Silwan village, as seen from the Old City of Jerusalem. Over 1,500 Palestinians are facing expulsion from Silwan, due to the efforts of the settlement organization the City of David Foundation, which is backed by Irving Moskowitz. (Mimmi Nietula, Maan Images)

For the winning punters chancing their luck at Hawaiian Gardens' charity bingo hall in the heart of one of California's poorest towns, the big prize is $500. The losers walk away with little more than an assurance that their dollars are destined for a good cause.

But the real winners and losers live many thousands of miles away, where the profits from the nightly ritual of numbers-calling fund what critics describe as a form of ethnic cleansing by extremist organisations.

Each dollar spent on bingo by the mostly Latino residents of Hawaiian Gardens, on the outskirts of Los Angeles, helps fund Jewish settlements on Palestinian land in some of the most sensitive areas of occupied East Jerusalem, particularly the Muslim quarter of the old city, and West Bank towns such as Hebron where the Israeli military has forced Arabs out of their properties in their thousands.

Over the past 20 years, the bingo hall has funnelled tens of millions of dollars in to what its opponents - including rabbis serving the Hawaiian Gardens area - describe as an ideologically-driven strategy to grab land for Israel, as well as contributing to influential American groups and thinktanks backing Israel's more hawkish governments.

But the bingo operation, owned by an American Jewish doctor and millionaire, Irving Moskowitz, has taken on added significance in recent weeks as President Barack Obama has laid down a marker to Israel in demanding an end to settlement construction, which the White House regards as a major obstacle to peace. "Moskowitz is taking millions from the poorest town in California and sending it to the settlements," said Haim Dov Beliak, a rabbi serving Hawaiian Gardens and one of the Jewish religious leaders in California who have campaigned to block the flow of funds to the settlers.

"The money Moskowitz puts in to the settlements has changed the game. Moskowitz has helped build a hardcore of the settler movement that may number 50-70,000.

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"He's not paying for all of it but he puts the money up front for the vanguards that get things off the ground. That ties Israel's hands. That ties the hands of the Obama administration. If the administration wants to be serious about stopping the settlers it has to begin in Hawaiian Gardens."

Moskowitz is an 80-year-old retired doctor and orthodox Jewish millionaire who built a fortune buying and selling hospitals. In 1988 he also bought the faltering bingo hall in Hawaiian Gardens which, under California law, can only be run as not-for-profit operation so Moskowitz brought it under the wing of a charitable foundation he had established in his own name.

The foundation, which did not respond to requests for an interview, bills the bingo operation as of great benefit to the local community through donations to a number of groups, such as the Hawaiian Gardens food bank, as well as scholarships. It has also given money for disaster relief in Central America, Kosovo and parts of the US.

But tax returns show that the bulk of the donations go to what the foundation describes as "charitable support" to an array of organisations in Israel.

"The loss of many of Dr Moskowitz's relatives during the Holocaust strengthened his conviction that Israel must be maintained as a safe haven for Jewish people from all over the world. In Israel, the Foundation supports a wide array of religious, educational, cultural and emergency services organisations," the foundation says on its website.

What it does not say is that the focus of the donations is a number of Jewish organisations intent on claiming Palestinian territory for Israel and ensuring that occupied East Jerusalem remains in the Jewish state's hands.

Beliak calculates that the foundation has given Jewish settlers well over 100 million English Pounds, beginning with the construction 20 years ago of 133 houses on land confiscated from Palestinians by the Israeli government.

To read the full article please visit The Guardian.