The Purim Hangover….A VideoJew Classic
This is an oldie from Season 1 of “” title=”Address here” target=”_blank”>Address here.
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March 11, 2009
An Appreciation of Islam: Q&A with Rabbi Reuven Firestone
Reuven Firestone is both rabbi and renowned Islamic scholar. A professor of medieval Jewish and Islamic studies at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and senior fellow at USC’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture, Firestone’s interfaith work is not focused on reaching political common ground but on understanding shared religious experiences.
Last week, in promoting his book, “An Introduction to Islam for Jews” (Jewish Publication Society, 2008), Firestone spoke at the Jewish Community Library about Islam as a world religion, Muslim views on non-Muslims and whether Muslims and Jews will be able to live in peace in Israel. The Journal caught up with him afterward.
Jewish Journal: What is the No. 1 thing that Jews don’t understand about Islam?
Reuven Firestone: I don’t think they understand that Islam is a complex religion, comparable to Judaism, and that it can’t be reduced to simplistic slogans and notions.
JJ: How do you think the real Islam differs from the generally perceived?
RF: All the fears about Islam, the worst-case scenarios, exist. But they exist in very small numbers, and they are magnified because of our fear and anxiety. And we live in a world where, at least in the last few years, we have been trained and programmed to think the worst.
JJ: You prefaced your talk by saying that you are a committed Jew and that you don’t have an ax to grind, but that you also have ‘a tremendous respect for Islam.’
RF: Some Jews think that if anyone says something positive about Islam in public, that they are not loyal to Judaism. They see it as a zero-sum game — black and white. I usually in speaking to Jewish audiences make some kind of a statement like that. Sometimes I say, ‘Look, I’m a Zionist.’ And I say that to my Muslim friends and colleagues, as well, and sometimes it pisses them off. In many cases they don’t understand how one could be a Zionist and still be appreciative of Islam and Palestinian culture.
JJ: There are passages in the Quran and Hadith that say good things and others that say awful things about Jews. What do Muslims thinks of Jews?
RF: If you were to ask somebody what do Jews think about Christians, what kind of response would you get? Some people would say, ‘I hate Christians.’ Some would say, ‘I have nothing for or against them.’ And some would say, ‘I love Christians.’ The same is true for what Muslims think about Jews. There is no such thing as a Muslim perspective on Jews and Judaism. Having said that, there tends to be a negative perspective on Jews today, and that is associated with the conflict in the Middle East. The Quran itself says positive things about Jews and Judaism, negative things about Jews and neutral things about Jews. The people who are sort of Islamophobic only look at the negative — and there is plenty of negative in the Quran and the traditional literature. And then there are people on the left who only look at the good references to Jews in the Quran and the Hadith. The truth is, as with most matters in life, a lot more complicated. When people reduce it to simplistic answers, it makes me crazy.
JJ: You mentioned in your talk that there was ‘nothing inherently more violent or systemically damaging about Islam than Judaism and Christianity.’
RF: It’s what the interpretative layers make of it. And that is influenced by history and politics and economics and materialism. These are the things that affect the way people relate to their religious tradition.
JJ: Why do you think dialogue is important, particularly religious dialogue?
RF: When you are working on a project together, you talk to one another and you get to know one another. Even if it is kind of at a superficial level, you develop a sense of trust and camaraderie and humanism and that is what dialogue is all about. We don’t usually use the term ‘dialogue.’ We use the term ‘engagement.’ It is more than just talking.
JJ: How difficult has dialogue and Muslim-Jewish relations been in the last two months, since Israel’s war in Gaza?
RF: That has put a damper on it. When the emotions rise because of violence, that always make things difficult. It doesn’t affect me and my colleagues, because we are generally beyond that. I don’t engage in the political issues between Israel and Palestinians, but that has a religious component, as well. So I deal with it, but not as a national issue.
JJ: Do you think Jews and Muslims will be able to live peacefully together in Israel?
RF: I think so. It will take a lot of education, a lot of providing on both sides that they are not trying to destroy the other. l
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Rabbis’ Ethics Initiative Evokes Cheers, Criticism
Rabbis’ Ethics Initiative Evokes Cheers, Criticism
Errol Fine, owner of Pat’s Restaurant and Catering, places the fair treatment of his employees high on his list of business priorities. In fact, he hopes soon to put a sign in the window of his popular Pico Boulevard establishment telling his customers as much.
Pat’s could become one of the first local businesses to sign onto a new initiative calling for ethical labor practices in Jewish workplaces in Los Angeles. Launched early this month, Peulat Sachir (“the worker’s wage”) is the brainchild of a group of local Modern Orthodox rabbis hoping to renew Jewish commitment to upholding labor laws in the wake of several national scandals during the past year.
“This initiative will make our community holier and more ethical, and will raise the level of commitment to labor laws and to Jewish law,” said Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky of B’nai David-Judea Congregation. “It’s about putting the importance of complying with labor law on the radar of this religious community.”
Rabbis and attorneys involved in the movement are asking business owners to sign a statement pledging to treat employees according to state and federal labor laws. The “covenant” document, offered at no cost, focuses on six areas: minimum wage, overtime payment, workers compensation insurance, meal and rest periods, family and personal leave, and anti-discrimination policy.
Employers wishing to take part will agree to open their books to trained volunteers who will verify compliance with the laws in question. Business owners also will agree to undergo biannual site checks and attend seminars on employer obligations and employee rights.
