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Articles In English
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Money meant for the
inner city went to fight the intifada. What donors to Jack
Abramoff's charity didn't know.
May 2 issue - The pitch from superlobbyist Jack Abramoff was hard to
resist: a good way to get access on Capitol Hill, he told his
clients a few years ago, was to contribute to a worthy charity he
and his wife had just started up. The charity, called the Capital
Athletic Foundation, was supposed to provide sports programs and
teach "leadership skills" to city youth. Donating to it also had a
side benefit, Abramoff told his clients: it was a favored cause of
Rep. Tom DeLay.
The pitch worked especially well among a group of Indian tribes who,
having opened up lucrative gaming casinos, had hired Abramoff to
protect their interests in Washington. In 2002 alone, records show,
three Indian tribes donated nearly $1.1 million to the Capital
Athletic Foundation. But now, NEWSWEEK has learned, investigators
probing Abramoff's finances have found some of the money meant for
inner-city kids went instead to fight the Palestinian intifada. More
than $140,000 of foundation funds were actually sent to the Israeli
West Bank where they were used by a Jewish settler to mobilize
against the Palestinian uprising. Among the expenditures: purchases
of camouflage suits, sniper scopes, night-vision binoculars, a
thermal imager and other material described in foundation records as
"security" equipment. The FBI, sources tell NEWSWEEK, is now
examining these payments as part of a larger investigation to
determine if Abramoff defrauded his Indian tribe clients. The tribal
donors are outraged. "This is almost like outer-limits bizarre,"
says Henry Buffalo, a lawyer for the Saginaw Chippewa Indians who
contributed $25,000 to the Capital Athletic Foundation at Abramoff's
urging. "The tribe would never have given money for this."
Abramoff, a legendary lobbyist particularly close to DeLay, is also
a fierce supporter of Israel--"a super-Zionist," one associate says.
That may explain why Abramoff's paramilitary gear ended up in the
town of Beitar Illit, a sprawling ultra-Orthodox outpost whose
residents have occasionally tangled with their Palestinian
neighbors. Yitzhak Pindrus, the settlement's mayor, says that
several years ago the town was confronting mounting security
problems. "They [the Palestinians] were throwing stones, they were
throwing Molotov cocktails," Pindrus says. Abramoff's connection to
the town was Schmuel Ben-Zvi, an American emigre who, the lobbyist
told associates, was an old friend he knew from Los Angeles. Capital
Athletic Foundation public tax records make no mention of Ben-Zvi.
But they do show payments to "Kollel Ohel Tiferet" in Israel, a
group for which there is no public listing and which the town's
mayor said he never heard of.
Pindrus says Ben-Zvi was an outspoken proponent of beefing up
security and even began organizing his own freelance patrols. "He
used to bring in this equipment--night-vision goggles, telescopes,"
says Pindrus. At least some of the equipment appears to have come
from Abramoff's law firm. An August 2002 invoice obtained by
NEWSWEEK shows that $773 worth of paramilitary gear--including
sniper shooting mats and "hydration tactical tubes"--was shipped to
one of Abramoff's aides at the law firm where the lobbyist then
worked. Reached last week, Ben-Zvi angrily denied any knowledge of
Abramoff or being involved in any efforts to obtain security gear.
The West Bank security payments are not the only foundation
expenditure being eyed by investigators. The bulk of the
foundation's money, about $4 million, was used for a now-defunct
Orthodox Jewish school in suburban Maryland that two of Abramoff's
sons attended. Buffalo says his tribe had no idea its donations were
being used for this purpose, either. A spokesman for Abramoff
vigorously defended all of the expenditures. Abramoff, says
spokesman Andrew Blum, "is an especially strong supporter of Israel
and has tried to find ways to help Israelis and others to be less
susceptible to terrorist attacks." Still, the increasing attention
from the news media and investigators is causing even old friends
like DeLay to back away. A spokesman last week vigorously disputed
that DeLay had anything to do with Abramoff's charity. Although he
had been scheduled to attend a planned gala fund-raiser for the
foundation two years ago, DeLay never went. As for the security
shipments to the West Bank, DeLay knew nothing about it, the
spokesman said.
With Dan Ephron in Jerusalem
Source: Newsweek
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