. 

US Groups Funneled $1m To Help Sharon

WASHINGTON, 28 January 2003 — US donors funneled more than one million dollars into coffers supporting political activities by Ariel Sharon before he was elected Israeli prime minister two years ago, the Washington Post reported yesterday. The revelation has sparked a probe by Israel’s attorney general on the eve of today’s parliamentary election, the Post said.

The Israeli state comptroller’s office has accused Sharon’s son Omri and a colleague of accepting foreign contributions that Israeli law deems illegal, while Sharon has denied knowledge of such a scheme, according to the daily. Money from two US charities — the American and Israeli Research and Friendship Foundation Inc. and the College for National Studies Inc. — was used to help fund Sharon’s political activities in 1999 and 2000, according to preliminary findings of the Israeli probe, it said.

One of the charities, the New York City-based American and Israeli Research and Friendship Foundation Inc., founded in 1998, received $1.49 million in contributions in its first three years of operation. The charity’s only disbursement in 1999 was a grant of $815,000 to a Tel Aviv firm called Annex Research Ltd., which Israeli state comptroller Eliezer Goldberg said was established by Sharon’s attorney and run by his son, the Post reported.

The daily wrote that Goldberg told reporters the money was in turn used to advance Sharon’s “position and improve his image” as he campaigned for Likud party chairman in September 1999. Another charity listed in the Israeli state comptroller’s report, the California-based College for National Studies Inc., was established in 1994 with the stated goal of passing contributions solely to Ben Eliezer College in Israel, an organization that offers lectures and seminars on “Jewish-related matters.”

The group’s sole disbursement in 1998 was a $80,000 grant to First International Resources, a New Jersey-based consulting firm, according to the newspaper. In this period, the firm produced a private poll to assist Sharon’s political efforts. In 2000, it gave $275,000 to Annex, the Post reported.

Annex was one of the shell companies which channeled funds to pay campaign workers in the 1999 leadership race, according to the Israeli press. In October 2001 Goldberg ordered Sharon to repay most of those funds, sparking off allegations of a new scandal earlier this month. To cover the repayments, Sharon’s family was reported to have borrowed $1.5 million from a South African businessman, Cyril Kern.

The latest revelations about American funding have shed new light on lax US government scrutiny of the transfer of money overseas by charitable, “tax-exempt” US organizations, the Post wrote. Currently, US charities are obligated to certify that they did not attempt “to influence public opinion on a legislative matter or referendum” and did not engage in transactions with political organizations.

Meanwhile, Israel’s third biggest political party, Shas, has toughened its policy on the Middle East peace process amid opinion polls suggesting it stands to lose as many as seven of its 17 seats.

In a handwritten message to Jewish settlers in the occupied territories, the party leader Rabbi Ovadia Yossef said he regarded the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords with the Palestinians as “null and void”. (AFP)

HOME