israel – R&R – Reachout and Rebuild

Jews know what Bigotry and Injustice look like!

David Posnett — Tue, 16 Jul 2019 14:50:10 +0000

By Shoshana Hershkowitz:

“I am tired of being gaslit by my government. Seeing an American political party attempt to weaponize my family’s history enrages me in a deeply personal way. The arrogance of the Republican Party trying to tell me what anti-Semitism is, when there are literally two Jewish Republicans in the entire US Congress (2 in the House, zero in the Senate) is astounding.

I’m not much of a statistician, but let’s talk stats for a minute. Only one in six American Jews identifies as Republican. More than 79% of American Jews cast their votes for Democratic candidates in 2018. We voted for Democrats at a higher rate than Evangelical Christians voted for Republicans. So the idea of someone like Senator Steve Daines from Montana purporting to know what a Jewish person like me thinks is preposterous. That dude wouldn’t know what to do with hummus if I handed it to him on the fucking pita itself.

And let’s talk about Israel, since every Republican politician seems to think they know something about it. It seems like they missed some important facts, The reason I’m never going to support a Republican is that they continue to deny the American people what my Israeli family has: universal healthcare, affordable public college, gun safety laws, and paid maternity leave. They don’t get to tell me what Israel’s all about when they don’t even have a clue what its citizens get from their government.

Let’s talk about Israel some more, because Republicans seems to think that’s the only thing Jews care about. Which by the way, is anti Semitic in itself. I’m an American citizen. I care deeply about Israel, but I’m capable of caring about Israel while voting based on what I’d like to see happen in the nation I’m raising my family in. Assuming I vote on one issue and one issue alone insults my intelligence. And since you lump all Jews together, you should remember that Albert Einstein was Jewish. And my guess is that he was not a one issue voter. Neither am I, or most American Jews.

And last but not least, Jews know what bigotry and injustice looks and feels like. So when I see Republicans justify the atrocities against migrants at the border, when I see them practice xenophobia against Muslims, and racism against blacks, I identify with these oppressed groups far more than with the oppressor. Because we’ve been there. I don’t want anyone else to experience it on my watch.

So, in conclusion, I find far more solidarity with #TheSquad, a group of black and brown progressive women, than I ever will with the Republican Party. I’ve already been called a self hating Jew (and much worse) by lots of Pete King and Lee Zeldin supporters. It’s funny how these two members of Congress, who claim to fight anti Semitsm, allow it to flourish on their pages, isn’t it? But that’s the cognitive dissonance of being the party of Trump. And it’s why the Republican Party, try as they might to use people like me as a human shield against the just accusations of bigotry, ain’t never gonna get my vote.”

Anti-Semitism never goes away, but it really flares up with a truth-attacking nationalist in the White House

David Posnett — Fri, 16 Nov 2018 01:47:55 +0000

Submitted by Steve Ludsin:

Letter published in the Los Angeles Times

NOV 14, 2018 | 4:00 AM

People hold up placards during a demonstration in London organized by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism on April 8. (Tolga Akmen / AFP/Getty Images)

To the editor: Steve Oney’s op-ed article on Jewish industrialist Leo Frank’s lynching in 1915 amid anti-Semitic hysteria and attacks on journalism provided clarity.

Demagoguery is thriving due to the irresponsible rhetoric of a nationalist president. The knee-jerk reaction that mainstream media are fake news provides a basis to avoid facts and incite people to commit acts motivated by bias.

Anti-Semitism will be part of society, particularly in times of flux because people need scapegoats. There has been progress in America, but complacency is not in order. The horror of the murder of 11 innocent worshipers in Pittsburgh reminds us that we are all vulnerable to misguided people armed with hatred and ammunition.

The need for vigilance starts with each one of us. We must do something to fight this form of domestic terrorism. Rants about fake news and attacks on the mainstream media as enemies of the people do not help.

Steven A. Ludsin, East Hampton, N.Y.

The writer is a former member of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust.