In exchange, leaders of the initiative will encourage patronage of businesses involved and give them priority when choosing vendors for synagogue events.
Establishments with the Peulat Sachir pledge in their windows might also gain a competitive edge among consumers who care about labor issues, said Los Angeles labor attorney Craig Ackermann — the same way stores that promote a green image attract environmentally conscious shoppers.
The rabbis spearheading the movement — who also include Rabbi Daniel Korobkin of Kehillat Yavneh, Rabbi Elazar Muskin of Young Israel of Century City and Rabbi Steven Weil of Beth Jacob — are first targeting businesses in the Pico-Robertson area that they believe are already in compliance.
“For them, it will be a no-brainer,” Kanefsky said. “All they will be doing is receiving public acclamation for doing what they have always done. Businesses will have everything to gain and nothing to lose.”
A Jewish Issue?
But Peulat Sachir organizers are preparing for a wave of criticism nonetheless. Much of the debate over the initiative revolves around one question: Is labor ethics a Jewish issue?
Fine, the owner of Pat’s Restaurant and Catering, thinks it is.
“Rabbis should get involved in more than kashrut,” he said. “I think [the initiative] is important — the community would know that the businesses they support are cognizant of correct business practices.”
But businesses are mandated to uphold labor laws anyway, said Gagy Shagalow, owner of Munchies on Pico Boulevard. An initiative led by religious leaders would have no added benefit to the community, he said.
“This is up to the law — it’s not up to the rabbanim to get involved in legal issues,” Shagalow said. “Either you follow the law or you don’t. The state takes care of businesses that don’t follow the law. It’s not a Jewish issue.”
Muskin and the other rabbis involved disagree. They say Judaism should not be confined to the synagogue, and point out that traditional Jewish law extends to marketplace regulation.
Choshen Mishpat, a text that outlines business ethics, is a heavily studied section of halachah (Jewish law), Muskin said. Members of the Jewish community are required to obey the “laws of the land” (Choshen Mishpat, 369:11), and the Torah commands employers to pay workers promptly and accurately because their lives depend on it (Deuteronomy 24:15).
“We have an obligation, as Jews, to be a light unto the nations and to set an example of ethical and moral behavior in all walks of life,” Korobkin said. “We’re supposed to be as observant in our offices and our homes as we are in our synagogues. For an observant Jew, his observance should be manifest in the way that he runs his business — not just in whether or not he wears a kippah or eats kosher food.”
Restoring Communal Values
The initiative was conceived in October in response to allegations of routine worker mistreatment at the country’s largest kosher meatpacking plant last spring, and has taken on new significance since Wall Street money manager Bernard Madoff’s December arrest on charges of running a $50 billion investment fraud.
News of rampant labor violations at the AgriProcessors slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa — including more than 9,000 child labor charges and workers’ claims of long hours, shorted pay and sexual harassment — shook the community in the wake of a federal immigration raid on the plant last May. Former manager Sholom Rubashkin was arrested Oct. 30, 2008, on allegations of knowingly hiring undocumented workers and covering up their illegal status with false identification.
“There were a number of stories in the news where Jews were portrayed in a bad light that I felt we, as a community, needed to address,” Korobkin said.
As kosher consumers reeled, the rabbis sought to counter the bad press with an educational initiative to bring ethical standards back to the forefront of community consciousness.
Bringing on labor lawyers and lay business leaders to flesh out the plan, the group first pursued the idea of certifying that local businesses were in compliance with labor laws through a seal of approval. But a seal might imply that they were providing rabbinic supervision over businesses, the group felt, which they lacked the resources to do. Also, if the initiative grew beyond the Jewish community, the rabbis didn’t want restaurant patrons to confuse a certificate of kosher business practices with one of kosher food.
Settling on a covenant-style agreement instead, the rabbis decided they would ask employers to sign a voluntary statement of intent to uphold labor laws, which the group would back through spot checks of participating businesses.
The nonprofit Bema’aglei Tzedek launched a similar measure in Israel in 2004 that recognizes restaurants pledging to treat its cooks and servers by ethical labor standards. That program has now grown to more than 300 restaurants.
In Los Angeles, the rabbis felt starting small and locally would be an effective way to bring the lessons of AgriProcessors home.
“This would be something that people would literally see on a daily basis, and they would have to make choices on a daily basis,” Kanefsky said. “It’s very real and very immediate; it’s not in Iowa — it’s on Pico Boulevard.”
Not a Witch Hunt
Businesses that apply for the covenant and are found to be in violation of labor laws, however, won’t be penalized, the rabbis say.
“We are not here to condemn, or to single out, or to expose any businesses that are not in compliance,” Korobkin said. “We are just here to heap praise and promotion on businesses that are.”
Peulat Sachir representatives will be bound by a confidentiality clause in which they agree not to publicize what they find on-site, said Ackermann, the labor lawyer who helped craft the initiative. “[Employers] might be concerned about, ‘Are you going to hand this over to the labor commissioner?’ That’s not going to happen,” he said.
In some cases, he added, business owners might simply be unaware of certain labor laws — such as that workers in California are entitled to a 30-minute meal break on shifts longer than five hours, or that employees on the clock for more than eight hours must be paid 1 1/2 times their regular rate in overtime.
