Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: J street e il conflitto di interessi

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/dec/30/jewish-group-pays-pr-firm-co-owned-by-president/print/
Jewish group pays PR firm co-owned by its president
J Street 'self-dealing' seen as 'very messy'
The Middle East lobby J Street — a tax-exempt 501(c)4 organization —
paid tens of thousands of dollars to a consulting firm co-owned by its
founder and president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, according to internal documents
obtained by The Washington Times.
The documents, including invoices sent to J Street, show that Ben-Or
Consulting — the Tel Aviv-based public-relations firm Mr. Ben-Ami co-
founded in 1998 while living in Israel — charged J Street at least
$56,000 over a roughly six-month period.
Though Mr. Ben-Ami ceased a day-to-day managerial role with Ben-Or a
decade ago, he remains a 15 percent shareholder in the company,
according to the May 2010 Dun and Bradstreet listings, as well as
current filings with the Israeli Ministry of Justice.
According to nonprofit analysts, Mr. Ben-Ami's stake creates a
conflict of interest that runs afoul of ethical — if not legal —
restrictions on acts of "self-dealing," in which an officer in a tax-
exempt organization receives undue benefit from that organization's
transactions.
"Even if it's technically legal, it gets very messy when you have
these sorts of deals going on because, if you're going to benefit on
the other end of it, be it 100 percent or 5 percent, it raises
questions about objectivity and the arms' length in the transaction,"
said Ken Berger, president of Charity Navigator.
"If you want your organization to use a particular company, ideally
there would be a clean break one way or the other. So you would either
sell off your interest in that company or step down from the board
during the period of time when this is going so that there would be no
question as to what's going on in the boardroom."
Mr. Ben-Ami declined repeated interview requests, but provided a
statement through a spokesman:
"I founded Ben-Or together with Oriella Ben-Zvi in 1998. When I left
in 2000, I relinquished all rights to ongoing compensation from Ben-Or
in any form. I have received no payments from the company in the past
11 years and have had no role in the management or operation of the
firm.
"At the time of my departure, as a token of my role as a co-founder,
we left 15 percent of the shares of the firm in my name — an agreement
that has no financial implications for me personally, for J Street or
for the firm."
Organizations that file with the IRS as 501(c)3's and 501(c)4's must
be run as not-for-profit groups. Groups that are 501(c)4 groups,
however, are permitted to use more of their time for lobbying and
political activities and are not required to disclose their donors the
way that 501(c)3 organizations do.
J Street, which bills itself as the progressive alternative to the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other pro-Israel
groups, has been under fire recently, after The Times reported in
September that, contrary to Mr. Ben-Ami's long-standing denials, the
group had received $750,000 from billionaire George Soros and $811,697
from Hong Kong donor Consolacion Esdicul.
The full extent of J Street's business relationship with Ben-Or is
unclear, but a sample of Ben-Or invoices establish that it involved
several transactions.
One marked May 1, 2010, requests payment of $32,581.77 for service
fees and expenses associated with the April 2010 visit of a J Street
delegation to Israel and the West Bank.
A Feb. 8 letter from Mr. Ben-Ami to Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister
Danny Ayalon requesting a Feb. 16 meeting for a congressional
delegation sponsored by the J Street Education Fund — J Street's
501(c)3 arm — indicates that Ben-Or was hired for that trip as well.
"Your office can contact [senior Ben-Or staffer] Shiri Ourian … at any
time to discuss the details of the sponsored trip and our
organization," it says.
On Nov. 1, 2009, J Street was charged $4,194 for an unspecified
"project."
Another invoice, dated Oct. 26, 2009 — the date of J Street's
inaugural conference — appears to charge the group 73,310.80 new
Israeli shekels ($19,292.32 at the time) for expenses and service fees
associated with "public relations and event coordination."
James Abruzzo, co-director of the Institute for Ethical Leadership at
Rutgers Business School, said that aside from a nonprofit's obligation
to vet multiple firms in a "competitive-bidding process," someone in
Mr. Ben-Ami's position would at a minimum have to disclose his stake
in the firm and recuse himself from any decision to hire it.
Even if those conditions were met, Mr. Abruzzo said, "it still doesn't
feel right."
"There's a certain amount of trust that is one of the assets of a
nonprofit," he said. "And if you undermine that trust by doing
something that even seems like it's self-dealing, that's injurious to
the organization."
501(c)4 and 501(c)3 organizations are required to report "business
transactions involving interested persons" on their annual Form 990
tax returns. On J Street's most recent form — covering the fiscal year
from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009 — one J Street official was
designated an interested party, though it was not Mr. Ben-Ami.