Zeldin on Yemen

David Posnett — Mon, 05 Nov 2018 02:14:02 +0000

By Ken Dorph

Amal Hussein, the seven-year-old in the two photos below, died of starvation last week in Yemen. I am working with a Yemeni team here in Cairo and I can’t help but despair over the never-ending war there. Our American leadership has created a human catastrophe in Yemen, taking sides in a tribal conflict driven by our greed to sell weapons. I asked our Congressman, Lee Zeldin, who has consistently supported the sale of weapons used to kill civilians to the Saudis, if we could somehow stop these sales. His response, verbatim:

“Not unless there’s, not unless … I’m not completely … No one’s read members of Congress like myself completely what strategically the big picture is with that deal. So I’m left to speculate. I don’t believe that that is a solely Yemen play, what the President agreed to in Saudi Arabia. That there is more of a regional play there that’s going on right now. Yemen is a piece of it. If everything got narrowed down to that we’re giving weapons in order to fight in Yemen, it would be a different analysis of what I am speculating to be part of the picture, not all of it.”

Our leadership will only change if we change them.
Vote for Perry Gershon on November 6th.

History can Repeat Itself

David Posnett — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 12:46:23 +0000

Letter published in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette October 30, 2018, by Steve Ludsin (East Hampton, NY):

History can repeat itself

“Dispatch From Squirrel Hill: Dread in a Peaceful Place” by David M. Shribman (Oct. 27) was moving and eloquent. The sadness of the murders of 11 innocent victims killed just for being Jewish evokes the horrors of the Holocaust.

I visited Pittsburgh many years ago, and I sensed a feeling of community. I spent most of my life in the New York metropolitan area, so being Jewish doesn’t make you feel like an outsider or threatened. Those days are over. I imagined myself back in Nazi Germany in the ‘30s while Hitler’s words bellowed in the air.

The tragedy is that history can repeat itself. We cannot be deaf, dumb and blind to the rise of hateful words and, even worse, hateful deeds. I am reminded of Elie Wiesel’s closing words at the first meeting of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust in February 1979. He said, “I don’t know what we accomplished today, but we all said oy. Let’s turn oy into deeds to protect the Jewish community. We have no choice.”

STEVEN A. LUDSIN
East Hampton, N.Y.

The writer was a member of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust and the first U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, which built the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

Yesterday, the leaders of Bend the Arc’s Pittsburgh Moral Minyan and their allies literally interrupted Trump’s visit.

“Trump’s motorcade forced to turn around after thousands of protesters
flood Pittsburgh streets” — RawStory

“Donald Trump, Meet America’s Jews.
They Are Protesting Your Hate.” — Forward

Pittsburgh March (Oct. 31st 2018)

Fight White Nationalism here TODAY:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1932358347068816/

Depressing Half-hour Meeting with Lee Zeldin

David Posnett — Sun, 28 Oct 2018 23:40:18 +0000

Ken Dorph 7:05pm Oct 27

I wrote this letter to a Long Island newspaper in reaction to my depressing half-hour meeting with our local Congressman, Lee Zeldin, to discuss the Middle East.
Let’s hope it gets published. Feel free to read and share.

Lee Zeldin, the Middle East, and Me

I knew before meeting Congressman Zeldin that our views would differ. He avidly supports President Trump’s bullying approach to foreign policy. But I did not expect to get massively depressed afterwards.

Received wisdom is that Long Island voters don’t give a whit about foreign policy. This is a shame, given that our disastrous overseas adventures have sucked our economy dry and ruined our global standing.

I’ve lived in the Middle East for a good portion of my life, from Morocco to Syria. I was invited to share my views with Congressman Zeldin based on my unusual experience. I was told that Zeldin wanted me to send detailed questions beforehand. I painstakingly constructed seven questions of concern, from the war in Yemen to the plight of the Palestinians. In each case, I shared my own experience on the ground.

When we were settled in Zeldin’s office, I asked if we should start with the prepared questions that he’d requested. Puzzled, he looked at his assistant. He hadn’t seen them. Fortunately, I had a copy with me.

I am now working on my third project in Iraq since the invasion. Zeldin puts himself forth as a veteran of the Iraqi war. Someone told me that they thought he had been a parachutist. I was curious.

So I told him about my various projects in Iraq – always out there with the Iraqis, sleeves rolled up. I am now on working a project in Mosul, trying to entice small businesses back amid the ruins.

I asked about his experience in Iraq. He was cagey, evasive. I later pressed him a second time and again, no details. I later learned from a fellow politician that Zeldin’s war experience consisted of a few weeks in Iraq as a JAG officer working in some back office with Americans, no contact with the Iraqis. Our perspectives could not have been more different.

I am also working on a project with the woebegone Yemenis. The Saudi-American destruction of that country is at the forefront of my mind. So I asked why we are taking sides in a tribal war in Yemen that’s killing so many civilians.

