Cuyahoga County Exec Chris Ronayne has no business using local funds to support Bennie Netanyahu’s war on Palestinians

Israel's bond brokers and promoters have not ever registered as foreign agents with the U.S. Department of Justice, as they sell a product Standard & Poor recently downgraded because of its war

CLEVELAND, OH – If Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne doesn’t end the contract with the American Financial and Development Corporation for Israel (AFDCI) to buy $10 million in Israel Bonds, he’ll continue to do business with an unregistered entity and agent of a foreign government that will be using local tax dollars to fund the Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) war, extermination and displacement of Palestinians.

More specifically, investing tax dollars in Israel bonds is a bad deal.  On April 18, 2024, Standard & Poor downgraded Israel’s credit rating from AA- to A+, and declared its long term financial outlook to be negative because its economy has been made unstable by war.  Tourism earnings are down as tourists don’t want to risk being a war zone casualty just to pay for a Holy Land Tour.  The rating agency sees Israel carrying a wider deficit because of the war, and being unable to pay its bond purchasers.

Cuyahoga County Council members Cheryl Stephens and Patrick Kelly have introduced a resolution to end the county’s investments in foreign governments.

The downgrade follows what we view as a further increase in already high geopolitical risks that Israel faces in the aftermath of the first direct attack by Iran in mid-April 2024. This attack followed Israel’s reported strike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus. Under our baseline scenario, we still expect a wider regional conflict will be avoided, but the Israel-Hamas war and the confrontation with Hezbollah appear set to continue throughout 2024. This is in contrast to our October 2023 expectation of military activity not lasting more than six months,” according to the April 18, 2024 Standard & Poor report.

The only benefit is to Israel’s corrupt prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu aka Benjamin Mileikowsky of Ukraine.  Palm Beach County’s comptroller, Joseph Abruzzo, is Netanyahu’s biggest sucker as he is being sued for his over-the-top $700 million Florida tax dollar investment in Israel’s high risk bonds.  Israel’s sold over $3 billion in bonds to investors in the USA since October 7, 2023.  Abruzzo’s Palm Beach County taxpayers will face a huge loss if the Zionist government can’t pay.

Adding insult to the semitic Christian and Muslim American taxpayers whose funds they’re jeopardizing, Israel bond brokers are not registered with the U.S. Department of Justice pursuant to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938.  Cuyahoga County taxpayers won’t get a report of the salaries and perks DCI’s top officers and directors are paying themselves, or know if they’re using the money to cover the cost of transporting Israel’s government leaders to the USA and elsewhere to spread its propaganda.  Israel, as a nation, obeys no other nation’s laws but its own.  Netanyahu has taken U.S. weapons and completely disregarded President Joseph Biden’s cease fire demands.

Cuyahoga County Council members Cheryl Stephens and Patrick Kelly introduced Resolution Number 2024-0208 to disinvest the county from investing in Israel and every other foreign nation’s bonds.  Instead of battling their resolution to make points with Cuyahoga County’s Zionists, Ronayne and their county council colleagues should see the resolution as an opportunity to avoid being dragged into a federal investigation.  The Stephens – Kelly resolution reads as follows:

“A Resolution urging the Cuyahoga County Executive and the County Treasurer to immediately cease any additional County investment in bonds and other sovereign debt issued by the Nation of Israel; and urging the Investment Advisory Committee to amend the County’s Investment Policy to prohibit future investments in any foreign securities; and declaring the necessity that this Resolution become immediately effective.”

Polish immigrant David Ben Gurion, born David Grun, declared Palestine to be renamed Israel as an independent state government on May 14, 1948. Since the Israeli government did not have an economy, Gurion created Israel bonds in 1951 to finance it with money from Russian, Polish and Ukrainian Jews in the USA.

It’s clear from its fundraising effort and messaging that AFDCI is raising money to support the IDF’s war on Palestinians.  The official name of the IDF is Tzva Haganah le-Yisraʾel.  The IDF was born as Haganah, the terrorist militia whose members planted bombs and carried out assassinations and kidnappings against Palestinians, British and other Jews in Palestine from 1920 to 1948.  If Donald Trump is re-elected to the U.S. Presidency, and he executes his plan to deport millions of the illegal aliens Biden allowed to invade our borders, and the cartels arm their countrymen to stay, their militias would be the equivalent of Haganah or the IDF in American cities.

AFDCI is legally known as the Association for the Development of Israel, Inc. F/K/A American Society of Resettlement & Rehabilitation in Israel, Inc.  FINRA has it registered as doing business as the Development Corporation for Israel.

Israel bonds were created by Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion and the new State of Israel’s Knesset in 1951, and are sold under the authority of its ministry of finance.  Today they’re funding violent Israeli settlements President Joseph Biden’s administration has sanctioned.

