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Feisty Israeli Settlement Backer Opens Wallet to Defeat Obama


money-puzzle.jpgMention the name Irving Moskowitz to most residents of Washington, DC and they will not know it.  But at least two residents at 1600 Pennsylvania NW know the name well. They are President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Moskowitz is the 83-year-old retired physician from Hawaiian Gardens, CA, the bingo-playing capital of the U.S.  He pledged $1 million in February to American Crossroads, the Political Action Committee orchestrated by Washington insider Karl Rove.

Rove is the same Karl Rove of Texas who politically guided the George W. Bush White House for eight years. American Crossroads is dedicated to regaining the White House for the Republican Party.

Now Rove and other wealthy anti-Obama cowboys are riding herd in an effort to unseat the President in the Nov. 6 election.

Street talk in Tel Aviv and Washington speculate that Moskowitz is ready to shell out millions more to oust Obama.  However, Moskowitz hasn't said, so far, what he really thinks of Mitt Romney, the Radical Party's flag-bearer who will be opposing the President.

What he has said, over and over, is how he opposes Obama's and Clinton's negative stand on the creation of more settlements in Israel's controversial West Bank sector. Israel has controlled the West Bank since it defeated the Egyptian army in a military lightning-strike, six-day war in 1967.

Right-wing Israelis oppose giving up the West Bank and Gaza to their Palestinian neighbors. The Palestinians desire to build a separate state for themselves, just as Israeli immigrants had done in 1948.

Moskowitz first began stirring up controversy in 2010. At that time, he incited worldwide groups to oppose Obama's attempts to convince Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to impose a freeze on settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem

Although generally viewed as an Israeli citizen, Moskowitz is an American. He was born in New York City in 1928 to Polish immigrants. He spent most of his childhood and teenage years in Milwaukee, a city then teeming with Jewish immigrants from Germany.

At various radio and public guest-panel talks over the years, Moskowitz has stated he lost at least 120 family members in the Nazi-triggered Holocaust in Poland and Germany in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Real estate played an important part in forming the base of Moskowitz's wealth. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin Medical School, he moved to Southern California to start his medical career as a doctor.

In early 1969, he started buying up area hospitals in financial difficulties. Moskowitz would then quickly re-sell them to pay for land purchases in Jerusalem and for donations to settlers in the West Bank and Gaza.

His $1 million donation to American Crossroads is his biggest contribution to U.S. electoral politics to date. He has funded Republican politicians and organizations in the past with smaller donations.

Moskowitz's contribution to American Crossroads was made possible by the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling on Jan. 21, 2010 that freed corporations, unions and individuals to make unlimited contributions to independent electoral efforts. Five justices were for the ruling; four against.

Now the court is studying whether it should review the ruling for possibly another vote by the justices.

Moskowitz is just the latest sugar-daddy to back political candidates. Earlier this year, Las Vegas, Macau and Singapore casino entrepreneur Sheldon Adelson and his family pledged a total $10 million to the campaign fund of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.  Gingrich's fund is rumored to be $4.3 million in debt.


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