At businesses found to be lagging, owners might have to spend a bit more to shore up old policies. Employers who feel they can’t afford to make changes in the current economic climate won’t be forced to sign on, Korobkin said. “Any business that feels that it’s not economically feasible to sign onto the covenant won’t be pressured to do so.”
Still, Ackermann said, “labor laws are not voluntary to begin with” and businesses that disregard them leave themselves open to government investigation and penalties.
The initiative does not address the issue of undocumented workers, which Ackermann said is “too complicated, too controversial” for such a small group. But the wage and break laws outlined in the covenant apply to documented and undocumented workers alike.
Another concern is that businesses might see the initiative as an “unnecessary headache” that might be too intrusive or time-consuming. Site testers will visit each business twice a year to check a random sampling of employee records — a process that might take, at most, an hour or two, Ackermann said. The site testers will be labor lawyers and trained volunteers, similar to the mashgiachs who monitor the kosher status of restaurants.
Any business with employees is eligible for the covenant, including synagogues, schools, restaurants, supermarkets, medical practices and dry cleaners.
The ultimate goal is not to regulate businesses, Korobkin said, but rather to boost the profile of labor laws on the Jewish communal agenda: “Our whole objective is to raise awareness in the community that these things are important to Jews.”
For more information, call Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky at (310) 276-9269, or e-mail Rabbis’ Ethics Initiative Evokes Cheers, Criticism Read More »
Madoff Is Going to Prison
Swindler Bernard Madoff will appear in Federal court Thursday morning in Manhattan, where he will plead guilty to multiple counts of fraud. A Federal judge is expected to sentence Madoff to up a prison sentence of up to 150 years. Here’s the New York Times report on the eve of Bernie’s long goodbye:
March 11, 2009
Madoff Faces Life in Prison for Vast Swindle
By DIANA B. HENRIQUES
Correction Appended
Bernard L. Madoff is facing life in prison for operating a vast Ponzi scheme that began at least 20 years ago and consumed billions of dollars of other people’s money.
While his fate will not be certain until he is sentenced, his lawyer told a federal judge on Tuesday that he intended to plead guilty on Thursday to all the criminal charges that federal prosecutors had filed against him — a list that could yield a prison sentence of 150 years.
Mr. Madoff was arrested Dec. 11 at his Manhattan home by federal agents who accused him of running what was perhaps the largest fraud in Wall Street’s history. The scheme zigzagged across the world, drawing in foreign banks, hedge funds, charities, celebrities and ordinary retirees who had entrusted their savings to his investment firm.
The charges, made public late Tuesday, offered a few fresh details about how Mr. Madoff conducted his long-running fraud. And they raised its price tag from his own estimate of $50 billion to nearly $65 billion, the total amount that thousands of customers were told they had in their accounts at his firm.
But left unanswered were questions about the involvement of family members and employees and the treatment of favored investors.
To sustain his fraud, prosecutors said, Mr. Madoff assembled an ill-trained and inexperienced clerical staff, directed them to “generate false and fraudulent documents,” told lies and supplied false records to regulators, and shuffled hundreds of millions of dollars from bank to bank to create the illusion of active trading. The government said Mr. Madoff ordered multimillion-dollar bank transfers in part “to give the appearance that he was conducting securities transactions in Europe on behalf of the investors, when, in fact, he was not.”
And, in an accusation that extends his crime’s shadow to the edges of the business where his brother and sons worked, prosecutors accused Mr. Madoff of using some of the money he gathered through his Ponzi scheme to support the supposedly legitimate wholesale stock trading operation that made his name on Wall Street.
Specifically, prosecutors said that Mr. Madoff “caused more than $250 million” he collected through his Ponzi scheme from at least 2002 through 2008 “to be directed, through a series of wire transfers, to the operating accounts that funded the operations of these businesses.”
The government also charged that he had money transferred from his firm’s London office “to purchase property and services for the personal use and benefit” of himself, his family members and his associates.
Finally, prosecutors said that Mr. Madoff — whose investors prized his steady single-digit annual returns — actually had promised select clients extraordinarily high returns, as much as 46 percent, to lure them in.
In all, Mr. Madoff was charged with 11 felony counts, including securities fraud, money laundering and perjury. Under federal sentencing guidelines, those crimes would yield a life sentence for the 70-year-old trader.
As that sentence suggests, Lev L. Dassin, the acting United States attorney in Manhattan, emphasized that prosecutors did not negotiate an agreement that traded Mr. Madoff’s guilty plea for more lenient treatment.
Moreover, Mr. Dassin disclosed that the government intended to seek at least $170 billion in forfeited assets from Mr. Madoff, a remarkable figure that apparently counts all the money that moved through Madoff bank accounts during the years of the fraud as the proceeds of illegal activities.
Although the forfeiture laws allow the government to seize any property it can trace as the proceeds of illegal activity, investigators have so far found no sign that Mr. Madoff or anyone connected with his business has anything like that amount of money.
And Mr. Madoff’s lawyers have filed a letter with the court disputing that outsize figure, saying it represents all the money ever deposited in Madoff bank accounts over the years without distinguishing either legitimate business operations or the billions that were paid out to investors as part of the Ponzi scheme.
Mr. Dassin said on Tuesday that his staff was still unraveling the fraud to determine who besides Mr. Madoff might have helped keep it running. “The filing of these charges does not end the matter,” Mr. Dassin said in a statement.