The State of Israel’s first bond offering in the United States of America was for $500 million. $52 million was raised at Madison Square Garden before the Development Corporation for Israel registered with the Securities & Exchange Commission or with the U.S. Department of Justice in compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Gurion, who was born David Grun in Russia’s partitioned part of Poland in 1886, decided to sell Israel bonds to the same Zionist supporters in the USA who’d conspired secretly against U.S. Middle East policies to supply Soviet illegal immigrants in Palestine with $50 million to obtain weapons for Haganah and Irgun militias to take over the nation.  The first Israel bond offering in 1951 was for $500 million.  It’s well known in Russian Jewish history inside the USA that Russian mobsters Meyer Lanskey, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and Mickey Cohen invested mob dollars to arm Haganah and Irgun militias in Palestine.

Gurion traveled to the USA and raised over $52 million during a Zionist fundraising event at Madison Square Garden in New York on May 10, 1951.  The purpose of the money was not to make restitution to Palestinians in compliance with a UN resolution promoting peace.  It was to redevelop the lands they’d taken after expelling 85 percent of the native Palestinian population they’d turned into refugees.  Gurion, like Benjamin Netanyahu today, needed additional money from Jews in the USA to fund their government and its continued militarized resistance to complying with Article 11 of UN Resolution No. 94.

Refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.

The State of Israel’s fundraising in 1951 caught the attention of the FBI under Director John Edgar Hoover.  Soviet Jews were widely-associated with Communism and AFDCI was quickly suspected of being a Communist organization.

There are no foreign affairs duties for local governments. Cuyahoga County’s tax dollars can’t be invested with the State of Israel to “make a statement” of support for its war on Palestinians.

In 1952, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a confidential opinion that AFDCI came within “the definition of the term ‘agent of a foreign principal’ contained in Section 1(c)(2) of the FARA.  The opinion of the U.S. Department of Justice was that AFDCI could avail itself of the exemption contained in Section 3(d) of the statute, as engaging in financial activities in furtherance of the bona fide trade and commerce of the State of Israel and in activities to relieve human suffering.

It was specifically noted by the U.S. Department of Justice, however, “that the exemption was available only so long as the Corporation did not engage in any political activity as defined by Rule 100 on behalf of the State of Israel.”  Funding a war is a political activity that restricts Cuyahoga County funds from being used for that purpose.  Naveh’s statements as the CEO of AFDCI are clear in his intent to convey Israel’s need for investments in its defense.  In 1967 Israel used aircraft purchased through its investments, that was sold to them by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966, to engage in a deadly act of treachery against the USA.

On June 8, 1967, the same IDF being funded by Israel Bonds now being sold to local governments, used fighter jets and torpedo boats to slaughter 34 U.S. sailors aboard the USS Liberty.   Another 174 were wounded in the Mediterranean incident on the 4th day of Israel’s Six Day War with Egypt, and its seizure of the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem.   It was Israel’s second attack on Egypt since 1956.  Johnson was warned not to arm the treacherous Zionist Soviets.

The late Sesame Street artist David Dees drew his interpretation of Israel’s June 8, 1967 attack on the USS Liberty and slaughter of American soldiers. President Lyndon B. Johnson was warned against selling weapons to Soviet Jews from Russia, Poland and Ukraine in 1964 after he replaced an assassinated President John F. Kennedy. Johnson concealed the Israeli Defense Force’s treachery from Americans by refusing to talk about it. He didn’t want to offend the nation’s Soviet Jewish community.

The U.S. Naval Institute reported how the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) investigated claims the IDF attacked the USS Liberty in 1967 to trick President Johnson into attacking Egypt for Israel during their Six Day War.  It’s the same IDF that under Gurion in 1954 who orchestrated the planting of bombs at locations in Egypt that Americans patronized.

1954 was the first time Israel’s Soviet aliens plotted to kill Americans and blame their deaths on Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood in a military exercise called “Operation Sussanah” or the “Lavon Affair.”   It was their way around the 1950 Tripartite Agreement President Harry Truman had signed with Great Britain and France where the three nations agreed to stop the attack of an aggressive nation in the Middle East.  Gurion and his IDF needed America to believe Egyptians were killing Americans.  The specific language reads as follows:

The three Governments take this opportunity of declaring their deep interest in and their desire to promote the establishment and maintenance of peace and stability in the area and their unalterable opposition to the use of force or threat of force between any of the states in that area. The three Governments, should they find that any of these states was preparing to violate frontiers or armistice lines, would, consistently with their obligations as members of the United Nations, immediately take action, both within and outside the United Nations, to prevent such violation.”

