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Edgar Bronfman and Israel Singer
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners March 1, 2006 |
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An Australian constituent organization of the World Jewish Congress have balked at a $6 million defamation suit filed against former WJC executive Isi Leibler, who conducted in the last year a no-holds-barred clean-up campaign against mismanagement of the organization, calling for more transparent governance and an end to financial improprieties.
New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, in an unexpectedly harsh report issue in late January, censured Israel Singer and other WJC executives for serious financial and government irregularities. In the 34-page report, Mr. Spitzer's office barred Rabbi Israel Singer, who resigned as the chairman of the group's governing board, from taking any role in the organization's finances, and it required him to repay what it termed "inappropriate disbursements."
Despite the harsh report, which largely validated the whistleblowing efforts of Leibler, the WJC announced that it was filing a defamation lawsuit in Israel against Leibler. "It is the World Jewish Congress's responsibility to recoup the money and the losses in revenues caused by Isi Leibler's ongoing war against the World Jewish Congress," a spokesman for the group told JTA.
At least one constituent organization is up in arms at the WJC's apparent decision to pursue Leibler, despite his vindication by the Spitzer report.
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, at its February 23 meeting the resolved to convey to Edgar Bronfman and the WJC Governing Board its "deep disappointment" in, and "dissociation" from, the decision of the WJC to commence legal proceedings in Israel against Leibler.
An ECAJ resolution, noting that the Attorney General's report vindicated the claims of Leibler, stated: "The legal action reflects and will continue to reflect adversely on the WJC, particularly at a time when the WJC is implementing measures to improve its governance, fiscal management, accountability and transparency. It will not only divert WJC resources away from its core mission, but will inevitably prolong if not escalate the dispute and thereby further damage the reputation of the WJC."
The group said that "the proceedings may be perceived as vindictive, vexatious, utterly unnecessary, and as an attempt to silence genuinely held political opposition within the organisation and are manifestly not in the interests of the WJC" and demanded that the WJC to discontinue the proceedings immediately.
Pulling out of the WJC is "one of our options," Grahame Leonard, president of the ECAJ, told JTA.
WJC appears to have no interest in backing down or hesitation in spending hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions in continued legal pursuit of Leibler. Stephen Herbits, an outspoken gay activist and lobbyist hired by the WJC to do damage control when the financial irregularities surfaced, recently told the London Jewish Chronicle: "he [Leibler] can say he's vindicated until he's blue in the face or six feet under. It doesn't bother me. I have no interest in settling."
Leibler, for his part, is not backing down and is now raising questions about Singer's leadership role in the "Claims Conference," the largest repository of funds for the Jewish people. "Can a body controlling billions of dollars of Holocaust restitution funds morally continue to retain as its President, a man found by the Attorney General of the State of New York to have 'violated his fiduciary duties as a trustee of charitable assets'?"
WJC spokesman Avner Tavori declined to answer all questions posed by Israel Insider on this and related subjects, insisting only that Israel Singer be referred to by his current title, Chairman of the Policy Council of the World Jewish Congress.
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