But as the criminal case against Mr. Madoff moved toward a resolution, Judge Denny Chin of Federal District Court said on Tuesday that it was not yet time for the court to hear from those who say they were defrauded.
Mr. Madoff has been free on $10 million bail, but confined to his apartment, since his arrest in December. It is not clear whether the government will seek to have his bail revoked if he pleads guilty on Thursday.
If Mr. Madoff does plead guilty, the judge cautioned, he will not be sentenced for several months, giving his victims ample time to submit their comments to the court and ask to be heard.
Dozens of private messages have already reached the court, many of them echoing a letter from a California man who urged the judge to jail Mr. Madoff “for the rest of his life, in conditions that are worthy of someone who has destroyed and raped so many people.”
Alexandra Penney, one of Mr. Madoff’s victims in New York, said she was still dissatisfied with the information that had come out about his crime. “He is gaming the system once again,” she said. “We know nothing — all he has given up is his disgusting, loathsome self.”
As Ms. Penney noted, despite the fresh details in the formal charges, substantial questions remain unanswered.
The government accuses Mr. Madoff of assembling an inexperienced staff to generate “false and fraudulent documents” for customers, but it does not indicate whether those staff members were aware of Mr. Madoff’s allegedly fraudulent activity.
Marc L. Mukasey, a lawyer for Frank DiPascali, who oversaw Mr. Madoff’s clerical staff, had no comment on the government’s allegations.
The document also accuses Mr. Madoff of luring new investors by promising some of them returns as high as 46 percent, well above the steady 8 to 10 percent most investors reported. But it does not explain how much those preferred investors may have known about their special status.
The government specifically accuses Mr. Madoff of taking in $10 million from approximately 35 labor union pension plans last September and, rather than investing it, converting the money “to his own use and the use of others” — but then does not identify the “others,” even in general terms.
The government has still given no indication of whether any members of Mr. Madoff’s family knew about his fraud or participated in it. Lawyers for those relatives have all said their clients did not know about the scam until Mr. Madoff’s confession — and, indeed, most of them lost millions of dollars entrusted to him.
But the document released on Tuesday does confirm the unyielding arithmetic that has wiped out so much wealth and created such hardship for those who trusted Mr. Madoff.
At the end of November, Mr. Madoff had 4,800 client accounts that were supposed to contain a total of $64.8 billion in customer savings. In fact, the government said, Mr. Madoff’s spurious advisory business “held only a small fraction of that balance.”
William K. Rashbaum and Zachery Kouwe contributed reporting.
The Times also has an excellent Q & A with the implications of the sentencing, including insights into what it means for his victims and his immediate family members.
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Friedman, Karatz Criminal Charges Rock L.A. Philanthropic Community
On March 4, Bruce Friedman, a Sherman Oaks-based mortgage banker, was charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) with orchestrating a $216 million real estate investment fraud.
The news came as yet another big blow to Los Angeles’ philanthropic community, as Friedman’s family foundation, a major partner of the Dodgers, had committed $10 million to the Children’s Museum of Los Angeles.
Still more bad news came the next day, when Bruce Karatz, former KB Home CEO and one-time president of Wilshire Boulevard Temple, was indicted by a federal grand jury in a stock options backdating case that has dragged on since the housing boom went bust.
Friedman and his attorney have not commented on the charges; Karatz has proclaimed his innocence.
Despite their differences, the coincidence in timing of these two cases sent shudders through the Jewish community last week. It is not just a matter of lost dollars, but rather the notion that both men were major donors to charitable causes, even as their business practices may have been illegal. This link has thrown even more unwelcome light on the community during a period of intense Jewish sensitivity to the casting of Jews as dishonest businessmen and conspiring moneylenders.
Immediately after Lehman Brothers failed in September and Wall Street collapsed, sending the United States and global economies into an ever-deepening downward spiral, anti-Semites piled on, blaming history’s favorite financial scapegoat for the world’s problems. Then in December, Bernard L. Madoff was arrested after reportedly admitting to operating a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, personifying every ugly slur about Jews and mammon and, on top of the broader financial crisis, devastating Jewish charities financially and emotionally. Madoff is expected to plead guilty on Thursday.
To be sure, the broad brushstroke is extremely unfair: “There are lots of Jewish money managers,” said Gary Tobin, president of the Institute for Jewish & Community Research in San Francisco. “Friedman and Madoff are rare, unsavory exceptions.”
And Karatz, Tobin said, should not be looked at in the same way.
“Bruce Karatz, in my view, never intended to defraud anybody. So you can’t lump him together with guys like Friedman and Madoff and this guy Stanford,” Tobin said, referring to Texas tycoon Allen Stanford, who is not Jewish and was charged last month by the SEC with a “massive ongoing fraud” related to an $8 billion investment fund. “They are part of a different crew,” Tobin said.
According to the SEC’s complaint filed in U.S. District Court, Friedman raised $216 million in investments for his companies, Diversified Lending Group (DLG) and Applied Equities Inc. (AEI), by promising 9 percent to 12 percent annual returns. The money was not invested in real estate, the SEC claims, and at least $17 million was diverted to Friedman’s $6.5 million Malibu home, European vacations, clothing, jewelry and home renovations totaling $4 million, as well as luxury cars costing $1.2 million and a $3 million jet.
