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The connections between J Street and the Dark Side of the Middle East are becoming more and more evident. Recently it was revealed that the anti-Zionist George Soros was a large contributor, although J Street had categorically denied that until now. But even more interesting was the fact that the single largest contribution to J Street in 2008-9  — $811,697 came from an unknown woman in Hong Kong, Connie Esdicul. Here she is with my favorite martial arts guy:

The mysterious Consolacion Esdicul with the great Jackie Chan

Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street explained that Esdicul was an associate of Pittsburgh multimillionaire and software entrepreneur William Benter, and contributed the money “at his urging”. Benter may have made as much as $27 million a year by applying computer modeling techniques to Hong Kong horse-racing, and has been called “the most successful horse racing player in modern times”.  All this appeared in my previous article, but now we’ve found out more about him.

An anonymous contributor to the Israeli ‘scoops forum’ at rotter.net [Hebrew] noticed that Benter is also a member of the advisory board of the Rand Corporation’s Center for Middle East Public Policy (CMEPP). This is interesting for several reasons.

CMEPP’s board president, Richard Abdoo — a former board member of the Arab-American Institute (AAI), who gave J Street PAC $11,500 in the 2008 cycle, is a director of AMIDEAST, an ‘educational’ organization that “strengthens mutual understanding and cooperation between Americans and the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa” (except Israel).  AMIDEAST’s primary funder is the Saudi Aramco oil company.

Also sitting on the CMEPP advisory board is another AMIDEAST board member, Odeh Aburdene. Aburdene was a Vice President of Occidental Petroleum, and a member of the Task Force In Support of Arab Democracy (a group sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, along with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of Ground Zero mosque notoriety).

Others include Ray Irani, Occidental CEO. His wife, Ghada, is yet another AMIDEAST director. And Nicholas Veliotes has a seat on the boards of both J Street and AMIDEAST. This is like a 19th-century Russian novel.

The Rand Corporation has close ties with the CIA, an organization that, together with the State Department, includes some of the most anti-Israel circles in the US government. Immediately prior to the 1967 war, the CIA advised President Johnson not to airlift military supplies to Israel, although it was impossible to predict the unlikely event that Israel would succeed in destroying the Egyptian air force on the ground.

We are getting far away from the liberal Jews that Ben-Ami claims as his constituency, aren’t we?

J Street’s Saudi connections were documented by Lenny Ben-David in December 2009:

A member of J Street’s advisory board, Judith Barnett [also an AMIDEAST director — ed.], worked on aspects of the Saudi account for Qorvis in 2004. She was also one of the first contributors to J Street’s PAC and was later joined in the PAC by Nancy Dutton, the Saudi Embassy’s Washington attorney; Lewis Elbinger, a U.S. State Department official who was based in Saudi Arabia; and Ray Close, the CIA’s station chief in Saudi Arabia for 22 years who later went to work for Saudi intelligence bosses. Close’s son Kenneth registered at the Justice Department as a foreign agent, working for Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal, the author of the Saudi peace plan.

Beyond sharing support for the Saudi plan, the J Street-AAI financial and ideological ties also appear to be very tight. Richard Abdoo is a member of J Street’s finance committee with its minimum contribution of $10,000 to J Street’s PAC. James Zogby recently wrote in the Bahrain Gulf Daily, “On October 25, [2009] the Arab American Institute and J Street convened a joint meeting that brought leaders and activists from both communities together as an expression of our shared commitment to advance a just and comprehensive Middle East peace.”

Saudi Arabia, AMIDEAST, the Rand Corporation, the CIA — seriously, now, all you “pro-Israel pro-peace” types: are these the people that you should be supporting?

Technorati Tags: J Street, Saudi Arabia, AMIDEAST, Bill Benter, Richard Abdoo, CIA

By Vic Rosenthal

J Street, the phony ‘pro-Israel’ lobby which consistently takes positions opposed to Israeli interests — such as opposing sanctions on Iran, calling for an immediate cease-fire at the beginning of the Gaza war, favoring negotiations with Hamas — was severely criticized for taking money for its PAC from people associated with Arab and Iranian interests. But the majority of its funding was still assumed to come from liberal Jews.

There has always been a suspicion that George Soros, the anti-Zionist billionaire who was involved in the creation of J Street as an ‘alternative to AIPAC,’ also provided some of the funding. But both parties realized that a relationship with the anti-Israel Soros could be the kiss of death for J Street, and so both Soros and J Street denied that he was a major funder.

