Capital Athletic Foundation

The Capital Athletic Foundation is a 501(c)(3) charity organization founded in 2000. The organization's nominal purpose was to provide needy youths with athletic opportunities. The organization has been used by its founder, Jack Abramoff, as a front group for channeling money into his own political causes. In its first four years of operation, the charity collected nearly $6 million.

According to information revealed by the Washington Post during the US Senate hearings into the Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal, Abramoff channeled money from corporate clients into the foundation and spent the overwhelming portion of its money on projects having little to do with the advertised sportsmanship programs, including political causes, the Eshkol Academy and an overseas golf trip for Bob Ney. Less than 1% of its revenue was spent on sports-related programs for youths.

Abramoff, who has been described by his spokesman Andrew Blum as, "an especially strong supporter of Israel" and by reporter Michael Isikoff, quoting an anonymous Abramoff associate, as "a super-Zionist," diverted "money meant for inner-city kids" to Israeli West Bank to be used by a Jewish settlers in order to help them "fight the Palestinian ." Tribal donors were outraged by Abramoff's diversion of funds to Israeli settlers.

Investigators believe that more than $140,000 of Capital Athletic Foundation funds were actually used for "purchases of camouflage suits, sniper scopes, night-vision binoculars, a thermal imager and other material described in foundation records as 'security' equipment."

Juan Cole asserts, in critiquing The Hill report on this subject, "the Israeli army does not need shooting lessons from Ben-Zvi. The sniper lessons were for the colonists, practice for shooting Palestinians. The "high-school friend" is, apparently, "Abramoff's connection" to the Jewish West Bank settlement of Beitar Illit, "Schmuel Ben-Zvi, an American emigre who, the lobbyist told associates, was an old friend he knew from Los Angeles;" Ben-Zvi has denied knowing Abramoff.

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