The SEC also claims that Friedman transferred at least $1.8 million in investor funds to the Friedman Charitable Foundation, of which he is president, and $275,000 to Tina Placourakis of Scottsdale, Ariz, whom the SEC identifies as his girlfriend. (Placourakis said she was never “romantically involved” with Friedman. “He is my employer nothing more or nothing less,” she said.)
Messages left for Friedman and his attorney, Mark C. Holscher, were not returned. Neither were calls to Daryn Friedman, executive director of the Friedman Charitable Foundation, or Dina Coster Kaplan, a member of its board.
Friedman, 59, has had legal troubles before. In 1981, he pleaded no contest to a felony charge of grand theft and was sentenced to 40 months.
His past and current legal issues came as a surprise to many. The news resonated over the weekend at Congregation Or Ami in Calabasas, the temple where Friedman worships and his brother-in-law is a past president.
“Or Ami is a congregation that attempts to be nonjudgmental about the tsuris [troubles] people are going through,” Rabbi Paul J. Kipnes said. “And so we reach out to our congregants as they go through their problems and deal with their issues.”
Friedman’s philanthropy was identified more with Los Angeles’ cultural community than Jewish causes, and the organizations the foundation had pledged to support may now be in limbo.
A new $58.5 million home for the Children’s Museum of Los Angeles in Lake View Terrace, scheduled to open June, 2010 had already faced major delays and is still counting on the $10 million from the Friedman Charitable Foundation, by far its biggest donor.
“The Children’s Museum of Los Angeles did the review that we have to do in order to accept a gift. I feel very comfortable with the gift that was given to the museum,” said Cecilia Aguilera-Glassman, the museum’s CEO.
Less clear is what will happen to the Dodgers’ plans to build 42 “dreamfields” across the region. At a news conference last November, Dodgers owner Frank McCourt announced that the Friedman Charitable Foundation would match the Dodgers dollar for dollar in building ballparks throughout greater Los Angeles. Dodgers’ spokesman Charles Steinberg, who did not return calls from The Journal for comment, told the Los Angeles Times that the team has yet to ask Friedman for any money.
Regardless of what happens to donations Friedman pledged to these organizations, the case against him raises troubling, though not new, questions about the relationship between philanthropy and ill-gotten gains.
“The robber barons in the gilded age exploited the country and its resources terribly and then became great patrons of culture. Both sides — commerce and culture — need one another. The businessmen/criminals need the validation from these tony, upscale institutions in order to justify to themselves their criminal activity, and the institutions need the infusion of cash,” said David N. Myers, a UCLA history professor and director of the Center for Jewish Studies. “I suspect if you went back to antiquity, you would find high-level criminals were funding major cultural institutions.”
Yet while Friedman has received the ignominy of being accused of mini-Madoff status, Karatz is the much bigger macher.
According to forms filed with the IRS for the year 2007, the most recent available, the Bruce Karatz Family Foundation had assets of $4.7 million and gave about $233,000 in grants. Most of the donations went to Jewish causes.
The largest, $50,000 each, were given to the United Jewish Fund and the City of Hope Medical Center. The Israel Air Force Center received $6,000, while $5,000 each went to Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Seeds of Peace and the USC Annenberg School for Communication. Jewish Big Brothers/Big Sisters got $1,250.
In the early 1990s, when Karatz spent three years as president of Wilshire Boulevard Temple, it wasn’t so much about giving his money but his time, Rabbi Steven Leder said.
“Anybody who saw Bruce operating as the president of the temple up close had and continues to have immense respect for him as a leader and his commitment to the temple. He really made a difference,” Leder said. “He was instrumental in the push to establish ourselves on the Westside of Los Angeles. Instrumental.”
Not that Karatz, now 63, didn’t have plenty of money.
When he was pressured out of KB Home in 2006, after 20 years at the helm, Karatz was one of the highest paid executives in the United States. Fortune magazine had ranked KB Home the nation’s top homebuilder. The company’s stock value had quadrupled in the previous 10 years and assets had increased by almost the same proportion.
The SEC claimed Karatz backdated stock options between 1999 and 2006 without reporting his actions to stockholders or paying taxes on the gains. He agreed last September to pay more than $7 million to settle with the SEC. But that didn’t stop a grand jury inquiry.
“This investigation painted a picture of avarice and dishonesty at its core,” Salvador Hernandez, assistant director in charge of the FBI in Los Angeles, said in a prepared statement.
On March 5, Karatz was indicted on 20 felony counts, including securities fraud. If convicted on all counts, he could face up to 415 years in prison.
John Keker, Karatz’s attorney, said his client has been unfairly targeted.
“We are disappointed that during this economic collapse the government chooses to waste its resources on backdated options, an issue that has long ago been fixed at KB Home and generally in the corporate world,” Keker said in a statement. “But since they made that choice, we will show a jury that Bruce Karatz, who as CEO helped create 5,000 jobs and oversaw significant company growth, acted appropriately.”
While Karatz and Friedman share little beyond their commitment to Jewish causes, anti-Semites have wasted little time in capitalizing on their troubles. Last weekend, a report about Friedman on The God Blog gave rise to numerous rabidly anti-Semitic comments.
These were in keeping with a survey released last month by the Anti-Defamation League of Europeans in seven countries — Austria, France, Hungary, Poland, Germany, Spain and Britain — which found that 40 percent of respondents feel Jews have too much power in business, and nearly a third said Jews are to blame for the global financial crisis.
