`No Quid Pro Quo'

ADL head denies seeking Rich pardon
in exchange for donations.

MICHAEL J. JORDAN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

New York

A

s the Marc Rich pardon
casts its shadow over those
who lobbied on his behalf,
the head of the Anti-
Defamation League is seeking to dis-
pel impressions that he went to bat for
the billionaire fugitive because of
Rich's donations to the ADL.
ADL National Director Abraham
Foxman, who was questioned by congres-
sional investigators last week about his
allegedly pivotal role in the Rich pardon,
summoned journalists to his New York
offices last Friday to argue that he was not
influenced by the $250,000 Rich gave
the ADL over a period of 16 years.
The most recent donation — for
was pledged in the fall of
$100,000
1999 and arrived in February 2000,
Foxman said, shortly afterRich Foundation
head Avner Azulay met with Foxman to
discuss Rich's legal predicament.
"There's nothing dirty or ugly about
it," Foxman told reporters. "The fact
is he did give money, with no strings
attached."
For some, Rich's donations and
Foxman's involvement raise questions
not only of a quid pro quo but about
the propriety of America's leading fight-
er against anti-Semitism straying from
his mission to lobby for a fugitive.
On Dec. 7, Foxman wrote President
Bill Clinton, urging him to pardon
Rich. Had he known details then that
he later discovered about the Rich
case, he would not have sent the letter,
Foxman said.
Foxman was among the prominent
American Jewish leaders and Israeli
politicians who lobbied Clinton to par-
don Rich. Clinton cited Jewish pressure
as a reason for granting Rich clemency.
Rich fled the United States in 1983
to avoid trial on charges of racketeer-
ing and evading 548 million in taxes.
He also was accused of breaching U.S.
sanctions against Iran by trading oil
with the Islamic regime.

—

Revised History

Foxman told reporters that Rich's
largesse W2S a drop in the ADL buck-
et, considering that the organization's

annual budget is about $50 million.
He conceded, however, that "people
give you money in anticipation that
there will be a relationship. The guy
who gives you 5100 doesn't get as
much attention as the guy who gives
you 510,000," he added.
He said he was the first to recom-
mend enlisting the aid of Rich's ex-wife,
Denise, a wealthy New York socialite
heavily involved in Democratic fund-
raising. He said he suggested to Azulay
that the loss of Rich's middle daughter
to leukemia might have softened the
enmity between the divorced couple.
Foxman said he was led to believe by
Rich's backers that if the Switzerland-
based commodities trader returned to
America — to be by his dying daughter's
side, for example, or at her funeral — he
would be jailed immediately.
Foxman now knows that was not
quite true. Documents collected by
congressional investigators indicate
that the government was willing to
show leniency toward Rich if he
agreed to stand trial. He said he was
unaware that Rich had renounced his
U.S. citizenship. Rich also holds
Spanish and Israeli citizenship.
The ADL head said he first met
Rich in Switzerland through mutual -
acquaintances 16 years ago, shortly
after Rich fled abroad. Rich
approached him, Foxman said, because
U.S. authorities' robust prosecution
efforts led Rich to believe that "what
happened to him may have happened
to him because of anti-Semitism."
Foxman later told Rich that "unless
he could produce evidence beyond his
feelings, this was not something the
ADL would undertake." Rich never
followed up with concrete evidence,
Foxman noted.
Foxman, who was born in what is
today Belarus, said he learned that
Rich was born in a nearby town. In
"seven or eight" subsequent lunches
and dinners through the years, the two
sometimes conversed in Yiddish.
Rich did express an interest in defend-
ing Jews from anti-Semitism, and began
to give money to the ADL. The first proj-
ect he funded was an exhibit celebrating
500 years ofJewish life in Latin America.
Later, Rich's money we nt toward a prej-
udice-reduction program in Europe and
Israel called 'A World of Difference."

❑

GLASS THROUGH THE AGES
While mystery shrouds their origins,
archeological
findings
suggest
that
glassware in larger quantities was first
beginning to be produced in Egypt at the
start of the Ptolemaic period. And glass
largely remained an artistic medium for the
next 2,000 years. The industry eventually
spread throughout Mesopotamia and
centered in the Syrian cities of Tyre and
Sidon where epoch-making glassblowing
was invented in the 1st century B.C.E.

Rare antique pendant
cast with menorah
and shofar

Also murky are the precise dates when Jewish craftsman
adopted the art under regional influence, although the Old
Testament (Job) asserts that neither gold nor glass can equal
wisdom--implying it was then known and prized by the people of
Canaan. Other texts mentioning glassmaking were the Mishna and
Kelim. From these references, and glass bottles excavated from
Jewish cemeteries, it appears that the art emerged in Palestine by the
1st or 2nd centuries C.E. Other early evidence:
❑ Fragments of glass bowls from those times were found
in Jerusalem, Ashod and Samaria, possibly manufactured in
factories along the coast.
❑ Talmudic literature records that Jewish artisans in the
sandy Belus area practiced glassblowing.
❑ Third and 4th century plates, bowls, drinking glasses and
beakers inlaid with gold foil images of the Ark, menorah, shofar,
lulav and etrog have been discovered--together with vestiges of a
glass workshop at Beth She'arim traced to Byzantine times.

.

Elegant hevra
kaddisha glass,
circa 1690 C.E.

Accounts ofJewish glass craftsmanship span
the ages. Ornamental 4th and 5th century
bracelets, pendants and medallions were
locally manufactured, and the medieval
period saw the art reach its regional peak. In
1770, a commercial visitor to Palestine
observed: "Jews (are) makers of good glass
which is called Tyrian glass and is famous in
all countries." Fame was also attached to the
well-known Islamic glass weights thought to
be produced by Jews--perhaps at a major
glass works in Hebron.
It is also believed that Jewish
craftsmen came to Spain, Italy and France at
the time of the Crusades. By the 15th
century, Jewish glassmakers and glaziers
settled in Bohemia and Moravia. Within the
next 300 years, their fellow craftsmen helped
stimulate Hungary's burgeoning glass
industry. During that period, Hungarian
Meyer Oppenheim invented and popular-
ized ruby flint glass.

By the 19th century, many prominent Jewish glassmakers emerged
in England--one of them winning a royal appointment to the court
of George III. Not to be outdone, a New York-based contemporary,
Lazarus Straus and Sons, spearheaded the manufacture and sales of
quality cut glass to the U.S. and Europe.

Other footnotes on the Jew's historical romance with glass:
Jews were among the leaders in producing and marketing
Czechoslovakian glass before World War I. Between the great
wars, many Jewish-owned European facilities manufactured plate
and sheet glass, and mirrors. And to replant the industry's roots,
Baron de Rothschild built a factory near an ancient Phoenician
harbor to provide wine bottles for his great vineyards.

-- Saul Stadtmauer

COMMISSION FOR THE DISSEMINATION OF JEWISH HISTORY
Walter & Lea Field, Founders/Sponsors
Irwin S. Field, Chairperson
Harriet F. Siden, Chairperson
Visit many more notable Jews at our website: www.dorledor.org

3/30
2001

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