Israeli settlement group runs ‘fictitious Jewish entity’ in Silwan

A report by the Israeli Justice Ministry’s Charitable Trust Unit has confirmed fraud, violations, conflicts of interest and many other flaws in the management of the Moshe Benveniste Trust in the Silwan neighbourhood of occupied Jerusalem, which was seized by the Ateret Cohanim settlement association.

The report concluded that the Moshe Benveniste Trust is, in fact, a “fictitious entity managed entirely by the Ateret Cohanim Association, in violation of the trust’s charter and contrary to the rules of proper administration.” Despite this, the Israeli authorities oppose replacing the organisation’s trustees, Rabbi Yitzhak Ralbag, Avraham Sheferman and Mordechai Zarbiv, according to Haaretz on Tuesday.

“The Moshe Benveniste Trust was formed by the leaders of Jerusalem’s Jewish community and registered with the city’s Ottoman Shariah court in 1899,” said Haaretz. “It constructed buildings in Silwan for Yemenite Jewish immigrants. According to its original founding charter, the trustees are supposed to be the two chief rabbis of Jerusalem and the principal of the Jerusalem Alliance school.”

In 2001, Ateret Cohanim officials asked the Jerusalem District Court to revive the trust and turn over control of it. “Ateret Cohanim showed the court letters from the chief rabbis at the time, surrendering their roles with the endowment, as well as documents from the Education Ministry confirming that the Alliance school no longer existed. Judge Yaakov Tsaban accepted the petition and appointed three people – two of them Ateret Cohanim employees Sheferman and Zarbiv – as the endowment’s trustees,” explained the newspaper.

Shortly after, the Justice Ministry’s Custodian General and Director of Inheritance Affairs handed the land that was once controlled by the trust to the revived endowment, under a law that Palestinians have no right to claim their property they were displaced from in 1948, because it was confiscated under the Absentee Property Law, and instead allows Jews to claim those properties.

Since the court approved the transfer of the lands to the trust, Ateret Cohanim, which seeks to Judaise occupied Jerusalem, has filed dozens of lawsuits against Palestinian families in Silwan, where they have lived since the 1960s, turning them overnight into residents in danger of eviction. Indeed, so far, 16 Palestinian families have been evicted from their homes, and Ateret Cohanim has settled Jewish settlers in their place. In recent weeks, Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court Judge Miriam Kaslassy has issued five rulings ordering five different families, totalling 131 people, to vacate their homes for the trust within six months, and ordered legal costs of 50,000 shekels ($14,000) against each family.

According to Haaretz, “NGO Ir Amim, through attorneys Yuval Adler and Luna Halloun of Ben Ari Fish law office, have been pursuing legal action against the trust and Ateret Cohanim for years, and are seeking a court order to appoint different trustees, on the grounds that the current board is not fulfilling its role.”

The Custodian General conducted an in-depth audit of the endowment, showing that “the endowment is nothing more than a fictitious entity managed entirely by the Ateret Cohanim Association, in violation of the endowment’s charter and contrary to the rules of proper administration.”

The audit also found that, “For 20 years the endowment’s funds have been placed in the same bank account as Ateret Cohanim’s. Even after a separate account was opened for the trust, the rent paid by the Jewish tenants was deposited in Ateret Cohanim’s account rather than in the endowment’s.”

It added that, “Ateret Cohanim carried out extensive renovations to the endowment’s properties without the endowment being a party to them and without there being a record of this in the endowment’s books,” and that “the endowment worked in cash and without any documentation, contrary to the rules of proper administration.”

A trust is supposed to operate in accordance with its charter, as signed on the day of its establishment, but according to the investigation, it went against this, as it states that “the endowment’s buildings were designated for housing assistance for the benefit of the poor of the Jewish community in Jerusalem, Sephardim and Ashkenazim in equal measure… After that, it will be an endowment for the benefit of the poor of the Jewish community wherever they are located there – and if they are not found, it will be an endowment for the benefit of the poor and needy wherever they are.”

The audit found that the Benveniste trust did not operate according to the terms of the charter. “Neither the trustees of the endowment nor of Ateret Cohanim examined whether the settlers who were brought to live in the heart of the Palestinian neighbourhood were indeed from needy families,” reported Haaretz.

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