2008 Palestine Solidarity Activist of the Year: Bernard L. Madoff
Bernard L. Madoff, the man said to have bilked scores of his Jewish friends and philanthropies out of billions of dollars, is expected to plead guilty this week to charges of running Wall Street’s biggest fraud. The former Nasdaq stock market chairman allegedly confessed to running a “giant Ponzi scheme” over decades.
A Ponzi scheme is one in which early investors are paid with the money of new clients. Madoff had thousands of investors worldwide. He told his sons the losses amounted to $50 billion, according to court papers, but the figure could include false profits.
Some of the charity groups he bankrupted are objectively humanitarian and worthy, such as The Gift of Life Foundation, a Jewish bone marrow registry. And he left a trail of many innocent victims.
However, he is being recognized with this tremendous honor because he did the world a service in some ways. His fraud shut down many organizations that sought to bolster Israel, a country that illegally occupies and oppresses nearly 5 million Palestinians.
Okay, so he did this not out of solidarity with Palestinians, but out of greed. But since he is going to prison, like most promising Palestinian leadership in the United States and back home, we’ll forget his selfish motives for now.
Thanks to his abuses, we can say goodbye to some Zionist charities that cloaked support of a human rights violating regime in humanitarian terms.
The Chais Family Foundation, a charity group invested entirely with Madoff, closed down operations. It donated some $12.5 million annually to Israel and Eastern Europe. The Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation financed trips for Jewish youth to Israel.
Though it appears open still with just two staff members, The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity had all of its assets held in Bernard Madoff Investment Securities. The Nobel Laureate who founded it has a long history of speaking from two sides of his mouth about human rights abuses, condemning them wherever they occur, except Israel, where he defends it. It may have to cut its program to assimilate Falasha “returnees” to Israeli into Zionist culture. Perhaps future generations of Ethiopian-Israeli soldiers will therefore be less rude to Palestinians at the checkpoints.
These organizations all provided support to Israel’s illegal and immoral occupation.
Madoff caused Zionist establishment scoundrels like Peretz, Zuckerman, and Walzer to sweat. Just being on the receiving end of their resentment makes me think Madoff’s treachery has caused some good. Though I would prefer to see them experiencing discomfort from the reprehensible policies of the state they actively defend, this will do for now.
Wall Street powerbroker Michael Steinhardt, and a founder of Birthright Israel, according to the Times, suggested it
might prompt Jews to re-evaluate their charitable giving in these leaner times. Naming names, he called a handful of Jewish agencies “lousy, miserable, corrupt organizations”; he said contributors were “just plain stupid,” for giving them money. “They spend $150 million for about 18 anti-Semitic incidents per year,” he said.
Gee, I wonder who he was referring to?
Gary Stern published the groups Steinhardt referenced on his blog:
He called the Jewish philanthropic world, in general, “miserable, archaic and unattractive.” Of Jewish groups, he said “So many of them do so little.”He called the Jewish Agency “a lousy, corrupt agency.”
He belittled the Federation system, saying that there was no reason that Jews should funnel their philanthropic dollars through an outdated institution.
As he has in the past, Steinhardt hammered at the “Jewish defense” organizations. He said that there was no reason to have the ADL, the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center. They’re the ones, he said, who spend the $150 million.
Steinhardt also doubted that the Madoff affair will result in any serious upshot of anti-Semitism, the same fears that he witnessed after the Milliken Savings and Loan scandals of the 1980’s. Those days, like these, passed without any substantial demonization of Jews — despite what groups like the ADL would have you believe from their website and discussion board monitoring (I am sure this post will get included in some count).
Perhaps the mainstream Jewish community should stop bundling anti-Semitism with criticism of Israel, as one way to de-bloat the Jewish advocacy non-profit industry per Steinhardt’s suggestion. With institutions playing on the fears of many Jewish Americans — which means fears of anti-Jewish hatred mixed with fears of criticism of Israel — they grew too large, and too well-funded. The mixed agenda premised on conflating legitimate critique of Israel with hatred of the Jewish people naturally led to the corruption Steinhardt observes.
