Los Angeles Sleaze Strip Czar Funds Israeli Right-Wing Extremists

by Pat McDonnell Twair

“Bingo King Aids Israeli Right Wing” read a rhyming headline on the front page of the May 9 Los Angeles Times, raising the curtain on a chain of local scandals involving the misuse of a nonprofit foundation’s status, withholding funds from a minuscule suburb of Los Angeles threatened with bankruptcy, and the ethics of basing a city’s income on gambling revenues. The story continued on two inside pages, but although it had innumerable angles for local follow-up, there was none.

The apparent reason for the curtain of silence that came down around the entire matter was the fact that state laws may have been broken and local officials discredited or bought off in order to divert Southern Californian gambling profits amounting to millions of dollars each year to sub rosa schemes in Israel to buy up Arab land and buildings in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and turn them over to fanatical right-wing Jewish “settlers.”

In the original report, L.A. Times correspondent Mary Curtius reported from Israel that Dr. Irving I. Moskowitz, now a resident of Miami Beach, FL, has donated millions of dollars of profits from the Bingo Club of Hawaiian Gardens, a one-square-mile township in the blue-color suburbs of southeast Los Angeles, to ultra-right-wing interests in Israel, including $2.35 million up to 1994 to American Friends of Ateret Cohanim. That organization’s publicly professed goal is to erect a new Jewish Temple on the Haram al-Sharif, site of the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site on the planet for the world’s one billion Muslims.

Hawaiian Gardens, the tiniest city in Los Angeles County, has a largely Hispanic population of 14,000 living in 1950s-era wood-frame stucco bungalows that stand in sharp contrast to houses starting at $200,000 in neighboring El Dorado Park Estates in Long Beach. For years the city of Hawaiian Gardens received 1 percent of the gross from a bingo hall operated by a non-profit foundation. In 1988 the city was threatened with loss of this revenue, about $200,000 annually, because the operator of the bingo club was facing criminal charges. Dr. Moskowitz, owner of a number of hospitals including one in the area, reportedly was asked if he had a charitable foundation of his ownthe prerequisite for running a bingo parlor. Indeed, he did: the Irving I Moskowitz Foundation.

On Sept. 13, 1988, the city council named his foundation to take over the Bingo Club. By 1991, the Bingo Club was taking in $34 million annually. According to foundation tax returns, $24 million was given out in prizes, $511,000 was paid to security forces, the doctor reportedly paid himself $310,000 in rent for the bingo hall, and $30,000 a month was earmarked for a food bank for the city’s needy. The latter was run by Hawaiian Gardens city councilwoman Kathleen Navejas’ husband.

Despite growing bingo profits, however, the city remained a shabby and seedy community. Then a corporation headed by Moskowitz persuaded city officials to allot $5.5 million in redevelopment funds to purchase several acres next to the bingo parlor and give it to the corporation. Moskowitz was to repay half the money and develop a supermarket that would bring in $250,000 in taxes annually.

Small businesses previously existing on the land protested, claiming it was a ploy to bring in a gambling casino. Mayor Robert Canada went on record that he would “not vote in any form for a poker casino.” Dennis Duski, whose garden center was lost in the takeover of the land, stated: “He [Moskowitz] owns Hawaiian Gardens and they do whatever he wants.”

The supermarket never materialized. Instead, in 1995, the city was faced with a new expense. It had to come up with $500,000 annually to pay salaries of a police force to replace patrols previously provided by the Los Angeles County sheriff’s department. The city, however, was broke. No revenue was coming in from the land it had purchased adjacent to the bingo hall.

Strangely enough, until then no one had asked what Dr. Moskowitz was doing with the bingo profits. When Moskowitz tried to push through a referendum entitled “Measure A” that would grant him a poker casino license, however, Navejas began distributing fliers asking, “Where Does the Hawaiian Gardens Bingo Club $30 Million Go?”

Moskowitz retaliated by stopping funds to the food bank, charging that Navejas’ husband, Carlos, couldn’t account for $190,000 in checks made out to cash. Navejas replied that cash was the easiest way to make large transactions on perishable foods.

“Measure A” passed, and the city rushed through a poker license in Moskowitz’ name on Feb. 12. On the same day, Navejas filed a lawsuit against the city, three council members she contends are on Moskowitz’ payroll, and the Moskowitz political action committee. Now, three months after the city approved his license, Moskowitz still has not submitted his application to the state attorney general.

According to Navejas’ attorney, most cities make an extensive background check before granting a license to an operator, but the city requested nothing more than a credit report on millionaire Moskowitz. However, if and when the license application is submitted to the state attorney general’s office, a detailed check of Moskowitz’s operations will be required.

Navejas says that last year, when Moskowitz launched the campaign for the poker club, documents crossed her desk that made her realize for the first time that millions of dollars she assumed were being reinvested in the city were collecting interest in savings accounts or were going to right-wing Israeli organizations.

“The Moskowitz Foundation is supposed to be non-profit, yet $38 million is sitting in the bank collecting interest instead of being spent on improving our community,” she said.

According to her calculations, “five cents of each $1 goes to the city, 20 cents goes to the Israeli right wing and 75 cents is sitting in a savings account,” Navejas said. “From 1988 to 1994, the Bingo Club turned over $58 million in profits. Add to this $9 million in interest and the total is $67.5 million—yet our city is $3.5 million in debt.”