The USS Liberty attack came three months after Soviet Jewish aliens from Belarus purchased the Plain Dealer in March 1967.  New owner and publisher Solomon Isadore Neuhaus, aka Simon Irving Newhouse, buried the story of Israel’s IDF savagery from the consciousness of greater Cleveland readers.  His newspaper’s version carried only Israel’s apology.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was ordered by President Johnson to recall the U.S. fighter jets he’d deployed to retaliate against the treacherous Soviet Israelis.  It’s offensive to think the tax dollars from the descendants of USS Liberty victims across the USA are being used to weaponize the descendants of their IDF killers and attackers today.

Unlike Johnson, in 1956 former U.S. General and President David Dwight Eisenhower ordered Israel’s Gurion to end his hostilities against Egypt.  He refused, like President Truman before him, to give the Israeli Soviets a bullet.  Eisenhower, however, delivered nuclear technology to Iran.  Prior to President Johnson, America’s past presidents wanted a relationship with 400 million Arabs instead of 500 thousand Soviet immigrants to Palestine who kept begging them for weapons.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency reported that Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Dayan ordered the USS Liberty to be destroyed by the Israeli Defense Forces. The Soviets were NOT the greatest ally of the U.S., and our troops wanted to do to them what they’re doing to Palestinians after their attack on the USS Liberty. There’d be no Israel if President Lyndon B. Johnson had not betrayed U.S. troops to protect their killers.

It’s not just AFDCI raising war funds on behalf of the State of Israel.  There are 23 Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces or Haganah regional chapters operating and raising funds inside the USA to support Israel’s conflicts, including Beachwood, and none have registered with the U.S. Department of Justice as agents of the State of Israel.  Neither has the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that was founded by Isaiah Kenen in Shaker Heights in 1948 as the American Zionist Council.

For comparison, federal authorities would not allow Communist China to organize a Friends of the Peoples Liberation Army, or sell China bonds to U.S. governments, though China currently holds $767 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds.  It’s an illegitimate argument to claim that opponents of Cuyahoga County or the state of Ohio buying Israel bonds are anti-semitic because Israel’s agents get benefits enjoyed by no other foreign nation inside the USA.

Communist China’s President Xi Jinping, and Russian Prime Minister Vladmir Putin, don’t get to address the U.S. Congress like Netanyahu.  Congress is even entertaining an insane bill to give IDF soldiers access to the same hospitals and benefits as U.S. veterans.  Hamas doesn’t have access to the U.S. Congress.

There’s nothing unambiguous about Israel’s intent to use bonds being sold to local governments across the USA to finance its war on Palestinians or to attack Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan or Egypt.

Israel Bonds chief executive officer Dani Naveh told the Jerusalem Post in a story published April 19, 2024, that funds being invested in Israel by local governments across the USA are needed to support the nation’s war.  The Israeli citizen living in the U.S. omits that his nation’s war is on Palestinian men, women and children the IDF or Haganah is calling “Hamas.”  The IDF has also been killing journalists and United Nations aid workers, and blocking food convoys to the Palestinians they’re starving as part of Israel’s bond-funded war effort against people who had nothing to do with a holocaust.

The Israeli economy supports the war efforts, civilians, and the military personnel, while at the same time maintaining its strength. I’m proud to say that Israel bonds play a vital role in achieving that. The funds we provide are an important part of Israel’s foreign debt and are being deployed where needed the most, enabling advances in infrastructure and reconstruction to defense and much more. Each and every dollar counts; even small investments can make you a part of this important mission,” Naveh told Jerusalem Post.

Naveh’s message on AFDCI‘s website is more politically direct.

When I was a kid in Jerusalem, we faced the Six-Day War and we literally had an IDF artillery base in our backyard. You could smell not only the gunpowder, but you could smell a fear for Israel’s future. Israel is still facing threats to its future.  And the lessons, especially as you watch these terrified children in the bombardment on the streets of Ukraine, is that Israel must be strong enough to defend itself by its own capabilities, without the need to beg others. And in this respect, I totally believe that one of the best ways to do that is by those investments in Israel bonds, by expressing your support by strengthening the Israeli economy and Israel’s future.”

A search of the FARA database on the U.S. Department of Justice’s website shows DCI, Naveh and local Israel Bonds broker Thomas Lockshin are not registered as an entity or individually as foreign agents of the State of Israel.  Neither is AFDCI local general director Ike Yedid, who is also not registered as a licensed securities broker.  Lockshin is a licensed and duly-authorized securities broker.