Now it has become clear that this was a lie. In a brilliant piece of investigative journalism, Eli Lake writes,

Tax forms obtained by The Washington Times reveal that Mr. Soros and his two children, Jonathan and Andrea Soros, contributed a total $245,000 to J Street from one Manhattan address in New York during the fiscal year from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009.

The contributions represent a third of the group’s revenue from U.S. sources during the period. Nearly half of J Street’s revenue during the timeframe — a total of $811,697 — however, came from a single donor in Happy Valley, Hong Kong, named Consolacion Esdicul.

Who?

When asked about Ms. Esdicul, the Happy Valley, Hong Kong based donor of nearly half the group’s revenue for the 2008 to 2009 fiscal year,  [J Street Executive Director Jeremy] Ben Ami said she gave J Street the money in multiple wire transfers at the urging of William Benter, a Pittsburgh-based philanthropist and the chief executive officer of Acusis, a medical services firm.

“She is trying to make the Middle East a Happy Valley,” Mr. Ben Ami said. “She is a business associate of Bill Benter and Bill solicited her for the contribution.” Happy Valley is a Hong Kong suburb.

This is weird, but there’s not much more in the article about Esdicul and Benter. So here are a few things I found:

Benter is listed as having made $136,300 of political contributions in the 2008 cycle, mostly to Democratic politicians and causes (including, of course, Soros’ MoveOn.org). But he also gave $2,300 to the presidential campaign of antisemitic wacko Ron Paul.

Now it begins to get surreal. Benter is a  mathematician:

He employed a variety of econometric modeling techniques to examine an important financial market — the horserace betting market in Hong Kong. He developed a successful computer-based econometric model to forecast outcomes in this market.

He’s been called “the most successful horse racing player in modern times“:

Benter’s software program works so well, it’s riled the Hong Kong Jockey Club, the powerful organizer behind Hong Kong’s $10.7 billion-a-year horse-racing circuit. The Jockey Club thinks Benter and other professional betting syndicates hold an unfair advantage over casual gamblers. It’s closed the accounts of some of the pros in the past because it felt they were “not in the best interest of the general public.” While not banned from the track entirely, Benter has not been allowed to place bets over the phone since 1996.

No matter. He and his buddies still usually bet about $260,000 each race, and make an average return of 24%. Let’s do the math: There are some 600 races a year at Hong Kong’s Sha Tin and Happy Valley racetracks. That means Benter’s annual take-home pay amounts to $37 million. — Yulanda Chung, Smartgambler (2000)

Here’s a photo of Happy Valley and the track there:

Happy Valley, Hong Kong

It would make sense that perhaps Consolacion Esdicul, whoever she is, has received some profitable tips from Benter. And she was happy to distribute some of it in accordance with his wishes. Nothing illegal here, folks. Just move on. These are not the droids you’re looking for.

Benter and Soros have a lot in common. Soros, too, is a gambler, although he specializes in the international currency market. Indeed, several academic papers compare the strategies of Soros and various hedge funds with those of Benter.

I think there’s more to come. Stay tuned!

Update [2113 PDT]: Regarding ‘Happy Valley’, Wikipedia says:

Early settlers had suggested the area to be used as a business centre, but the suggestion was put off due to the valley’s marshy environment, which was causing fatal diseases. The death rate in the area and Victoria City was high in the early colonial days, and the valley became a burial ground for the dead. As a result, the valley was renamed as Happy Valley, a common euphemism for cemeteries.

I guess this explains Ben Ami’s comment that “She is trying to make the Middle East a Happy Valley.”

Technorati Tags: J Street, George Soros, William Benter, Hong Kong,

Jeremy Ben Ami’s job is to sell administration Middle East policy to Jews.

This is not so easy to do when said administration is the most anti-Israel one since 1948.  How do you sell a policy whose primary goal is to gain approval in Riyadh, the world capital of antisemitism, to Jews?

Actually, it’s easy when your customers are Jews who have had their collective Jewish historical memory wiped clean by the unprecedented paradise in which Jews have lived in the US since 1945. The American people gave us a tremendous gift by treating us more or less like anyone else legally, economically, politically and even socially — not to mention playing a major role in defeating Hitler. Many of them even like and admire us.

There has never been another time or place in Jewish history that even comes close. No matter how benign the ruler or how wealthy the community, diaspora Jews have never been able to forget that they were diaspora Jews. Until now. And now they are forgetting in droves.

