Restitution negotiator tells Leumi: Pay back the money

Israeli banks should return money belonging to Holocaust victims or their heirs immediately, according to Dr. Israel Singer, chief negotiator of the World Jewish Restitution Organization, who successfully dealt with the problem with the Swiss banks.

"The Israeli banks incidentally got hold of the money, and they should give it back. There is no excuse for holding back the money," Singer said yesterday. "People are old and dying. We estimate that they are dying at the rate of two per day. My opinion is that it should be done now; it should have been done last week, it should have been done last year, and 55 years later is too late," Singer said.

Singer is on a visit to Israel before publication of a special report on the Israeli banks and Holocaust funds carried out by the Knesset committee for locating Holocaust victims' assets in Israel, headed by Labor MK Colette Avital. The committee has held back its report for more than a year because of the ongoing campaign against it by the five big banks in Israel. The battle is being led by Bank Leumi, which has vehemently rejected demands that the money be returned to victims traced by the committee.

According to unconfirmed media reports, the five banks combined hold some 5,000 such accounts with total assets of some NIS 1 billion in real terms. At least half of the sum was deposited in Bank Leumi.

Singer led the struggle against the Swiss banks with a media campaign in 1996 and 1997, publishing historical documents that angered the Swiss government and banks but eventually led them to grant restitution to the victims. Asked what made the Swiss banks pay, Singer said: "Pressure and the justice of our cause."

He does not want to use the same tactics with the Israeli banks, for two reasons. The Swiss banks were thieves, he said, but the Israeli banks got hold of the money incidentally. "But if Bank Leumi has an account that belongs to a Jewish person and that person has a nephew or son, I say `give it back to him,' because that is the way you should deal with people in general."

The second reason, he says, is that Israeli politicians, notably Justice Minister Yosef Lapid (himself a Holocaust victim) and Avital, have taken upon themselves the task of having the money returned, and sit on the committee. "The Holocaust victims in Israel have the right to vote," he notes. But, he adds, the handling of the subject by the politicians is "not as good as it should be .... After three years, they should have published a report and the money should have been returned."

The Israeli banks are well aware of the precedent set by the Swiss banks. In meetings with the committee and the Knesset speaker, Bank Leumi chair Eitan Raff, and the bank's legal representative, Ram Caspi, "warned" that if the report implies the banks benefited from the Holocaust victims' money, this will be used against Israel by the international media. "The Wall Street Journal will say the israeli banks also hide money, not just the Swiss," Caspi said.

Singer retorted: "This is no consideration at all. If you have something that belongs to somebody else, you must return it."

	Israel Singer