NEW YORK (AP) -- Two decades ago, the Rubashkin family of Brooklyn opened up a kosher slaughterhouse amid the cornfields of Iowa - not exactly a center of Jewish culture.
The bearded, fedora-wearing strangers from Brooklyn quickly transformed Postville into its own small-town melting pot. Immigrants from Guatemala and Mexico began arriving in great numbers to work at the slaughterhouse. Soon, the town was home to churches and temples, and the shelves of the grocery stores were stocked with tortillas and bagels.....
It all adds up to a mess for a family that has never sought attention and now feels it is being attacked unfairly, especially by the media.
"The press? Terrible!" the family's patriarch, Aaron Rubashkin, told a reporter with the Jewish news service JTA during a rare interview in June. He said allegations that the company knowingly hired illegal immigrants and children and tolerated abusive conditions were all lies.
"I wish everybody would be treated like we treat people," he said.
Ouch:
"After raid, underage immigrants fuel labor inquiries; Describe lapses, long shifts at Iowa meat plant" by Julia Preston, New York Times News Service | July 27, 2008
"I felt like I was a slave" -- Elmer L. who said he was 16 when he started working on the plant's killing floors, said he worked 17-hour shifts, six days a week"
Aaron Rubashkin and his wife, Rivka, fled the Soviet Union after World War II and settled in Brooklyn, a world center of Hasidic Judaism.
The family prospered in America.... in 1987, the family bought an abandoned non-kosher meatpacking plant in tiny Postville, Iowa. Two of Aaron's sons moved to Postville to oversee the plant, and a steady stream of Hasidic families followed. Soon, Postville, then a town of around 1,500 people, found itself drawing immigrant laborers, too.
Suddenly, the town was infused with rabbis and other Jews, Guatemalans and Mexicans, expatriates from former Soviet Republics - and a host of new ethnic tensions. Amid it all, the company was a huge success, with popular brands such as Aaron's Best and Rubashkin's. By 2006, Agriprocessors had a second plant in Nebraska, run in partnership with the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and annual revenue of $250 million.
In 2004, however, the animal rights group PETA recorded a gruesome video of the company's operation that showed cattle staggering about in apparent pain after their throats had been slit and their tracheas partly removed. Agriprocessors, while defending its techniques as a religious ritual, agreed to change some practices.
One of Aaron's sons, the influential Brooklyn rabbi Moshe Rubashkin, pleaded guilty to bank fraud in 2002 after writing $325,000 in bad checks related to a family textile business. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison.
A son-in-law, Menachim Balkany, a political fundraiser who hobnobbed with mayors and congressmen, was charged in 2003 with misusing a $700,000 federal grant. The prosecution was dropped when he agreed to make restitution.
Agriprocessors also found itself battling a lawsuit filed by a bankruptcy trustee overseeing the remnants of a New York health and beauty supply company whose owner had pleaded guilty to a multimillion-dollar bank fraud.
The trustee said the company, Allou Distributors, had a host of suspicious transactions on its books, including $2.9 million in unexplained payments to Agriprocessors. The lawsuit demanded Agriprocessors return the payments, which it claimed were part of the scheme to hide Allou's assets.
Agriprocessors insisted it did nothing wrong and had been supplying Allou with surplus meat, but it agreed last summer to pay $1.4 million to settle the case.
More trouble may lie on the horizon. Moshe Rubashkin pleaded guilty this year to storing hazardous waste without a permit at a defunct, family-owned textile plant in Allentown, Pa. His son pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents during the investigation. They have yet to be sentenced.
Seriously, what is with the rank corruption of Zionists?
And why am I so unsurprised that the MSM is keeping this disgusting and despicable case quiet?
And if you think about it, this partly explains the agenda-pushing regarding illegal immigrants that you will find in the Zionist-controlled AmeriKan War Dailies, too!!!
Supporters say the Rubashkins are no scofflaws, just unsophisticated businessmen who made some mistakes as their company grew.
"These are simple people. They are a family of butchers," said Dovid Eliezrie, a California rabbi who has been assisting the family with the media.
Scott Frotman, a spokesman for the Food and Commercial Workers union, had a different take, calling the company's treatment of its immigrant work force "morally reprehensible."
"They blame the media. They blame us. They refuse to accept responsibility for anything that is going on in that plant," he said.
State and federal investigators are looking into various alleged violations at the company, such as employing underage employees, not paying workers, improperly using hazardous chemicals and not having alarms that could be heard by employees. The Rubashkins have not been charged...
--MORE--"
Also see: Kosher meat plant was Israeli drug factory
Owner of embattled kosher slaughterhouse charges allegations are a big 'lie'
And more:
"While federal prosecutors are primarily focusing on immigration charges, they may also be looking into labor violations. Search warrant documents filed in court before the raid, which was May 12, cited a report by an anonymous immigrant who was sent to work in the plant by immigration authorities as an undercover informant. The immigrant saw “a rabbi who was calling employees derogatory names and throwing meat at employees.” Jewish managers oversee the slaughtering and processing of meat at Agriprocessors to ensure kosher standards.
In another episode, the informant said a floor supervisor had blindfolded an immigrant with duct tape. “The floor supervisor then took one of the meat hooks and hit the Guatemalan with it.”
So far, 297 illegal immigrants from the May raid have been convicted of document fraud and other criminal charges, and most were sentenced to five months in prison, after which they will be deported."
Yeah, it is AMAZING that the ZIONIST MEDIA would CENSOR ZIONIST RACISM, isn't it?
