Abramoff and the Israeli Connection

Washington sleazebag funneled money to Israel's "settler" movement

by Justin Raimondo

According to a report by Michael Isikoff in Newsweek, Abramoff was soliciting funds on behalf of a shady organization known as the Capital Athletic Foundation (CAF), which was supposed to be funding sports programs and imparting "leadership skills" to inner-city youth. Instead, CAF funneled millions scarfed up from Indian tribes not only into Abramoff's own pockets and the pockets of his cronies, but also to ultra-right-wing Israeli "settlers." Isikoff reports:

"More than $140,000 of foundation funds were actually sent to the Israeli West Bank where they were used by a Jewish settler to mobilize against the Palestinian uprising. Among the expenditures: purchases of camouflage suits, sniper scopes, night-vision binoculars, a thermal imager, and other material described in foundation records as 'security' equipment. The FBI, sources tell Newsweek, is now examining these payments as part of a larger investigation to determine if Abramoff defrauded his Indian tribe clients."

The fraudulently obtained money funded a paramilitary outfit based in the ultra-Orthodox settlement of Beitar Illit, a large community annexed after the '67 war and the site of renewed building in open violation of the American-sponsored "road map." The conduit for the money was one Schmuel Ben-Zvi, an old buddy of Abramoff's who, like so many Americans, was recruited into the rabidly expansionist Israeli "settler" movement. A series of e-mails between Ben-Zvi and Abramoff illustrate the agenda that energized and inspired the Abramoff crime family. While Newsweek reports Ben-Zvi "heatedly denied" that he had any connection to Abramoff, other than being a high school bud from Abramoff's Hollywood days, the e-mails, featured as exhibits in a Senate Indian Affairs committee hearing, tell a different story.

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