NYC's 6th Borough: Zionist Reprisals Against Architect

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NYC's 6th Borough: Zionist Reprisals Against Architect

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit sent by Andy Pollack

MORE Zionist censorship and economic reprisal in New York... This time against an erstwhile supporter of a very important group, Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine. -AP

New York Daily News - March 3, 2006

Rogers and out!

BY PAUL D. COLFORD DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

The architect behind a new Javits Center is desperately trying to remake something else - his anti-Israel views. Lord Richard Rogers has been furiously issuing statements trying to extract himself from a jam that could see him getting booted from the $1.7 billion project.

But it may be too late.

buttembly Speaker Sheldon Silver demanded yesterday that the state reconsider its hiring of Rogers, the British architect chosen to design the new Javits, named after four-term U.S. Sen. Jacob Javits, a staunch Israel ally.

Rogers reportedly belonged to Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, and allowed the group to hold a meeting in his architectural firm's headquarters in London.

The group issued a statement last month comparing West Bank building firms to those that helped apartheid South Africa - and has called for a boycott of Israel.

After Rogers' ties to the group drew criticism from Rep. Anthony Weiner and Jewish leaders, he tried to distance himself from the mess.

Citing "the published aims" of Architects and Planners and "the suggested boycott by some members, I am dissociating myself from this organization," he said in a statement from London Wednesday.

As outrage grew yesterday, Rogers issued a new statement: "I abhor boycotts of any kind against Israel or any other place."

That wasn't good enough for Silver, who called on Gov. Pataki and economic development czar Charles Gargano to investigate Rogers' ties and boot him from the state-owned Javits Center if the review "simply confirms press accounts."

"The connection is even more outrageous," Silver said, "when we recall that the center itself is named for one of ... the most prominent and pro-Israel elected officials in our nation's history, United States Senator Jacob K. Javits."

Javits died in 1986.

Empire State Development Corp., headed by Gargano, is pushing the Javits complex expansion based on Rogers' design.

According to Gargano, Rogers buttured the agency that he didn't support a boycott and will never do so.

"I don't think he Gargano got all the answers to all of the questions raised here," Silver told the Daily News after speaking with him yesterday.

Silver added that he shared his concerns with the owners of Silvercup Studios in Queens, which hired Rogers to design a mixed-use complex planned for a site just south of the Queensborough Bridge.

The Javits plan, which would double the complex's size by 2010, was already under fire.

Gargano recently spent nearly two hours in the hot seat, grilled in an buttembly hearing about whether the expansion would offer too little space and limit the options for additional growth at a later date.

buttemblyman Richard Brodsky (D-Westchester) revealed memos - obtained under subpoena - in which the Convention Center Operating Corp.'s own consultant advised the agency to reject the expansion plan as it now stands.

The New York Times - March 3, 2006

NYC

All Politics of the Mideast Is Local

By CLYDE HABERMAN

what the rest of the world calls the Middle East, specifically Israel and the Palestinian territories. What happens there has a remarkable way of reverberating here.

Just ask Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Her 2000 election campaign nearly ran off the rails when she gave Yasir Arafat's wife, Suha, a peck on the cheek after Mrs. Arafat made a virulent attack on Israel.

When Edward I. Koch was mayor, he had his own foreign policy for the Middle East; now and then, it came close to resembling United States government positions. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani went so far as to make himself the city's Bouncer-in-Chief, tossing Mr. Arafat out of a city-sponsored concert for dignitaries gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the United Nations.

Over the years, little has changed. The sixth borough continues to roil New York politics.

Middle Eastern shadows have fallen across two huge expansion projects: at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan and at the Silvercup Studios in Long Island City, Queens. In both cases, the lead architect is Richard Rogers, of Britain, formally known as Baron Rogers of Riverside (a fitting breastle, some might say, for a man hoping to work along the Hudson and East Rivers).

Without a doubt, Lord Rogers is eminent in his field. But he is also not without controversy.

Early last month, he was host in London to 60 members of Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, a group that, as its name suggests, does not take kindly to Israel. Indeed, it vehemently denounced the concrete barrier that the Israelis have built through the West Bank and along its periphery � a barrier that Israel describes as essential to fight terrorism but that critics view as keeping some Palestinian towns in a virtual lockdown.

To the architects in London, it is "an apartheid system of control." Some said they were considering an economic boycott of Israel's construction industry and a possible call to expel Israeli architects from the International Union of Architects. The group met at Lord Rogers's London office not once but three times, The Independent of London has reported. As word of those meetings emerged this week, some New York officials reacted. The state comptroller, Alan G. Hevesi, was poised, a spokesman said, to send a letter to the governor and his lieutenants reminding them that taking part in an anti-Israel boycott is illegal under New York law.

In short order, Lord Rogers backpedaled faster than a circus performer. "My convictions on peace and justice have always been clear," he said in a statement on Wednesday. But given the boycott suggestions, he said, "I am dissociating myself from this organization."

That he was worried became more obvious yesterday. He hired Howard J. Rubenstein, New York's preferred public-relations executive for those in hot water. Through Mr. Rubenstein, the baron issued a second statement. "I abhor boycotts of any kind � Israel or any other place," he said. "It's not the way to achieve peace."

END of story?

It would seem so, said the Empire State Development Corporation, the state agency that gave Lord Rogers the Javits contract. Indeed, said the baron's New York partner company, FXFowle. But perhaps the final chapter has not been written.

Silvercup Studios issued its own statement yesterday, calling on Lord Rogers to go beyond what he has said thus far and to "unequivocally renounce the group and its mission." Helen M. Marshall, the Queens borough president, agreed that the baron had to "go further and disavow himself from that group." City Councilman David I. Weprin of Queens, said he, too, wanted to hear more.

No one spoke more forcefully than Sheldon Silver, the buttembly speaker, who invoked the memory of the late Senator Javits, a firm supporter of Israel. Lord Rogers's involvement in the boycott discussions was hardly peripheral, Mr. Silver said. As for state officials, their "lack of accountability for what his actions have already suggested is nothing short of shameful."

So who knows? If this dispute gets really hot, maybe the five boroughs will not become this Mr. Rogers's neighborhood. At issue, after all, is the sixth borough � where anything can happen, and often does.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company * ================================================================ NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us ================================================================

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