“There is a plan of the Iranians of a growing regional influence that is a threat for US Interests, whether it’s the US itself or Israel, in the region.”

Yemen is really far from Israel, so that was a puzzling response. In the Middle East, it is widely believed that US foreign policy is concocted in Israel. His response seemed to affirm that.

I asked why he and the President are so rabidly anti-Iran and pro-Saudi. I’ve lived in Saudi Arabia, the country that supplied most of the perpetrators of 9/11. I personally like many individual Saudis but their government is less democratic and less free than Iran. Why were they the good guys?

A muddled answer for that one, except that we’re ‘defending American interests.’ I took this to mean cheap gas and weapons sales. It’s hard to defend Saudi Arabia as a beacon of human rights, and this before Khashoggi’s brutal murder and dismemberment.

Ok, but then how do we get back to peace in Yemen? I didn’t understand how selling all these arms to the Saudis was going to help. Shouldn’t we stop supplying the weapons and logistical support that are killing so many civilians, including children?

His response: “Not unless there’s, not unless … I’m not completely … No one’s read members of Congress like myself completely what strategically the big picture is with that deal. So I’m left to speculate. I don’t believe that that is a solely Yemen play, what the President agreed to in Saudi Arabia. That there is more of a regional play there that’s going on right now. Yemen is a piece of it. If everything got narrowed down to that we’re giving weapons in order to fight in Yemen, it would be a different analysis of what I am speculating to be part of the picture, not all of it.”

I then questioned our foreign aid to Egypt, almost all of it military in a country where over two thirds of the people have no bank account. Since Camp David, Egypt has been the second largest recipient of our funds after Israel. Together the two have received almost half of all US foreign aid for decades. Egypt is a dictatorship arising from a coup. According to US law (Section 508) we must cut aid to countries whose democratic leaders are overturned by a military coup. I personally know Egyptians who have been arrested or have fled for speaking their minds.

Why didn’t we question what’s going on in Egypt?

Long silence, then: “I don’t know exactly what the play is as far as leveraging the money [to Egypt].” Zeldin changed the subject to cutting foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority, whose aid has been cut to zero. Egypt still gets billions. But they are the good guys. Like the Saudis.

Tunisia is the Great Hope for democracy in the Arab world, which we Americans purport to care about. Yet the day before our chat, the US Government had cut the already paltry aid to Tunisia from US$120 to US$70 million. Meanwhile Israel, less than half Tunisia’s size, gets several billion in aid a year, receiving each day more than Tunisia’s yearly package. Why in the world would we cut back such critical aid?

“I don’t know, how much did we cut?”

Almost half. This happened yesterday. You voted to support the cut, as I understand.

“I have to dig into that one deeper.”

Well, I never heard back on that, but I didn’t expect to.

We ended on the most delicate of issues, Israel and the Palestinians. I said I thought it was fairly simple: One state or two. Most Americans, including most American Jews, oppose Israel’s colonizing of the occupied territories. The massive settling of the West Bank by Israeli Jews was clearly ending the possibility of two separate states. A single state that absorbed the Palestinian lands, if democratic, would mean the end of the Jewish state, since the majority would be non-Jewish. So how could he support the settlements if he supported two states, as he claimed? Zeldin started to talk about the occupied territories, then corrected himself and said, “the disputed territories.” I’d heard about this trick of right-wing Israelis to falsify the narrative. I corrected him, a bit heated now: I pointed out that since the territories were taken in war, they were occupied, as per the Geneva Convention, to which the US is a signatory. Colonizing occupied territories is illegal. I tried to get him to commit to opposing the settlement project, but he refused.

By this time we realized we had no common ground, and it was time to go. I shook his hand but was deeply saddened to think that this man represented me on the world stage. No wonder Americans are so unpopular.

I went home and went to bed for three hours with the blanket over my head. If this is the best we have to offer, there is little hope for anything but more needless confrontation and endless war.

We are at a crossroads. Lee Zeldin personifies the wrecking ball diplomacy of Sheldon Adelson, John Bolton, and Donald Trump: Tear up treaties negotiated by people of good faith, make enemies of old friends (Canada!), and bully nations big and small. This election we can choose a grown-up who can play well with others. I have met Perry Gershon several times and the difference cannot be more dramatic. Folks like Zeldin gave us the disaster of the Iraq war, trillions of our good money down the drain, and whole nations laid waste. This same clique now wants to do battle with Iran, an even more terrifying prospect. More than half our discretionary budget goes to the Pentagon and our foreign wars, leaving us with a failing national infrastructure and a growing national debt.