The ADL has not administered a similar survey in the United States, but the blog comments indicate that many Americans share the Europeans’ sentiments. And this, in turn, fuels the fear that the more Jewish names are associated with financial calamity and misdeeds, the more common and openly expressed those sentiments could become.
Contributing Editor Tom Tugend contributed to this report.
For blog coverage on this ongoing story click here
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Ex-AIPACer Suing Former Employer for Defamation
UPDATE
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Steve Rosen, the former AIPAC foreign policy chief charged with receiving classified information, is suing his former employer for defamation, JTA has learned.
Rosen filed a civil action March 2 in the District of Columbia Superior Court seeking $21 million from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, its officers at the time of his dismissal in 2005 and an outside spokesman hired to deal specifically with the case.
Should it come to trial, the civil case promises revelations of how AIPAC works its sensitive relations with the executive branch and allegedly capitulated to government pressure to fire Rosen and Keith Weissman, its then-Iran analyst.
Weissman, Rosen’s co-defendant in the criminal case under way in a federal court in Alexandria, Va., is not a plaintiff in the civil suit. He and his lawyers declined comment, as did Rosen.
Both of Rosen’s lawyers—in the criminal case and in his suit against AIPAC—did not return calls requesting comment.
The core of the case is the repeated claims by Patrick Dorton, the outside spokesman for AIPAC named in the suit, that Rosen and Weissman were fired because they “did not comport with standards that AIPAC expects of all its employees.”
AIPAC’s regular spokesman, Joshua Block, referred questions to Dorton. In turn, Dorton issued a statement saying that AIPAC and the others named in Rosen’s suit would defend themselves vigorously.
“The complaint paints a false picture of what happened,” he told JTA, adding later that “AIPAC made all decisions in this situation with a determination to do the right thing.”
Rosen is not publicity-shy; he helped launch the recent successful effort to remove Charles Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, from the chairmanship of the National Intelligence Council. In his blog monitoring Obama administration Middle East policy, Rosen uncovered and highlighted a number of past controversial statements by Freeman praising Saudi Arabia and blaming Israel for the collapse of the Middle East peace process.
In seeking to prove that he was the victim of “false and defamatory statements” made on AIPAC’s behalf, the complaint describes Rosen as tumbling from the heights of a cozy relationship with the highest echelons of government to being shown the door at AIPAC.
Rosen describes his own status as a high-flying conduit between foreign policy mandarins and the policy community, journalists and foreign diplomats.
In the complaint, a copy of which was obtained by JTA, Rosen says he had the “requisite experience and expertise” to deal with those “with the authority to determine and differentiate which information disclosures would be harmful to the United States and which disclosures would benefit the United States.”
Rosen and Weissman allegedly received classified information having to do with Iran and its backing for terrorism. The case came to light following an FBI raid on AIPAC’s offices in August 2004.
After the FBI raid, AIPAC stood by the two employees, insisting they had done nothing wrong. Rosen says he even received a performance bonus. Seven months after the raid—just a month or so after Rosen received his bonus—in March 2005, Rosen and Weissman were fired. They were indicted in August of that year.
Rosen’s suit alleges that AIPAC gave in to government pressure to fire the two staffers, casting prosecutors in the case as making threats that would not be out of place in a legal drama.
“We could make real progress and get AIPAC out from under all of us,” the filing quotes a prosecutor as saying.
The filing draws its information from a motion by Rosen and Weissman to have the criminal case dismissed in 2007. The motion said the government violated the defendants’ right to a defense by threatening to charge AIPAC as well unless it fired Rosen and Weissman and stopped paying their legal fees.
In sworn affidavits filed with the motion, lawyers for Rosen and Weissman quoted lawyers for AIPAC as saying that the decision to fire the two came under government pressure.
T.S. Ellis III, the federal judge trying the case, ultimately rejected the motion to dismiss but said its claims were credible. At the time of the May 2007 ruling, Dorton brushed aside the motion’s claims.
“AIPAC made all of its decisions in this case alone based on the facts of the situation and the organization’s intention to do the right thing,” he told JTA.
Within months, however, AIPAC agreed to pay a portion of Weissman’s legal fees and later came to a similar agreement for Rosen. Weissman’s legal team is still fund-raising for the defense.
Rosen’s central contention is that his actions comported with AIPAC practices, and that he provided his superiors with regular briefings about his efforts to gather information from government officials. The paragraph in the complaint outlining how AIPAC works suggests that the trial would lift the veil over exchanges with the government that AIPAC has long tried to keep under wraps.
“To be effective, organizations engaged in advocacy in the field of foreign policy need to have earlier and more detailed information about policy developments inside the government and diplomatic issues with other countries than is normally available to or needed by the wider public,” the complaint says. “Agencies of the government sometimes choose to provide such additional information about policy and diplomatic issues to these outside interest groups in order to win support for what they are doing among important domestic constituencies and to send messages to select target audiences.”
The complaint also asserts that the statements made by AIPAC’s outside spokesman “might influence a jury that will hear the misdirected case brought against him by the government.” The criminal trial, which has been delayed multiple times, is now set for June 2.
The filing also alleges that “through their publication of the falsehoods about Mr. Rosen, defendant achieved an increase of millions of dollars in revenue for AIPAC, whereas had they told the truth, AIPAC might well have suffered a significant decrease in fund-raising, as well as an increase in legal costs.”
