The head of First Fiscal Fund, a high-powered real estate investment firm, Lawrence Kadish has been a key financial backer of the Republican Party and supporter of various neoconservative-aligned enterprises such as the Center for Security Policy (CSP), a hardline pressure group led by Frank Gaffney, and Americans for Victory over Terrorism (AVOT), the William Bennett-led organization founded in the aftermath of 9/11 "to defend America's war on terrorism against those who would weaken the nation's resolve and erode our commitment to end the international menace of terrorism."
According to Mother Jones magazine, Kadish was a top Republican donor in the late 1990s and gave some $500,000 during the 2000 presidential election campaign. He is also a founding member of the Republican Jewish Coalition. In 2001, Mother Jones reported that the coalition "has supported a hardline approach to negotiating an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord, criticizing President [Bill] Clinton for 'appeasing Chairman [Yasser] Arafat' instead of requiring 'responsibility and compliance from the Palestinian Authority.' Allied with Israel's Likud government, the group supported the construction of the controversial Har Homa settlement in East Jerusalem, over Palestinian objections that the project jeopardized the peace process. It also supports continued American military support of Israel, including a recent project to build an antiballistic missile system."
According to Kadish's former biography on the AVOT website, Kadish, "a national commercial and industrial real estate investor and developer," has supported a number of other conservative causes in addition to AVOT and CSP. He was a founding chairman of the American Middle East Information Network, a rightist pro-Israel group among whose past associates is Clifford May, founder of the neoconservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (Washington Post, September 13, 2001); was a "supporter" of the Investigative Project, a controversial organization founded by Steven Emerson whose efforts to "uncover" Islamic terrorist plots in the United States have been criticized as inflammatory and misleading; and served as a "contributor" to the Foundation for Responsible Government, an organization that in the late 1990s championed small government and tax cuts.
Although Kadish's support for groups like AVOT and the Republican Jewish Coalition seemed to have diminished by early 2007 (neither group included his name as of February 2007 on their respective lists of members and advisers), he remained a board member for both the conservative Hudson Institute and the Claremont Institute.
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Affiliations
Claremont Institute: Board Member
Hudson Institute: Board Member
Americans for Victory over Terrorism: Former Senior Adviser
Center for Security Policy: Contributor
Republican Jewish Coalition: Founding Chairman and Board Member
Committee for Security and Peace in the Middle East: Founding Chairman
American Middle East Information Network: Founding Chairman
Private Sector
First Fiscal Fund Corp.: Real Estate Broker
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