Ben Ami had no trouble at all getting plenty of Jewish support for his phony “pro-Israel” group, J Street, from culturally amnesiac  ‘progressives’ of Jewish descent. And they happily do the administration’s work in promoting its Saudi agenda. For example, when it was convenient to manufacture a break in US-Israeli relations in order to impose a freeze on Jewish construction in Israel’s capital, J Street was there (see Lenny Ben-David’s investigative report):

The 1,600 Jerusalem apartments would become the anvil on which the administration would forge a pliant Israel. The message would have to be amplified, and for the White House, the pro-Obama, purportedly pro-Israel J Street was a perfect vehicle.

According to newly released White House visitor logs, J Street’s president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, and vice president of policy and strategy, Hadar Susskind, came to the White House to meet with officials in the White House Office of Public Engagement, headed by Obama’s close friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett.

On March 11, and then again on March 12, the logs show Ben-Ami set a meeting for March 15 in the Old Executive Office Building with Danielle Borrin, who served on the vice president’s staff and in Jarrett’s office. On March 17, another meeting was set in the West Wing, the White House’s inner sanctum, for the next day with Tina Tchen, Jarrett’s principle deputy and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement…

On March 15, the day it met with Borrin, J Street issued a statement on the “escalation of U.S.-Israel tensions” warning that Israel’s “provocative actions undermine the peace process” and weaken the American attempts “to build a broad international coalition to address the Iranian nuclear program.” Parroting Emanuel’s strategy for crisis management, the J Street memo declared:

Bold American leadership is needed now to turn this crisis into a real opportunity to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The memo, in effect, called for an imposed American solution:

We urge the United States to take this opportunity to suggest parameters to the parties for resuming negotiations — basing borders on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps, with the Palestinian state demilitarized and on territory equivalent to 100% of the area encompassed by the pre-1967 Armistice lines.

Serving as a stalking horse for the President, J Street came out in support of the construction of the ‘Ground Zero mosque’. This despite the fact that the project’s initiator, the supposed ‘moderate’ Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, will not say that Hamas is a terrorist organization, although Hamas is all about killing Jews and liquidating the Jewish state.

Not all of J Street’s support comes from progressive Jews. It gets plenty of help from Arab and Muslim donors who are not so confused about their interests. J Street has a PAC which supports candidates for public office. It is must report all contributions it receives, unlike the main J Street organization which is not required to do so. Look at some of the contributors to the J Street PAC here and ask yourself: why they would support a ‘pro-Israel’ organization?

Some of the donations are small, but remember we don’t know what they may have contributed to J Street itself. As of July this year the J Street PAC distributed more than $650,000 to 61 candidates, like Joe Sestak, who signed a controversial letter accusing Israel of ‘collective punishment’ in Gaza.

Wake up, American Jews. Don’t buy what J Street and Obama are selling. Don’t assume that the exceptional case of the past 65 years in America represents a new paradigm — look at Malmo, Sweden, for example, where Jews are fleeing because of rising antisemitism.

The best way to ensure the preservation of the Jewish people is to support a strong Jewish state. J Street would like us to abandon Israel, and put our trust in the good will of people like President Obama and even Feisal Abdul Rauf, the ‘moderate’ Muslim.

It isn’t a difficult choice when it’s put like that, is it?

Technorati Tags: J Street, Obama, Israel, Rauf, Lenny Ben-David

Among the ethical obligations imposed upon Jews are these two: honoring the dead, and comforting  mourners.

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin gives this highly relevant example of the former:

After the terrorist attack on New York City’s Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, religious Jews came to recite psalms on behalf of the victims. At first this went on near the site, and then continued in a trailer set up as a chapel outside the office of the medical examiner, where the remains of the dead were delivered. Some two hundred Jews, many of them affiliated with Manhattan’s Congregation Ohab Zedek, were involved in the effort, which continued around the clock for seven and a half months. — Telushkin, A Code of Jewish Ethics, Vol. II, p.96 [my italics]

Those who mourn for the victims of 9/11, of course, are long past the traditional mourning period. But can anyone doubt that their loss is still with them? After all, their loved ones were murdered, their lives cut short early. What could be more unkind than to tear open their wounds today?

So even if you believe that the building of a mosque next to the site is intended as a gesture of reconciliation (and if so, see here), shouldn’t you respect their wishes? The plan is to dedicate the building on September 11, 2011, exactly ten years after the murders. Anyone who can’t see the cruelty in this is worse than blind.

And so, enter J Street, the ‘pro-Israel’ group which is in part funded by Israel’s enemies and which time and again takes positions on critical security issues that are diametrically opposed to those of Israel’s democratically elected government.