Sources close to the criminal case say that Weissman and the criminal defense team are not troubled by the lawsuit, but think that making the case that Rosen had been defamed would be much easier after an acquittal or after the case had been dropped by the government.
Increasing calls on the Obama administration to drop the case include most recently an editorial Wednesday in the Washington Post.
The case is now being seen to have been an instrument of Bush administration efforts to expand secrecy laws. Prosecutors charged Rosen and Weissman under a rarely cited section of the 1917 Espionage Act that criminalizes the receipt of classified information by civilians; the section has never led to a successful prosecution.
Rosen in filing his lawsuit may have felt pressed for time, as defamation suits must be filed within a year of the offending statement.
The most recent instance of Dorton, the spokesman, claiming publicly that Rosen and Weissman did not comport with AIPAC rules came in a story by The New York Times on March 3, 2008—a year less a day before Rosen filed his suit. The suit contends that Dorton repeated the claim to a reporter for the Forward in October; that instance apparently was not published.
A Superior Court judge set June 5 for a hearing to set a trial date regarding Rosen’s claims. By the time Rosen’s civil lawsuit comes to trial, he might have a dismissal or acquittal under his belt, increasing his chances for victory.
Rosen’s filing asserts that at AIPAC he “was one of the principal officials who, along with Executive Director Howard Kohr and a few other individuals, were expected to maintain relationships with [government] agencies, receive such information and share it with AIPAC Board of Directors and to Senior Staff for possible further distribution.”
Kohr is named as a defendant, as are AIPAC’s lay leadership at the time: Bernice Manocherian, then president; Howard Friedman, then president-elect (and a former president of JTA’s board of directors); and Amy Friedkin, then the immediate past president.
Also named are alleged members of an “advisory group” set up to deal directly with the case. These names reinforce the impression that a small core of members of AIPAC’s board continues to take the lead in determining AIPAC’s direction. They include past presidents Lonnie Kaplan, Larry Weinberg, Bob Asher and Ed Levy.
The complaint asks for $10 million from AIPAC, $500,000 each from all 12 other defendants and $5 million collectively from all the defendants.
Also named are alleged members of an “advisory group” set up to deal directly with the case. These names reinforce the impression that a small core of members of AIPAC’s board continues to take the lead in determining AIPAC’s direction. They include past presidents Lonnie Kaplan, Larry Weinberg, Bob Asher and Ed Levy.
The complaint asks for $10 million from AIPAC, $500,000 each from all 12 other defendants and $5 million collectively from all the defendants.
Ex-AIPACer Suing Former Employer for Defamation Read More »
No Mormon Love for ‘Big Love’
Just think, if Jews objected to their wedding rituals being depicted on screen, a good bit of Hollywood’s film archives would be wiped out. “Fiddler on the Roof,” for example, would have been painfully anti-climactic. What’s a movie about shtetl Jews without the Cossack pillaging of Tzeitel’s wedding?
Mormon church leaders, however, are up in arms over HBO’s “Big Love” and its decision to film a sacred temple rite. “Only church members in good standing can enter temples to perform or witness sacred ceremonies,” wrote Variety. Church leaders argue that because they are so secretive, a television executive couldn’t possibly have accurate knowledge of these rituals. “Members take a vow not to discuss the rituals outside temple walls,” the article in Variety stated, but added, “although details of the ceremonies are widely available on the Internet.”
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a statement saying, “Church members are offended when their most sacred practices are misrepresented or presented without context or understanding.”
Not to accuse the Mormon Church of ill meddling, but—make up your mind—is the depiction forbidden or is it OK if Hollywood gets their “context” right? Producers of the popular HBO drama, about a polygamous family in Utah, swear their sensitivity to the subject. For this episode, they employed an on-set expert in Mormon rites to supervise the controversial scene. Since the show’s creation, they have consulted with the Mormon Church and promised to distinguish between the beliefs and practices of The Church of Latter-day Saints and the fundamentalist, fringe groups and individuals who merely practice polygamy.
But angry leaders dispute HBO’s religious concerns: “Despite earlier assurances from HBO, it once again blurs the distinction between The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the show’s fictional non-Mormon characters and their practices,” the church statement said.
Read more in Variety’s report, Mormon Leaders Take Aim at ‘Big Love’:
“In approaching the dramatization of the endowment ceremony, we knew we had a responsibility to be completely accurate and to show the ceremony in the proper context and with respect,” Olsen and Scheffer said in a separate statement issued through HBO. “We therefore took great pains to depict the ceremony with the dignity and reverence it is due.”
The church declined an interview request by The Associated Press on Tuesday.
News of the episode has sparked an online campaign by individual Latter-day Saints, who are calling for a boycott of “Big Love” and cancellation of subscriptions to HBO, AOL and other Time Warner Inc.-owned entities.
The church itself has not called for a boycott and said in its statement that doing so would just fuel controversy and interest in the program.
Church leaders also said members of the rapidly growing faith should not feel defensive about HBO’s characterization of Mormons.
“There is no evidence that extreme misrepresentations in the media that appeal only to a narrow audience have any long term negative effect on the church,” they said in the statement.
