Palestinians
Sue Trump Adviser, Netanyahu for Terrorism
By Charlotte Silver
February 05, 2017
"Information
Clearing House"
- "EI"
- A
group of US citizens and Palestinian nationals is suing
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and key
members of US President
Donald Trump’s administration for perpetrating and
enabling war crimes.
Their lawsuit,
filed in federal court in Washington, DC, on Wednesday,
alleges a money laundering scheme that involves the US
defendants raising charitable donations to send to
Israeli government leaders.
Based on the
Anti-Terrorism Act and the
Alien Torts Statute, the complaint alleges that the
Israeli officials use the money to fund settlements and
violent extremism in the occupied West Bank, which the
complaint identifies as “international terrorism.”
It comes as
Netanyahu
vowed that Israel would soon build an entirely new
settlement in the occupied West Bank. Since Trump took
office last month, Israel has announced plans for 6,000
additional settler housing units.
Israel’s
current and former defense ministers
Avigdor Lieberman and
Ehud Barak are named as defendants, as is former
foreign minister
Tzipi Livni, who recently
evaded a war crimes summons from Belgian
prosecutors.
The lawsuit
also names the family foundation of Jared Kushner,
Trump’s son-in-law and now his
adviser on the Middle East and Israel.
Other
defendants are
David Friedman and his charity, American Friends of
Beit El Yeshiva Center. Friedman, Trump’s
ambassador-designate to Israel, is a major fundraiser
for Israeli settlements.
Pandering to Christian
Zionist leaders
The lawsuit
aims to use anti-terrorism statutes and laws governing
tax-deductible charities to hold accountable those
sending huge sums to fund Israeli colonization.
It was filed
just one day before Trump
told a group of religious leaders that he would
“totally destroy” the amendment to the US tax code that
prohibits tax-exempt organizations, including churches,
from engaging in direct political activity to influence
elections.
Trump
made the repeal of the Johnson Amendment a tenet of
the Republican Party platform during his presidential
campaign,
drawing the support of right-wing Christian Zionist
leaders, including
John Hagee, head of
Christians United for Israel.
Hagee is a
defendant in another
pending lawsuit filed last year over the funding of
settlements and occupation.
Real-estate fraud
The several
dozen plaintiffs include residents of the US, the
occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. They say they have
been directly injured by the alleged war crimes enabled
by the defendants.
For example,
Palestinian Americans Linda Kateeb and Ali Ali claim to
have lost from $2 to $3 million worth of real estate in
the occupied West Bank due settlement activity the
complaint describes as real-estate fraud.
According to
the lawsuit, tax-exempt organizations currently raise $2
billion dollars to fund Israeli colonization of the
occupied West Bank.
“Courtesy of
the $2 billion in laundered funds that they receive
every year, Israeli-based beneficiaries are able to
inflict wholesale violence on their Palestinian
neighbors and steal more of their real property,” the
complaint alleges.
While Jared
Kushner was a director of the Kushner Family Foundation,
the group
sent nearly $60,000 to West Bank settlements between
2011 and 2013 and more than $315,000 to Friends of the
IDF, a group the Israeli newspaper Haaretz
describes as “the army’s US fundraising arm.”
The foundation
sent a small amount to the
Yitzhar settlement, home to some of the most violent
settlers in the West Bank.
Yitzhar’s
rabbi,
Yosef Elitzur, has advocated for settlers to commit
so-called “price tag” attacks on Palestinians and
co-authored a book justifying the killing of
non-Jewish babies.
Until recently,
Kushner also
sat on the board of the New York-based
Friends of the IDF, which holds gala fundraisers to
support Israeli soldiers.
On 25 January,
The Forward reported that Kushner’s name
was removed from the website.
David
Friedman’s Americans Friends of Beit El Yeshiva Center
raises about $2 million a year that mostly goes to
the
Beit El settlement, near Ramallah.
The seventh
defendant is the accounting firm Billet, Feit, & Prince,
P.C., which the complaint claims knowingly concealed the
nature of the charities on documents filed with the US
Internal Revenue Service, therefore committing tax
fraud.
Follow the money
The complaint
was prepared by attorney
Martin McMahon, who has filed three other lawsuits
that are currently before the courts, targeting the
stream of funding from the US to Israeli colonialism.
“They’re
designed to cut off the money that’s going to the
settlements,” McMahon told The Electronic Intifada. “If
you cut off the money going to the settlements, they’re
dead.”
One of his
lawsuits already
accuses American Friends of Beit El Yeshiva Center
along with other individuals and companies of profiting
from Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Another
charges the
US Treasury Department with failing to enforce the
laws on charitable contributions.
“Our tax code
is being abused, and the Treasury is not doing its job,”
McMahon said.
The latest
lawsuit argues that for the last 20 years, settlements
in the occupied West Bank have been fueled by the
“personal agenda” of the defendants, in contravention to
Israel’s sovereign interests.
“When
financing, encouraging, or engaging in acts of
international terrorism the Israeli defendants were not
implementing Israeli official government policies but
pursuing their own personal agenda,” the complaint
states.
Like
previous attempts to invoke US laws in favor of
Palestinians, this lawsuit must argue that the
settlement activity and violence is distinct from state
violence.
“I don’t want
Netanyahu or the Ministry of Defense to claim immunity,”
McMahon explained, citing past cases in which lawsuits
against Israeli military commanders have been thrown out
on the grounds that they were acting as agents of the
state.
“All defendants
have been violating US and Israeli criminal statutes for
at least twenty years,” the complaint claims, “by
engaging in money laundering … and funding settlement
expansion, arms trafficking, ethnic cleansing and
genocide.”
Controversial law
The complaint
invokes, but is not based on, the recently passed
Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA),
which allows victims to sue state actors for knowingly
contributing material support to people or organizations
“that pose a significant risk of committing acts of
terror.”
Until now
another law, the
Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act has protected
states and their agents from civil claims in US courts.
This law has repeatedly shielded Israeli leaders.
The Senate
unanimously passed the controversial JASTA statute last
May, with the specific intention of allowing families of
victims of the 9/11 attacks to seek damages from the
state they believe bore responsibility:
Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis
reportedly lobbied heavily against the bill. President
Barack Obama vetoed the bill, only to see Congress
override his veto for the first and only time during
his eight-year presidency.
The bill was
strongly
supported by Senator Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump’s
nominee for attorney-general.
While arguing
against the bill, Obama
warned it “threatens to create complications in our
relationships with even our closest partners.”
McMahon intends
to use it to do just that.
The lawsuit
argues that by funding belligerent settlements and the
Israeli army through Netanyahu and Israel’s defense
ministers, Kushner, Friedman and other donors are
violating JASTA.
Past attempts
to claim Israeli leaders and military officials violate
the Anti-Terrorism Act have
failed to overcome the Foreign Sovereign Immunities
Act, while US courts have accepted numerous lawsuits
against Palestinian groups.
This lawsuit
stops short of accusing President Trump, but suggests he
could be found to be violating federal criminal statutes
if his tax returns are released.
The views
expressed in this article are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of
Information Clearing House. |
