Apr 23 2013
CounterPunch: Friends of Israel Defense Forces Raises $27 Million Under NY Media’s Radar
It isn’t every day or night that a tax-exempt non-profit American charity rakes in $27 million in the space of a few hours. When it happens in New York at such a well known landmark as the Waldorf-Astoria, arguably the city’s most famous hotel, it should be news, right?
Wrong, apparently, since not a single TV station nor any New York newspaper, all of which are known for their attention to events in the city’s Jewish community as well as their devotion to Israel, saw fit to cover the annual dinner of the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) this past March 12 which raised that enormous sum.
Nor, it turns out, did they cover last year’s FIDF fundraiser at the Waldorf which took in almost as much, $26 million, nor the one in 2011, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the organization that featured the presence of six former Israel Defense Forces Chiefs of Staff and collected $23 million.
More than five weeks after latest dinner, the only paper trails that can be found to the event were in the Jerusalem Post, Ha’aretz (a week later), the New York Jewish Week, and the Forward, the city’s national Jewish weekly which is known for printing articles that the mainstream press and other Jewish publications find too hot to handle. The Jewish Week’s reporter, Tim Boxer, in fact, did not mention the amount raised at the black tie, $1000 a plate affair, until the very last paragraph of the story.
“The dinner raised $27 million for FIDF which, since 1981, has been supporting educational and recreational facilities for soldiers and their families,” wrote Boxer. “Among the heavy hitters was Marc Belzberg who announced, ‘I am donating one million dollars and my first-born son to the IDF in August’.”
The FIDF is an organization that most Americans, including Jews not affiliated with the Jewish establishment, have probably never heard of and that is obviously the intent of those who run what has, in the last few years, become one of the brightest star in the pro-Israel fundraising firmament with a $60 million annual budget, all of which, it cannot be overemphasized, is tax-exempt.
“[E]stablished … by Holocaust survivors to provide for the well-being of Israeli soldiers,” according to its website, and headquartered in New York City, the FIDF is a 501c3 not-for-profit corporation that operates 16 regional offices in the United States and Panama. Its mission, in brief, is visible at the top of its website: “Their job is to look after Israel. Ours is to look after them.”
True to that motto, the money this “charity” raises benefits exclusively the soldiers of a foreign country that has not fought a war longer than 33 days in 40 years and whose primary duties have been to protect Israel’s illegal settlements, demolish Palestinian homes, make the lives of ordinary Palestinians miserable, and suppress Palestinian resistance to its ongoing ethnic cleansing by whatever means necessary.
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Truth about fake “palestinians”
The highest ranking Soviet bloc defector, KGB Major General Ion Mihai Pacepa, in his documentary book “Red Horizons” rote about ME peace process and role of KGB in it:
“The peace process is, and has from the outset, been nothing but a charade. It all started with the creation of a fictitious “Palestinian People” who allegedly demand political self determination. This collective noun was created by the Soviet disinformation masters in 1964 when they created the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the “PLO”. The term “Palestinian People” as a descriptive of Arabs in Palestine appeared for the first time in the preamble of the 1964 PLO Charter, drafted in Moscow. The Charter was affirmed by the first 422 members of the Palestinian National Council, handpicked by the KGB.
There are additional documentary confirmations that a such ethnic group as “palestinian people” and a state of “Palestine” have never existed:
Arab leaders like Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi told the Peel Commission in 1937: “There is no such country as ‘Palestine’; ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented!’
In 1946, Arab historian Philip Hitti testified before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry that “there is no such thing as Palestine in history.”
In 1977, an executive committee member of the PLO Zahir Muhsein confirmed that there is no such thing as a separate “palestinian” people of Arab descent. In an interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw in March 31, 1977, he stated the following: “The palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity.”
Based on the above and the attached documents, it is absolutely clear that the documentation submitted to UN for recognition of the Palestinian state is fake, false and fraudulent and was fabricated by Soviet KGB in the 1960s – 70s. Respectively, the UN resolution on recognition of the Palestinian state (as well as all UN resolutions on this issue) is illegal and shall be annulled. Moreover, all legal and historic documentation enclosed confirm legal and historic right of Israel and Jewish people on the land including Judea, Samaria (called West bank), Gaza and that that is called Jordan. With all my respect, I request full investigation of UN illegal activity based on fraudulent data fabricated by KGB and PLO and provided to international community. Those who have filed false documents to the UN, including Mahmoud Abbas, PLO chairman and president palestinian authority; Riyad Mansour, permanent observer of palestinian authority to the UN; and their accomplices, Mr. Churkin, Russia permanent representative to the UN, and Mr. Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia, as Russia is legally responsible for all previous actions committed and documents submitted by the USSR, shall be brought to justice through the International Criminal Court in Hague, The Netherlands.