“Big Love” is in its third season on HBO and a fourth is in the works. The program tells the story of Bill Hendrickson, a fundamentalist (played by Bill Paxton) who runs a chain of hardware stores and lives with three wives (Tripplehorn, Chloe Sevigny and Ginnifer Goodwin) in a Salt Lake City suburb.
Like Utah’s real-life fundamentalists, the Hendricksons’ beliefs are tied to the early teachings of Mormon church founder Joseph Smith, who said polygamy was an essential doctrine for exaltation in the afterlife. The church ultimately abandoned the practice in 1890 as a condition of Utah’s statehood.
When “Big Love” first aired, negotiations between the church and HBO resulted in a one-time disclaimer included in the show’s credits that distinguished the modern church’s position on polygamy from the beliefs of the fictional characters in the series.
This season, however, the show’s polygamy-focused stories have included more mainstream Mormon references.
No Mormon Love for ‘Big Love’ Read More »
The Israel lobby and true power
Great blog post from JTA’s Ron Kampeas that essentially likens the “Israel lobby” to the Wizard of Oz. It’s pegged to the sinking of Chas Freeman, which is, of course, being blamed on the Jews.
Kampeas begins with an old joke:
It goes like this: “Killed Jesus? No. But only because the Romans got there first.”
Eric tells me that when he interned at AIPAC, he heard a similar take on Paul Findley, failed congressman and perennial Israel critic, who was the Walt-Mearsheimer of the 1980s, when he published his own critique of the pro-Israel lobby, “They Dare to Speak Out.”
“Forced him out of Congress? No. But if he wants to give us credit… “
The jokes are telling: After being accused of a calumny for so long, part of you wants to own it. Run the joint? Sure, I run the joint. Right now, I’m thinking of running you out of the joint.
This is not always productive (See under: Jesus). More recently, however, it has been—for the pro-Israel lobby—a happy if unintended consequence of its (shhhh!) utterly routine maneuverings in Washington. A hefty portion of power is perception and the “lobby’s” critics have been pushing perceptions of its omnipotence, in spades. (See under: Paul Findley.)
It might even help explain AIPAC’s wild growth. Control the levers of power? Sure we do. See ya at our next policy conference!
What astonishes me is how the enemies of the lobby feed this imagined monster, with a neurotic commitment to self-defeat. The reactions today to the end of the Chas Freeman fiasco are not just typical, but a kind of apotheosis.
Kampeas then goes on to quote some of the reactions and argues that what sank Freeman was not simply his criticism of Israel but his sympathetic remarks regarding those bastions of human rights: China and Saudi Arabia. After all, Samantha Power, who has accused Israel of war crimes, works for President Obama’s National Security Council.
“But that doesn’t matter to Freeman or his supporters,” Kampeas concludes. “They apparently want a Jesus, however much this does the work of pro-Israel groups. In the long run, after all, Jesus scored major points for his followers. Good luck with that guys! Looks to me, though, like you got a Findley instead.”
The Israel lobby and true power Read More »
Better luck in Israel
I found this video from MASA on MyJewishLearning blog:
In the video, a young woman is doing a standup routine at a retirement home. None of the old people find any of the jokes funny and eventually yell at the girl for comparing the current economic crisis to The Great Depression. Then it makes an implausible transition to say that Israel is an “Better Stimulus Plan.”
Nope, I don’t get it either.
Maybe its a reference to making aliyah instead of waiting around for President Obama’s trillion-dollar stimulus package to kick in. Last month, I read a little something about Israelis leaving the United States and its abysmal economy for the greener grass, or at least better beaches, of Israel:
Better luck in Israel Read More »
Anti-Zionism rebounds on college campuses
Last summer, treatment of Israel on college campuses, even UC Irvine, was improving. No more.
JTA recounts a few recent flare-ups at York, NYU and San Jose State and writes:
“Jewish students are not comfortable and they’re not feeling secure,” Daniel Ferman, president of the York Hillel, told JTA. “But I think most importantly though, they’re not happy with the situation. I think they’re disappointed that there hasn’t been more action. The university administration needs to take responsibility for its campus and ensure that it’s a safe environment for all students.”
Compared to the animus frequently directed toward Israelis in Europe, where calls for academic and cultural boycotts have become routine and even sports competitions involving Israelis attract scores of rock-throwing protesters—the situation at American campuses is relatively tame. But those involved in pro-Israel activism at U.S. colleges remain concerned that the situation is worsening, with rhetoric and tactics once thought rare in North America gaining increasing traction.
“The level of activity and nature of activity in three specific areas is measurably different in kind, not merely degree, from what we’ve seen before,” said Wayne Firestone, president of Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life.
Firestone said the three areas are academic hostility toward Israel, physical intimidation, and activities similar or related to Israel Apartheid Week, the annual weeklong festival of anti-Israel events that just finished its fifth year.
“There are a couple of things that make this rise unique and worrisome in my eyes,” said David Harris, director of the Israel on Campus Coalition, a partnership featuring nearly three dozen Jewish organizations. “One is that we’re seeing anti-Israel activity on campuses like Cornell and Queens College that have not for years seen meaningful anti-Israel activity.”
Previously on The God Blog:
Files of Fact and Fiction: Academia vs. Israel
Why a Jewish student chose against UC Irvine
A baker’s dozen of anti-Semitism at UC Irvine
UC Irvine student: “Israel will be wiped off the face of the earth”
How Jewish hawks won the advocacy war
Anti-Zionism rebounds on college campuses Read More »