Instead of voting to continue purchasing Israel Bonds through Lockshin, county officials should be reporting AFDCI and its unregistered agents to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for violating Title 22 of the United States Code, Section 611.  Violations of the FARA can come with up to five years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

Special counsel and former FBI Director Robert Mueller used the FARA to successfully prosecute 34 “Russian collusion” defendants such as Rick Gates, Paul Manafort and retired U.S. Army General Michael Flynn.  Cleveland during the Republican National Convention in 2016 was the city where the Russian collusion investigation began.  22 USC 611 reads in pertinent part as follows:

(1) any person who acts as an agent, representative, employee, or servant, or any person who acts in any other capacity at the order, request, or under the direction or control, of a foreign principal or of a person any of whose activities are directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed, or subsidized in whole or in major part by a foreign principal, and who directly or through any other person 

(i) engages within the United States in political activities for or in the interests of such foreign principal;

(ii) acts within the United States as a public relations counsel, publicity agent, information-service employee or political consultant for or in the interests of such foreign principal;

(iii) within the United States solicits, collects, disburses, or dispenses contributions, loans, money, or other things of value for or in the interest of such foreign principal; or

(iv) within the United States represents the interests of such foreign principal before any agency or official of the Government of the United States; and

(2) any person who agrees, consents, assumes or purports to act as, or who is or holds himself out to be, whether or not pursuant to contractual relationship, an agent of a foreign principal as defined in clause (1) of this subsection.

Ohio’s been using public funds to buy Israel Bonds since Democratic Treasurer of State Mary Ellen Withrow in 1993.  The state’s total Israel bond investment since Withrow is over $351 million.  Israel bond peddlers have recently sold more than $3 billion in securities to more than 80 state and municipal public employee pension and treasury funds.

Since 1951, Israel has sold more than $52 billion in bonds to finance its government and defense.

Eric Jonathan Brewer

Cleveland's most influential journalist and East Cleveland's most successful mayor is an East Saint Louis, Illinois native whose father led the city's petition drive in 1969 to elect the first black mayor in 1971. Eric is an old-school investigative reporter whose 40-year body of editorial work has been demonstrably effective. No local journalist is feared or respected more.

Trained in newspaper publishing by the legendary Call & Post Publisher William Otis Walker in 1978 when it was the nation's 5th largest Black-owned publication, Eric has published and edited 13 local, regional and statewide publications across Ohio. Adding to his publishing and reporting resume is Eric's career in government. Eric served as the city's highest paid part-time Special Assistant to ex-Cleveland Mayor Michael R. White. He served as Chief of Staff to ex-East Cleveland Mayor Emmanuel Onunwor; and Chief of Communications to the late George James in his capacity as the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority's first Black executive director. Eric was appointed to serve as a member of the state's Financial Planning & Supervision Commission to guide the East Cleveland school district out of fiscal emergency and $20 million deficit. Former U.S. HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson told Eric in his D.C. office he was the only mayor in the nation simultaneously-managing a municipal block grant program. Eric wrote the city's $2.2 million Neighborhood Stabilization Program grant application. A HUD Inspector General audit of his management of the block grant program resulted in "zero" audit findings.

As a newspaper publisher, Eric has used his insider's detailed knowledge of government and his publications to lead the FBI and state prosecutors to investigations that resulted in criminal prosecutions of well-known elected officials in Ohio; and have helped realign Cleveland's political landscape with the defeat of candidates and issues he's exposed. Eric's stories led to the indictments of the late Governor George Voinovich's brother, Paul Voinovich of the V Group, and four associates. He asked the FBI to investigate the mayor he'd served as chief of staff for public corruption; and testified in three federal trials for the prosecution. He forced former Cuyahoga County Coroner Dr. Elizabeth Balraj to admit her investigations of police killings were fraudulent; and to issue notices to local police that her investigators would control police killing investigations. Eric's current work has resulted in Cuyahoga County Judge John Russo accepting the criminal complaint he guided an activist to file against 24 civil rights-violating police officers in the city he once led for operating without valid peace officer credentials. USA Today reporters picked up on Eric's police credentials reporting from his social media page and made it national.

Eric is the author of of his first book, "Fight Police License Plate Spying," which examines the FBI and local police misuse of the National Crime Information Center criminal records history database. An accomplished trumpet player and singer whose friendship with Duke Fakir of the Four Tops resulted in his singing the show's closing song, "Can't Help Myself": Curtis Sliwa of New York's Guardian Angels counts Eric among his founding chapter leaders from the early 1980's role as an Ohio organizer of over 300 volunteer crime fighters in Cleveland, Columbus and Youngstown, Ohio. For his work as a young man Eric was recognized by Cleveland's Urban League as it's 1983 Young Man of the Year.

Known in Cleveland for his encyclopedic knowledge of government and history, and intimately-connected with the region's players, every local major media outlet in Cleveland has picked up on one of Eric's stories since 1979. There is no mainstream newspaper, television or radio outlet in Cleveland that does not include an interview with Eric Jonathan Brewer in its archives over the past 40 years.

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