Great nations die by battling on all fronts while letting their heartlands wither. Let us not follow that path.

Bolton War(s)?

David Posnett — Mon, 14 May 2018 18:21:02 +0000

It is unambiguous! Any war ensuing due to the Bolton appointment can now be squarely blamed on Zeldin and his fellow Republicans who have endorsed Bolton for National Security Adviser.

The reations from different law makers were recently reported in the NY Times and they include this:

Representative Lee Zeldin of New York: “Ambassador John Bolton is ridiculously knowledgeable and will be a great national security adviser. The leaks coming out of the National Security Council will end, Obama administration holdovers will be gone, and the team, chemistry and work product will all be improved. Ambassador Bolton is a very underrated, amazing American, and I applaud this extraordinarily talented pick. I look forward to working closely with Ambassador Bolton on the many national security concerns facing our exceptional country.”

Unfortunately, this appointment did not require Senate confirmation. Unlike Bolton’s unsuccessful nomination for the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 2005.

Let me sum up why Bolton is so dangerous. Bolton has been preaching pre-emptive war for decades: war in Iraq, war against Iran, war in Syria, war against N. Korea.

John Bolton, who served as United States Ambassador to the United Nations under former President George W. Bush, had a recent Op-Ed in The Wall Street Journal calling for pre-emptive war against North Korea. According to foreignpolicy.com/:

Trump shocked the world by agreeing to meet with Kim sometime before the end of May. Reports suggest that the timing of Trump’s move to replace McMaster with Bolton, as well as the president’s earlier decision to fire Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and replace him with Mike Pompeo, is an effort to put key personnel aligned with his views in place leading into the summit. Yet if Bolton reflects, or influences, Trump’s position on North Korea, the entire endeavor is doomed. Indeed, Bolton reacted to news of the summit by dismissing any prospect for success and rooting for a quick failure. According to Bolton, the only value in having this “unproductive” leader-to-leader meeting now, instead of starting with a more deliberate set of working-level talks, is to “foreshorten the amount of time that we’re going to waste in negotiations that will never produce the result we want, which is Kim giving up his nuclear program.”

John Bolton has a history of skewing intellingence and is known to retaliate against people he disagrees with. Here is a sample from talkingpointsmemo.com:

A biological warfare analyst wrote back that Bolton’s proposed comments overstated what U.S. intelligence agencies really knew about the matter, and, as routinely happens, suggested some small changes.

The analyst was summoned to Bolton’s office. “He got very red in the face, and shaking his finger at me, and explained to me that I was acting way beyond my position,” the analyst, Christian Westermann, recalled later during a Senate inquiry. Bolton then demanded that Westermann’s supervisor remove him permanently from the biological weapons portfolio, thundering that “he wasn’t going to be told what he could say by a mid-level munchkin.”

Jimmy Carter is warning of a looming nuclear war!

My Sources

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/john-bolton-is-foolishly-calling-for-preemptive-war-against-north-korea/

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-legal-case-for-striking-north-korea-first-1519862374

https://www.theaustralian.com

http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/23/john-bolton-is-a-national-security-threat/

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/john-bolton-skewed-intelligence

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/938108/North-Korea-news-World-War-3-Donald-Trump-Kim-Jong-un-USA-Jimmy-Carter-latest-video

Scrapping the Iran Nuclear Deal: War?

David Posnett — Wed, 09 May 2018 20:17:08 +0000

Netanyahu in the Golan Heights looking out at Syria and warning Iran not to “test” Israel’s resolve, on Feb. 6, 2018. From his twitter feed.

