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El Al owner used fraudulent nursing home funds to buy airline, New York AG Letitia James claims
(New York Jewish Week) – New York State Attorney General Letitia James accused Jewish owners of four nursing homes in New York of misusing $83 million in government funds and diverting them towards the purchase of Israel’s national airline, El Al.
In a lawsuit filed this week, James alleges that instead of employing the funds to care for residents and hire adequate staff, Kenneth Rozenberg and Daryl Hagler, the owners of Centers Health Care, have been using the money for their own personal benefit. In 2020, Rozenberg purchased a controlling stake in the Israeli airline El Al for $107 million. Hagler became a director of El Al in 2021, and per the suit spent $132 million in 2022 to purchase three properties in Brooklyn and Queens.
“Rozenberg’s investment in El Al, which ultimately allowed him to become the controlling shareholder of the airline, was made possible by his and Hagler’s longstanding pattern of fraud and illegality,” the suit says.
James is seeking to block Centers Health Care from admitting new residents until they are properly staffed to care for current residents as well as hire financial and healthcare monitors to ensure compliance. Rozenberg and Hagler are also being asked to return the allegedly stolen funds.
The facilities in question are Beth Abraham Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in the Bronx, Buffalo Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in Buffalo, Holliswood Center for Rehabilitation and Healthcare in Queens and Martine Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in White Plains.
Centers Health Care denied the allegations. “Centers Health Care prides itself on its commitment to patient care,” Jeff Jacomowitz, a spokesman for Centers Health Care, said in a statement. “Centers denies the New York attorney general’s allegations wholeheartedly and attempted to resolve this matter out of court. We will fight these spurious claims with the facts on our side.”
Per the suit, Centers Health Care has been engaging in fraud since as early as 2013. The suit alleges that the nursing homes often left residents sitting in their own feces and urine for hours, failed to respond to calls for help when residents fell and kept residents malnourished and starving.
“Nursing homes are meant to be safe spaces where the most vulnerable members of our community receive the care and dignity they deserve. Instead, the owners of Centers Health Care allegedly used these four nursing homes — and the vulnerable New Yorkers who lived there — to extract millions of dollars for their personal use, leading to elderly residents and those with disabilities suffering unconscionable pain, neglect, degradation, and even death,” James said in a press release.
“Rather than honor their legal duty to residents to provide the highest possible quality of life, Centers leadership and their associates seized every opportunity to put personal profit over resident care,” she added.
Four hundred residents at Centers Health Care facilities died in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The suit alleges that they died as a result of the nursing home’s failure to provide adequate staff and follow COVID safety protocols.
In the first year of the pandemic, more than 15,000 nursing home residents statewide died due to the coronavirus and its complications, according to a state audit.
Rozenberg was reported to have used his son, Eli Rozenberg, an Israeli citizen, as the frontman for his bid to purchase El Al, due to a law preventing non-Israelis from owning the airline.
The suit alleges that in 2020, “Hagler used a bank account that received, among other sums, profits obtained fraudulently and illegally from the Nursing Homes to loan Rozenberg $103 million — at no interest and with no repayment terms or loan documentation — to facilitate Rozenberg’s purchase of the Israeli national airline, El Al. In the fall of 2020, Rozenberg lent $109 million to a company controlled by his son to purchase a controlling stake in the airline for a total of $107 million.”
The senior Rozenberg made Aliyah in 2021 and took control of the company in May 2021.
This is the fourth lawsuit James has filed against nursing home owners this year. In a press conference, she encouraged anyone with concerns or information about nursing home conditions to file a confidential complaint.
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The post El Al owner used fraudulent nursing home funds to buy airline, New York AG Letitia James claims appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.