Moskowitz lives far away from the scruffy community of Hawaiian Gardens. He retired 16 years ago to Florida from where he sends millions to his pet right-wing Israeli groups. Two of his sons are rabbis living in Israel. In 1993, he gave $100,000 to Bar Ilan University, the institution attended by Yigal Amir, the assassin of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

The latest year for which the Moskowitz Foundation reported its donations was 1994. Major contributions were: $1,031,060 to American Friends of Everest, Miami, “to acquire an important religious building in the holy city of Jerusalem...very close to the very holy Western Wall”; $576,000 to American Friends of Ateret Cohanim Inc., New York City, to benefit the militant Ateret Cohanim school in Arab East Jerusalem; $514,000 to the National Council of Young Israel, New York City to benefit 150 Orthodox synagogues in the U.S. and Israel that often are critical of peace proposals; $216,000 to the P.E.F. Israel Endowment Fund, New York City, to help new immigrants to Israel; $200,000 to American Hechal Shlomo Committee, Brooklyn, to expand synagogues in Israel; $200,000 to the Zionist Organization of America, headed by Morton Klein, who has been a leading critic of the Oslo accord peace proposals; and $200,000 to the Yemeniste Heritage Foundation, Brooklyn, to help Yemeni Jews in Israel. Moskowitz’s donations to Hawaiian Gardens in 1994 were $360,000 to the Hawaiian Gardens Social Service Agency and $225,000 to the Hawaiian Gardens Coalition for Youth Development Inc.

Did the people of Hawaiian Gardens take up arms when they read these figures in the Los Angeles Times? No.

“International Attention”

Instead they criticized Navejas for bringing “international attention” to their community. For the writer, attending a May 28 Hawaiian Gardens city council meeting was like stepping back into the age of feudal lords, as local residents expressed appreciation for the Moskowitz handouts. Hawaiian Gardens residents seem to be honest, well-meaning folk for the most part, but confused over the controversy and the fact that the funds Moskowitz was remitting in fact originated in their own community.

An elderly woman shouted from the audience several times, accusing Mrs. Navejas of sending thugs to get her to sign a “recall Navejas” petition. When Mrs. Navejas told the woman it was a petition against Mrs. Navejas, the woman inexplicably replied: “You have to get up pretty early in the morning to fool an Armenian.”

A woman in a wheelchair approached the microphone and stated: “I’m a nobody, but the doctor spoke to me and shook my hand. He’s a good man.”

When others lined up at the microphone to criticize Moskowitz for sending locally collected money to Israel, they were told to leave because the city council wasn’t interested in international affairs. Then one city councilman contradicted that statement by commenting: “I’m a Roman Catholic and I support Dr. Moskowitz and the right of Israel to have a homeland.”

Navejas repeatedly asked for an investigation of Moskowitz’s handling of bingo profits, but a phalanx of Hispanics in white tee shirts standing at the back of the room hooted and whistled whenever she spoke.

Several people shouted out that it is the doctor’s money and he can do whatever he wants with it.

“But it’s our money,” Navejas retorted, undaunted by the catcalls.

William Weinberg, an attorney for the Hawaiian Gardens Card Club, said Dr. Moskowitz was willing to help the city through its crisis. Noting that Moskowitz has donated $750,000 to the city, he contended that Navejas’ lawsuit is preventing Moskowitz from opening the poker casino which would bring profits to the city.

“Are you saying the lawsuit is preventing Dr. Moskowitz from submitting his application for a poker license to the state?” Navejas asked Weinberg. She repeated the question, but Weinberg remained silent at the microphone.

“Why is he [Moskowitz] hiding in Miami?” she continued. “Why doesn’t he come here and answer some questions—like how many of you are on his payroll? Take a look at what’s going on here.”

Mayor Lupe Cabrera appeared to be well-intentioned but somewhat intimidated by Navejas’ opponents on the council. He proudly commented that his father and his grandchildren live in the city.

Navejas stuck to the subject at hand, pointing out that “the bingo ordinance can be readjusted anytime by the city council. Why don’t you find out how much bingo money goes to the city? Ask the city attorney to investigate this.”

Another council member told Navejas it is too late to question the poker casino since the city already has voted on it. Navejas rebutted that Moskowitz’s attorneys drew up the application to operate the poker club and that it must be investigated.

“Why,” she charged, “didn’t the council demand card club money stay here and be reinvested in the city? Why are you allowing Dr. Moskowitz to do what he wants with the profits with no questions asked?”

Navejas’ two requests to have Moskowitz investigated were denied, but the mayor did allow that the city council should request an annual report on the expenditures of the Bingo Club.

Navejas seems to be waging a one-woman battle against one of the major private funders of the Israeli right-wing, and the people of Hawaiian Gardens either don’t want or are unable to understand that millions of dollars that should be going into their city instead are going into the bank accounts of the Moskowitz Foundation and his “charities.”

As this writer left the city council meeting, a towering neon sign in the strip mall housing the 800-seat bingo hall summarized much of the tawdry story: “Hawaiian Gardens Bingo Club, Liquor and Pawn Shop.” It didn’t mention the even more sinister uses for which the profits from these sleazy enterprises are being exported to Israel.