When Victims Rule (pdf)

WALL STREET, JEWISH / ISRAELI ETHICS, AND THE WORLD OF FUND RAISING
(the Ukrainian Jewish immigration umbrella organization), an immigration
activist named Yosef Zisels, the Jewish Agency, and the Liaison Bureau of the Israeli
government. “According to the charges,” notes the Jerusalem Post, “the immigrants
gave money from their savings and the sale of their property to Zisels
to transfer to Israel at the advice of emissaries working for the agency and bureau.
However, they claim they were not paid the sums half a year later, as had
been stipulated in the contract with the Va’ad.” [TSUR, p. 6] Then came the
1999 investigations of “lawyers who reportedly cheated thousands of elderly Israelis
out of more than half a billion dollars by offering to help them obtain
German pensions. [i.e., Holocaust-era reparations]” [BARSHI]
In November of 1999 the Montreal Gazette noted that
“It was scandal, and lots of it, that truly occupies the country’s [Israel’s]
attention. There was a scandal of lust, scandal of greed, scandal of
corruption. There was a scandal involving the national soccer team for
losing a key match following pregame visits to a house of ill repute.
There was a scandal involving former prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu
and his wife, Sarah, accused of accepting bribes and stealing valuable
state gifts. And there was yeshiva scandal a plenty. So much muck
was being raked that the newspaper Yediot Ahronot even ran a full-page
scandal guide on Friday, with boxes for every major affair, its suspects,
its allegations and the status of its investigation.” [SONTAG, D., 11-28-
99, p. 17]
In 2000, nothing had changed. The Jewish Week headlined an article “Israel
Sinking in Scandal Swamp: ‘Light Unto Nations’ Seen Losing Moral Bearing
Amid Corruption, Fraud Probes.” New scandals included those surrounding Israel’s
president, Ezer Weizman, who had taken hundreds of thousands of dollars
in a secret fund from French Jewish millionaire Edouard Sarousi, and Prime Minister
Ehud Barak “who was questioned by state Comptroller Eliezer Goldberg last
week about allegations that fictitious associations illegally pumped foreign contributions
into his 1999 election campaign.” [AIN, S., 1-28-2000, p. 1]
In 2002, Israeli MK (Member of Knesset/Parliament) Michael Kleiner complained
that “World Jewish organizations are set to ‘rake into their coffers’ some
$1 billion in unclaimed funds allocated by Swiss banks to compensate for assets
from dormant Holocaust-era accounts … Kleiner accused the [Israeli] government,
along with Jewish organizations, of compliance in allowing the Swiss to
avoid publishing the lists of bank account and insurance policyholders. The
Jewish organizations have a conflict of interests, he said, since they cut a deal
under which all unclaimed monies would go to them.” [GILBERT, N., 1-15-02]
Scandals in Israel are an old theme. Looking back to the 1970s, notes Richard
Rubenstein, “there was a serious loss of public confidence in the Labor government
[the then-empowered political party] as a result of revelations of economic
corruption and greed among some government leaders, heads of state-owned
banks, corporations, and the Histradut labor federation.” [RUBENSTEIN, R.,
p. 229] And as World Zionist Organization president Nahum Goldmann noted
about Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion:
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