Scrapping the Iran Nuclear Deal (or JCPOA as it is formally called) is likely to have all sorts of bad side effects. I have collected some thoughts from friends and experts:

Scrapping JCPOA undercuts the moderate wing within Iran and empowers the hardliners;
Will likely lead to a return to nuclear enrichment and possibly a military program for nuclear weapons too — if only to strengthen their hand in negotiations
The U.S. is seen to ally itself with Saudi Arabia and the UAE against Iran, Syria (and Iraq).
Emboldens Saudi Arabia to step up its attacks on Yemen and Lebanon.
Further increases the refugee flow.
Emboldens Netanyahu to do whatever … (Israel has been flying sorties over Syria and attacking different targets in the vicinity of Damascus over the past week, killing Syrians and apparently some Iranian troops as well).
We will have a realignment with Iran and the Syrians becoming even closer to Russia and possibly giving Russians the option of air bases on Iranian territory for the first time, while the US will become even more closely tied to Saudi Prince Mohamed Bin Salman whose grip on his own country is almost certainly very fragile after he has violently burned all his bridges with those who have real power in the country.
A subdued Iran would lead to an unfettered Saudi Arabia with an aggressive leader, Mohammed bin Salman. Saudi Arabia has been the most important exporter of radical Wahabi/Salafi fundamentalism around the world
Then of course there is the question of how Trump’s performance is perceived by Kim Jong Un and how he feels he has to position himself in the upcoming negotiations. “If I were Kim, I would definitely not give up nuclear weapons — it really is the only significant card that he holds.”
Sanctions won’t work any longer (e.g. when not everyone is on board), and it was the sanctions that brought Iran to the negotiating table.
It looks very much like a strategy to have an excuse to bomb…or “regime change”, meaning war.

A bipartisan group of more than 100 US national security experts — including nearly 50 retired military officers and more than 30 former ambassadors –had urged President Donald Trump to remain in the Iran nuclear deal.

On the other side we have John Bolton, Trump’s new National Secrutiy Advisor, who repeatedly advocated regime change in Teheran. Bolton’s hawkish views on Iran mirror those of Israel, Saudi Arabia and one of his key ideological partners, the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK). It is also a victory for Netanyahu who has viewed Iran as the arch enemy for the past 25 years! Recently Israel has been bombing missile stock piles in Syria, apparently from Iran and meant for Syria and for Hezbolah. CBC news reports:

“The worry for Israel is that Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement could embolden Tehran to retaliate against Israel for a number of recent airstrikes in Syria, believed to be carried out by Israeli warplanes.

The most recent incident unfolded about an hour after Trump spoke in Washington, when explosions were reported near Damascus. Syrian state media reported that eight Iranians were among the 15 killed in the attack.

This is yet another in a string of bombings that are thought to be part of the shadow war Israel is engaged in with the Iranians, who have built up their military muscle — including stockpiling surface-to-surface missiles — inside Syria. “

Our reperesentative, Lee Zeldin, is an unabashed cheer leader for Trump and John Bolton. He also cheers on the Israeli war mongers and Netanyahu. And by-the-way, that same John Bolton led a superPAC that employed Cambridge Analytica ! Yes, those are the people that got your FB info and sold it to the Trump campaign. Sound like a swamp?

Zeldin and Bannon do the 2 step dance

David Posnett — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 01:03:21 +0000

White nationalist demonstrators use shields as they guard the entrance to Lee Park in Charlottesville, Va., Aug. 12, 2017. (AP/Steve Helber)

A shorter version, was published as a letter to the editor in the East Hampton Star, Nov 30, 2017: “Anti-Semitic Stance“

Lee Zeldin is one of only 2 Republican Jews in Congress. As such he should be a strong voice for those suffering religious persecution and anti-semitism in particular.

His latest move, is his alliance with Steve Bannon, who will be headlining a high end fundraiser for Congressman Lee Zeldin in New York City. Bannon is the Executive Chairman of Breitbart News, the “platform for the alt right” which has a public anti-Semitic stance and is in lockstep with the neo-Nazi movement.

Mr. Zeldin has cast a blind eye on the rise of anti-semitic hate crimes since the campaign and election of Donald Trump.

The FBI just released 2016 data: There were 6,063 single-bias incidents involving 7,509 victims. A percent distribution of victims by bias type showed that 58.9 percent of victims were targeted because of the offenders’ race/ethnicity/ancestry bias; 21.1 percent were targeted because of the offenders’ religious bias.

The SLPC has commented on this data from the FBI: The number of hate crimes has reached a five-year high in 2016, taking a noticeable uptick toward the end of the year around Donald Trump’s surprise electoral college victory.

The majority, by far, of these hate crime incidents were anti-jewish, not anti-muslim or anti any other religion!

