In October, Gush Shalom addressed the American National Lawyers' Guild (NLG) -- asking it to take up the issue of American organizations supporting Israeli settlers in the Occupied Territories and enjoying a tax-exempt status in the US.

NLG -- whose founders broke away from the American Bar Association at a time when the ABA supported racial segregation, and whose members have since been involved in various campaigns for peace and human rights -- seemed the right place to make such a request.

The approach to the American lawyers is part of a campaign conducted by Gush Shalom in coordination with American human rights activists, many of them Jewish peace seekers. Some of the California activists involved are already for years campaigning against the notorious Irving Moskowitz (and his son and heir David Moskowitz) and their aggressive sponsorship of settlers taking over Palestinian properties in East Jerusalem. It turns out that not only the methods of acquiring properties in Jerusalem are shady -- also the methods for gaining the money in the first place, through bingo and gambling ventures in America.

In recent months, Israeli and American activists gathered information about the American settler-support organizations -- much of it easily accessible on the web, but hitherto never systematically collected. As it turned out, there are dozens of such organizations, some supporting all the settlers but most of them affiliated to one particular settlement and energetically collecting donations on its behalf.

They register with the federal tax authorities as "charities", "educational institutes" and the like. In statements to the US government they never see fit to mention that their activity is of a clearly political character -- designed to dispossess the Palestinians, establish and extend Jewish presence in what they consider a Biblically-hallowed land, and thus make impossible the creation of a Palestinian state. In their own publications and fundraising events, however, the same associations do refer very extensively to their aim of "redeeming" Arab land and making it Jewish by any means, fair or foul, using highly nationalistic language often verging on the blatantly racist.

In Seattle where the NLG held in October its annual conference, the lawyers’ guild was also approached by the Anti-Discrimination League, with a similar request to investigate the legality of settler charities. In early November it was disclosed that the "New York Mets" baseball club had leased its premises at Citi Field for the Hebron settlers' annual fundraising event. Seventeen American, Israeli and Palestinian groups united in calling upon the Mets to "cancel this shameful, racist event."