as funding buses that will transport
large numbers of Jews to the Temple compound in order to “change the
rules of the game.”
According
to the Israel Independence Fund’s website, HaLiba seeks no less than
the “imposing of clear and unambiguous Israeli sovereignty over the
mountain.”
In
October, while Netanyahu was meeting U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry
in Germany, in an attempt to calm the violence, HaLiba shared on its
Facebook page: “The Temple Mount, source of our longing, the place we
yearned for over two thousand years, is now in danger! Today, Prime
Minister Netanyahu is meeting Secretary of State Kerry in order to reach
‘understandings’ regarding the Mount. These understandings will mean
only one thing – a complete transfer of the Temple Mount into foreign
hands, which will rapidly lead to a loss of the entire land.”
HaLiba's financial reports were not yet available, so it is unclear how much support it has received from the Israel Independence Fund. However, HaLiba is listed on its website as one of its projects.
Aharon
Pulver, who heads the Israel Independence Fund in Israel, is also one of
the founders of HaLiba. Speaking to Haaretz, he confirms that his group
supports activities aimed at securing Israeli sovereignty over the
Temple Mount and has funded HaLiba since its establishment, with about
$100,000. Pulver compares the ban on Jews praying on the Mount to the
blocking of desegregation in U.S. schools in the sixties. “It’s
definitely a human rights issue” he says.
“HaLiba
speaks of basic rights in an open public space in that compound,” Pulver
says. “We’re not talking, God forbid, of praying inside the mosque.”
HaLiba collects donations from hundreds of donors, Jews and non-Jews, he
adds.
Asked if
the group promotes changes to the status quo, he says: “The status quo
is very pliable and keeps changing. With the rising extremism in the
Islamic world in recent years, we see a similar development on the
Temple Mount. I saw with my own eyes the flags of Hezbollah and Daesh
(ISIS) fluttering there. The Waqf custodians do nothing about it. The
current status quo is a result of intolerable extremist developments.”
Asked if
it is not paradoxical that the U.S. administration opposes any changes
to the status quo, yet money going to the Israel Independence Fund is
recognized for tax deductions, he responded:
“The
Americans don’t recognize Israel’s hold on East Jerusalem, and it’s true
that the current administration opposes any change to the status quo,
but there are many funds in the U.S. that raise money for causes the
administration doesn’t believe in," Pulver says. "As long as the money
doesn’t go to political causes everything is fine.”
Reporting for this story was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
Commenti
Posta un commento