This flies in the face of an earlier statement by Lee Zeldin that denies a correlation between increase in anti-Semitism and Trump’s election and blames “those who are … looking for any excuse to undermine the Trump presidency,”

Zeldin hasn’t responded to a US vote against condemning Nazism at the United Nations. The resolution called on all U.N. member nations to ban pro-Nazi speech and organizations. The Russian-drafted resolution was approved Thursday by the General Assembly’s human rights committee on a vote of 125-2, with 51 abstentions. Only Ukraine joined the United States in voting “no.” Despite U.S. pressure to vote “no,” Israel supported the resolution.

On October 13^th, Richard Cohen, President of the SPLC, wrote about the annual “Values Voter Summit” in Washington, featuring a rogue’s gallery of far-right extremists along with President Trump and Steve Bannon! “No one should be fooled. These are people and groups who harbor extreme beliefs that are antithetical to the very foundations of our democracy.”

One of the headliners at the Summit, was Roy Moore – the former Alabama chief justice who suggested in a 2002 judicial opinion that the state would be justified in executing gay men and women to protect children. Moore also wrote in 2006 that Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, shouldn’t be allowed to serve because of his faith. As any judge should know, the U.S. Constitution explicitly bars any sort of religious test as a prerequisite to holding federal office.

We’ve twice had Moore removed from the Alabama Supreme Court for thumbing his nose at the Constitution. The first time, in 2003, was after he defied a federal court order to remove a monument to the Ten Commandments that he had installed in the state judicial building. The second time was after he ordered state officials to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples even after the U.S. Supreme Court settled the issue with its landmark ruling in 2015.

Bannon, however, called Moore a “good and righteous man” during his Summit appearance.

Bottom line: When Jews neglect to call out anti-Semitism and intolerance, I am reminded of those Jews that stood by Hitler and lived (or died) to regret it.

Postscript 1:

It may not be surprising that Trump brought so much racial animus into the 2016 election cycle, given his family history. His father, Fred Trump, was a target of folk singer Woody Guthrie’s lyrics after Guthrie lived for two years in a building owned by Trump père: “I suppose / Old Man Trump knows / Just how much / Racial hate / He stirred up / In the bloodpot of human hearts.” And last fall, a news report from 1927 surfaced on the site Boing Boing, revealing that Fred Trump was arrested that year following a KKK riot in Queens. It’s not clear exactly what the elder Trump was doing there, or what role he may have played in the riot.

Postscript 2:

This blog has posted numerous past entries on the topic of anti-semitism and religious/ethnic tolerance in the Trump era. They are listed here for reference:

Holocaust Seen Through the Eyes of a Child

Hatemongers without the Robes and Hoods

“They Want Everything Done For Them”

Zeldin & Bigotry

Devoid of Emotion & Supported by Zeldin

Remove Lee Zeldin from the US Holocaust Memorial Council

The Last Nuremberg Prosecutor Alive

What has Zeldin Actually Done ?

“Prejudice, hatred, and racism”

How sincere was trumps condemnation of racism as evil? His history indicates not very.

An Open Letter to our Fellow Jews

Mr. Zeldin Learns the Trump “Two-Step”

Anti-Semitic Posters on Cornell Campus

No one Above the Law, at Least in Israel

David Posnett — Fri, 08 Sep 2017 12:38:04 +0000

Sara Netanyahu Will Be Indicted For $100K Fraud Scheme

September 8, 2017 By JTA

The wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Sara, will be indicted on four counts of fraud for allegedly diverting some $100,000 in public funds for her family’s personal use, Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit said.

Mendelblit gave Sara Netanyahu the news Friday, according to Army Radio.

“The attorney general examined the case evidence and reached the decision [to indict Sara Netanyahu] after consulting relevant sources, including the state prosecution and the Jerusalem District Prosecutor’s Office,” read a statement from the attorney general’s office Friday.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s office dismissed the indictment as “absurd and unfounded.”

“Sara Netanyahu is a brave and honest woman,” read a statement posted on his Facebook page. Any financial discrepancy at the Prime Minister’s Residence came from former housekeeper Menny Naftali, described in the statement as “problematic.”

The Netanyahus ended their statement Thursday by alleging that they were the target of an “obsessive” smear campaign.

The most serious of the four charges being brought against Sara Netanyahu involves the hiring of electrician Avi Fahima, a Likud Central Committee member. A committee charged with overseeing residence expenditures — and which included the Prime Minister’s Office legal adviser — ruled against the hiring of Fahima, but he was employed regardless.

Does this sound familiar?