J Street did not need to take a stand on the Ground Zero mosque.  AIPAC certainly did not. It isn’t an Israel-related issue, and it isn’t even a Jewish issue. But they did:

The principle at stake in the Cordoba House controversy goes to the heart of American democracy and the value we place on freedom of religion. Should one religious group in this country be treated differently than another? We believe the answer is no.

As Mayor Bloomberg has said, proposing a church or a synagogue for that site would raise no questions. The Muslim community has an equal right to build a community center wherever it is legal to do so. We would hope the American Jewish community would be at the forefront of standing up for the freedom and equality of a religious minority looking to exercise its legal rights in the United States, rather than casting aspersions on its funders and giving in to the fear-mongerers and pandering politicians urging it to relocate.

What better ammunition to feed the Osama bin Ladens of the world and their claim of anti-Muslim bias in the United States as they seek to whip up global jihad than to hold this proposal for a Muslim religious center to a different and tougher standard than other religious institutions would be. — J Street head Jeremy Ben-Ami

J Street’s sheer stupidity combines with  its insensitivity to make them look like idiots in both the logical and moral realms.

The suggestion that Muslims are ‘treated differently’ than other religions is absurd. Nobody says they can’t build yet another mosque in New York — it’s just this particular location that presents a problem. If those planes had been hijacked by Buddhist monks, then possibly some of us would feel funny about putting a monastery here, too. But they weren’t.

The thought of the Osamas of the world ‘whipping up jihad’ with this issue is beyond ludicrous. Does anyone really think that someone whose ideology prescribes that infidels should be subjugated or killed cares that said infidels might be prejudiced against Muslims? And is the way to prevent terrorism to voluntarily subjugate ourselves to every culturally narcissistic demand made by Muslims?

And then we get to the issue of sensitivity: the basic human decency that demands that if the relatives of murder victims don’t want a reminder of the murderers next to the graves of their loved ones, then it could be built a mile or two away. How hard would that be?

One of the reason’s that Ben Ami has injected J Street into this controversy is to help one of his bosses, Barack Obama. The administration is stuck between a rock and a hard place, because it craves Muslim affection too much to oppose the mosque, but yet is unhappy that Republicans — including Rick Lazio, who is running for governor of New York — are making an issue of it. So Ben-Ami can help by attacking “pandering politicians.”

So far it’s not working. No less than 58% of likely voters in the State of New York think that the mosque should go somewhere else.

Technorati Tags: Ground Zero mosque, J Street, Jeremy Ben-Ami

Last year, I wrote a piece called J Street’s treason exposed, in which I quoted this news story:

The [J Street PAC] finance committee’s 50 members – with a $10,000 contribution threshold – include Lebanese-American businessman Richard Abdoo, a current board member of Amideast and a former board member of the Arab American Institute, and Genevieve Lynch, who is also a member of the National Iranian American Council board. The group has also received several contributions from Nancy Dutton, an attorney who once represented the Saudi Embassy in Washington.

I, and many others, found it somewhat odd that these individuals would support a pro-Israel organization. You don’t understand, I was told. They are donating because they are for peace.

Note that the donations in question were to the J Street PAC — which, because it gives money to candidates for political office, is bound by law to report all donations in detail. The J Street parent organization is not required to do so, so we don’t know where they get their money from.

Now a search of Federal Election Commission records for 2009 shows a new name: Mehmet Celebi of Naperville, Illinois (a Chicago suburb), contributing $275 (see p. 14 of this document).

OK, $275 is not much. But who is Mehmet Celebi?

The Clinton campaign is no longer taking contributions from a Turkish American who financed a film that depicted an American Jew trading in Iraqi body parts.

Mehmet Celebi had been listed on the presidential campaign website of U.S. Sen. Hilalry Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) as a “Hill-raiser,” someone who had raised more than $100,000 for her presidential bid. Celebi had co-produced “Valley of the Wolves: Iraq,” a 2006 film based on a popular Turkish TV series about a crack Turkish combat unit.

The film depicts a Jewish American doctor harvesting organs from prisoners.

“We were unaware of Mr. Celebi’s involvement in this film and we obviously do not agree with it,” Ann Lewis, a senior adviser to the campaign said Friday in response to a query from JTA. Lewis, who plays a lead role for the campaign in dealing with the Jewish community, added: “He is no longer raising money for this campaign.” — NBC First Read, David Gelles

The film is the most expensive ever made in Turkey ($10M) and, big surprise, has been called viciously anti-American.

Does this guy sound pro-Israel to you? Me neither.

Technorati Tags: J Street, Mehmet Celebi, Valley of the Wolves:Iraq