According to the form, J Street paid $61,000 in the reporting year to
Gerstein Agne, the consulting firm of Jim Gerstein, vice president of
J Street's board.
"The payment was at fair-market value," the form says, though it does
not indicate whether other firms were explored before Gerstein Agne
was hired.
Charity Navigator's Mr. Berger said that without a competitive-bidding
process, "you're getting into some very gray area, and you don't want
to have a look back from the IRS later that's going to bite you."
"In other words," he said, "if you have a financial interest in the
company and then the IRS checks and sees that the decision was based
without looking at any other options — because you said it was the
best, then there's exposure there."
The documents also hint at an added level of collaboration between J
Street and Ben-Or.
In a March 1, 2010, e-mail from senior Ben-Or partner Didi Remez to
Noam Lekach — communications coordinator for Amnesty International's
Israel branch, a Ben-Or client — Mr. Remez suggested a fundraising
vehicle through which they could "raise the necessary amount" to buy
drums for an anti-settler demonstration in the disputed East Jerusalem
neighborhood of Sheik Jarrah: "Maybe via the J Street student list,"
he wrote.
When reached by e-mail, Mr. Remez declined comment on whether he had
used the list or had J Street's permission to do so.
Ben-Or's website lists 91 (mostly Israeli) clients, including peace
groups, human rights organizations, international figures, such as
former President Jimmy Carter, and campaigns for Israeli politicians
from the center-left Labor Party and the more leftist Meretz party.
Though the client list included Americans for Peace Now — J Street's
leading organizational ally in the U.S. — J Street was absent as of
press time.
A statement from Ben-Or, facilitated by a Ben-Ami spokesman, echoed
Mr. Ben-Ami's statement that he received "no compensation" for the
past 11 years. But it called into question his claim that his stake in
the company had no financial implications for him, saying "he would
receive 15 percent of the proceeds if the firm is ever sold."
Mr. Ben-Ami declined requests to explain his arrangement with Ben-Or
or to provide evidence that he had forfeited all dividends upon
leaving the firm. His spokesman promised The Times a letter from the
lawyer who oversaw the agreement, but no letter was ever received.
Mr. Ben-Ami has earned plaudits for his managerial skills — since its
2008 inception, J Street has built itself into a political force on
the Jewish left — but he also has drawn fire for a string of
misleading and evasive statements regarding J Street controversies.
He had long denied the Soros funding, telling Moment magazine earlier
this year that "we got tagged as having his support, without the
benefit of actually getting funded!" He later apologized for being
"less than clear" on the matter.
The Times subsequently reported that J Street had helped facilitate
meetings between members of Congress and Judge Richard Goldstone,
author of a U.N. report that accused Israel of systematic war crimes
in its three-week 2008-2009 war against Hamas in Gaza. The information
was gleaned from former Israeli Knesset member Colette Avital, who
told The Times that she had stepped down as J Street's Israel liaison
in part because of the group's "connection to Judge Goldstone."
"When Judge Goldstone came to Washington, [J Street leaders were]
suggesting that they might help him set up his appointments on Capitol
Hill," Ms. Avital said.
In a statement to the Times, Mr. Ben-Ami said J Street "reached out to
a handful of congressional staff to inquire whether members would be
interested in seeing Judge Goldstone," thinking it would "be a good
idea for him and for members of Congress to meet personally."
According to a follow-up report by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency,
"Jeremy says that, after that info-sharing and those calls, J Street
solicited Avital's advice on whether to make such appointments. She
said Goldstone was at that time regarded as something akin to the
devil in Israel, and that it would harm J Street's brand. Jeremy says
he took the advice."
But a day earlier, in a conference call with The Times, Mr. Ben-Ami
said emphatically that there had been no such discussion: "The
entirety of our communication with Ms. Avital concerning Judge
Goldstone was her inquiring of me, whether e-mail or by phone, I don't
remember — whether or not J Street was in fact helping with Judge
Goldstone's visit to Congress, and me telling her, 'No, we're not.'"

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/bibi-donor-list-yediot.jpg

 
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/wp-content/uploads/2010/.
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come mai ti interessa cosi' tanto cambiare discorso?


non c'è nessun cambiamento di discorso. Chi critica chi si oppone al
sionismo di estrema destra che governa adesso Israele, dovrebbe essere
sicuro di poterselo permettere, altrimenti fa la figura del bue che dà
del cornuto all'asino.

 non c'è nessun cambiamento di discorso. Chi critica chi si oppone
stai cambiando discorso, perche' evidentemente non ti intendi di
finanziamenti ai partiti.


partiti? Una lobby e un politico sono partiti?


non ti intendi di finanziamenti, evidentemente.
["protected" ROTFL]