Christian donation never claimed by J'lem Municipality

[CornField]

Good ole Evangical Christian values at work!
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Half a million dollars in donations raised by American Christian Evangelical supporters of Israel for Jerusalem's needy has been held up for the past year and a half due to a long-running feud between the head of the charity and the Jerusalem Municipality over a photo-op with the mayor, the city and the organization said Tuesday.

At issue is a $600,000 donation by the Chicago-based International Fellowship of Christians and Jews earmarked back in 2003 for the social welfare department of the Jerusalem Municipality.

The organization, which raises tens of millions of dollars each year for Israeli welfare projects, has withheld half a million dollars of the total donation to the city since Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski has refused to take part in a photo-op with the group's president, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, in recognition of the group's donation, Eckstein said in an interview Tuesday.

The group's president had previously said that the dispute was resolved, and that the money had been claimed. But, in a reversal, Eckstein said Tuesday that repeated phone calls, and correspondences with the mayor's office over the photo-op have gone unanswered, leading the group to actually withhold the bulk of the funds.

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http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1105418784031

[Name removed]

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[CornField]

2. Sorry, I should have typed a bit more background

Rabbi Eckstein holds close ties with Ralph Reed. Reed helped IFCJ found Stand for Isreal, a sub-charity which takes in the vast majority of the donations by evangical christians.

Since Mayor Lupolianski has come into power, there have been many promises made by IFCJ for various aid. Each comes with a demand. After the demand has been met, the aid is often reduced or cancelled.

Speculation is that Reed and the EC base wish to unseat Lupolianski in favor of his opposition, Nir Barkat -- that they are putting pressure on Eckstein and IFCJ as a whole to do just that. This seems to evidenced later in the article as the reporter comments how the mayor has been "criticized by the opposition in the city for shying away from meetings with Christian Evangelical leaders, who have been among Israel's strongest supporters during the past four years of violence." There are other snippets within the article as well.