Union Leader Running for Assembly Returns Cash from Casino Bankrolling the Displacement of Palestinians

Ada Briceño, a candidate in the 67th State Assembly District, whose boundaries cover eight cities, including parts of Anaheim and Fullerton.

By DUANE J. ROBERTS
Editor & Publisher

Campaign finance disclosures reviewed by The Anaheim Investigator show that an independent expenditure committee tied to the Hawaiian Gardens Casino in Los Angeles County not only spent $202,701 supporting Ada Briceño’s bid for the 67th State Assembly District, but also delivered $11,800 directly to her campaign in cash contributions.

However, a card club license renewed in February 2025 by the California Gambling Control Commission confirms this casino is still owned by a Florida‑based family with a history of funneling tens of millions of dollars of its profits into a foundation they use to bankroll extremist settler movements in Israel involved in the displacement of Palestinians.

Although the motivations behind their decision to boost Briceño—a prominent leader of a major hotel and restaurant employees union—remains unclear, individuals familiar with local politics told The Investigator it could stem from her role in helping block several Gaza ceasefire resolutions during her tenure as chair of the Orange County Democratic Party in 2024.

Form 497 filed with the California Secretary of State on May 4th.

Documents filed with the California Secretary of State list David Moskowitz and Laurie Hirsch as the principal officers of the Hawaiian Gardens Casino. Both are children of the late Dr. Irving I. Moskowitz, who died in Miami Beach, Florida in 2016. According to Mother Jones magazine, the elder Moskowitz acquired the gambling operation in 1988 when it was a bingo hall.

Form 990s filed with the Internal Revenue Service identify Hirsch as president of the Irving I. Moskowitz Foundation, a non-profit which disburses the casino’s profits. David and two other family members currently serve on its board of directors. At least three of their names appear on the current license issued by the California Gambling Control Commission.

Copy of Hawaiian Gardens Casino’s cardroom business license.

Despite the fact some of the money is plowed right back into the local community, the amount is miniscule compared to the tens of millions of dollars the foundation has given to projects in Israel, including substantial funding for extremist settler movements such as El’ad and Ateret Cohanim, whose main goals are to push Palestinians out of East Jerusalem.

A careful examination of their most recently available Form 990 shows they gave almost $1.5 million to the Central Fund for Israel, a non-profit that seven members of congress alleged in 2021 was “fueling the dispossession and displacement of Palestinians“ by using 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status to help finance settlement expansions throughout that country.

From a Form 990 the Irving I. Moskowitz Foundation filed in 2025.

With respect to their political affiliations, the Moskowitz family makes it no secret who they align themselves with. Besides their late mother giving $2 million to a “super PAC” supporting President Donald Trump’s re-election, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right Israeli National Security Minister, met with Hirsch last year when he flew to Florida on an official trip.

According to the newspaper Harretz:

On his agenda for Miami is a meeting with Laurie Moskowitz Hirsch, a right-wing philanthropist. She runs the Irving Moskowitz Foundation, which was established by her late parents, Irving and Cherna Moskowitz. Irving Moskowitz was a longtime patron of Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, purchasing land to prepare it for Jewish residents.

She also sits on the board of the Hebron Fund, which promotes ‘a strong Jewish presence in the holy city of Hebron.’ The organization’s international spokesman is Yishai Fleischer, a Ben-Gvir confidante who serves as his foreign affairs advisor and is joining him on the trip. Ben-Gvir himself is a resident of Kiryat Arba, the Jewish West Bank settlement outside the city.

Along with her parents and their foundation, she was awarded the World Zionist Organization’s Jerusalem Award for Building the Land of Israel in 2022 ‘for decades of work primarily in the eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem and the towns of Judea and Samaria,’ the biblical term for the West Bank, ‘in securing strategic properties for the Jewish nation,’ and work that ‘literally changed the map of Israel.’

Hirsch (l) meeting with a settler from Itamar in May 2011.

The Investigator made a good faith effort to reach out to Briceño and ask what she thought about the Moskowitz family using casino profits to bankroll the displacement of Palestinians. Moreover, we inquired about how she felt about them giving $2 million to a Trump “super PAC” a few years ago. She so far hasn’t bothered to respond to our questions.

But in a statement published on Friday by the Los Angeles Times, she told the paper she strongly opposed the “family’s positions on Trump and their support of the settlements, which displace Palestinians in the West Bank, and I am willing to say that.” She further added that the $11,800 in cash they gave to support her campaign would be returned to them.