Meet the Man Claiming a Tax To Fund Land Preservation "Targets Jews"

Today, we take a look at Joseph "Yossi" Gestener, frequent supporter of white supremacists and spreader of myths concerning anti-semitism, COVID-19, and January 6th.

Yesterday, we talked about how State Senator James Skoufis helped kill the Orange County Community Preservation act. In short, Senator Skoufis took huge financial contributions from people connected to the Real Estate industry. Then, he repeated almost word for word the language of the New york State Association of Realtors (NYSAR) when sharing his concerns about the bill to The Times Herald Record.

Today, we’re going to take a closer look at a frequent commentator about the Orange County Community Preservation act: Yossi Gestener, co-founder of the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council (OJPAC).

Joseph Gestener, is listed as the Executive Director and Trustee on the organization’s 2021 Form 990. Yossi Gestener is no where to be found on these forms. Whether or not Joseph and Yossi are the same person is unknown at this time.

I have previously reached out to Mr. Yossi Gestener for comment, even citing Bava Metzia 4:10 from the Talmud —which prohibits fraud (and lying) in business dealings — but did not receive a reply.

What is known is that, for many years, Mr. Yossi Gestener has received a remarkable amount of media coverage, most of which involving matters in neighboring Rockland County, but very little of which was about himself and his history.

Given Mr. Gestener’s interjection into the media cycle last time the Orange County Community Preservation Act was being discussed, I thought I’d help fix that in the event he shows up again.

As you are about to see, Mr. Gestener is not a credible source of information.

"It’s a disgrace that such bills even get out of committees," said Yossi Gestetner, co-founder of the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council. "Those bills are written with the false and bigoted assumption that growth of said communities are a problem when in fact they are an economic and tax boon for local communities as shown in multiple data reports on our website." (Source)

That was Yossi Gestetner. Speaking to The Times Herald Record after Governor Kathy Hochul vetoed a stand alone bill that would have allowed the Town of Blooming Grove to preserve land through a real estate transfer tax.

After State Senator Skoufis helped kill the Orange County Community Preservation Act, a standalone bill passed both chambers of New York State Government, only to be vetoed by the Governor, late at night, and just before Christmas when no one was looking. Her successor, Governor Cuomo, often did the same thing concerning bills that may upset powerful political forces.

When Attorney General Letitia James interjected herself in a suspicious manner involving Joseph Landau’s Chester Greens, Mr. Gestetner stated:

“Rabble rousing on social media against a community with lies and innuendo as is done daily against Orthodox Jews is one thing. But taking official government action against a community is illegal,” Gestetner’s statement said. “Too often, local governments in New York and New Jersey abuse their powers in a bigoted attempt to deny Orthodox Jews their constitutional rights. Therefore, OJPAC welcomes when justice authorities intervene such as done today by the New York State Attorney General against Chester, Orange County.”

In 2015, down in Rockland County, Mr. Gestetner has spoken out concerning federal oversight of the East Ramapo School District, stating:

"The East Ramapo budget was approved with a clear majority at the first try and the incumbent members running for re-election won landslides in a high-turnout election," said Yossi Gestetner, a political commentator and co-founder of the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council. "This shows that the people who actually live in this district have great confidence in the board, and the un-American monitor bill ... is just a divisive political ploy pushed by outsiders to destroy a school district already suffering from state underfunding." (Source)

If you’re not familiar with the East Ramapo situation, it goes like this: The school board is run by haredi. The haredi do not like paying taxes for public schools since they do not utilize them. In order to lower taxes, everything is cut at the public schools. The school district has a majority population of black and latino students.

There is a deep, and unfortunate, strain of racism and bigotry that runs among some Haredi where they believe black and brown people to be cursed.

Whether or not the East Ramapo cuts are racially motivated is not something I can comment on at this time, but it’s often cited as a concern by non-haredi members of the community.

A state monitor was eventually brought in to make sure the school district was properly funding its public schools. Our new friend Yossi blamed the funding formula for the trouble, aka having to pay school district taxes when you don’t have a student attending public school.

By this logic, nobody in the United States should be on the hook for the congressional money provided to Kiryas Joel for the Kiryas Joel Catskill Aqueduct Connection Project. This pipeline received generous financial support from both New York State taxpayers and people nationwide through Congress. When completed, the long delayed pipeline will tap into New York City’s water supply and provide water to the Town of Palm Tree / Village of Kiryas Joel, but not the water restricted neighboring municipalities such as South Blooming Grove and Woodbury.

Often, the threat of “East Ramapo” is used by members of hanhallah to bully and intimidate politicians and other influential parties in Orange County to get them to do what Rebbe Aaron Teitelbaum wants. You can see Mr. Gestetner utilize that exact tactic here.

One last comment from Gestetner is worth flagging, given how often he himself is cited as a source in Orange and Rockland County on matters involving our haredi friends:

Yossi Gestetner, who frequently comments on issues related to the Jewish community, said there was only an appearance of celebration. He said it was due to The Journal News repeatedly quoting the same small number of people who oppose St. Lawrence.

"Taking the opinion of some people and making it the overwhelming opinion, it's not true," Gestetner said. (Source)

Tweets From White Supremacists

Mike Cernovich has his own page on the website for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In short, he’s an (alleged) rapist who helped spread myths that put lives in danger, such as #Pizzagate, and said stuff like this:

“Rape via an alpha male is different from other forms of rape. We can't really understand this, as our culture is too detached from instinct.”
—Twitter, September 2013

Mr. Yossi Gestetner is a frequent re-tweeter of Mike Cernovich as you can see here, here, and here.

Not to be outdone by Cernovich, Yossi has compared pro-palestinian protestors with Nazis.

Spread disinformation concerning the numerous felony counts against Donald Trump.

Helped spread COVID-19 misinformation.

And has even retweeted stuff from a convicted January 6th insurrectionist.

Ok, But Who Is This Guy?

Before (allegedly) changing his name from Joseph to Yossi, Yossi Gestetner briefly served as the New York State GOP’s Director of Jewish Outreach. A tenure that lasted all of eight days.

Prior to his brief tenure with the NYS Republican Party, Mr. Gestetner did PR work for Torah True Jews Against Zionism.

If you’re not familiar with this organization, that’s ok. All you need to know is that what it does is in the name: It’s a group of Orthodox Jews and other haredi who advocate against the existence of the state of Israel. Mr. Gestetner was hired by this group to help spread their message.

Presently, Mr. Gestetner lists himself as operating multiple PR firms including Gestetner and Co. and AXLE PR. Whether or not Mr. Gestetner was hired by Mr. Joel Stern and Mr. Isaac Ekstein to represent United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove, or at the very least, to put out disinformation about the Orange County Community Preservation Fund is unknown at this time.

When pressed about his work for Torah True Jews Against Zinoism, Mr. Gestetner said to The Jewish Channel:

“as long as I don’t go out there and assist people in doing crimes, as long as people are doing things perfectly legal, and people need public relations consulting, media consulting, I think it should be perfectly fine in doing so.”

Later, Gestetner would add, “I personally have no problem with the State of Israel being there.”

Which, is interesting, given that he’s taking money to do work for an organization with the polar opposite opinion of his own, calling his credibility into doubt.

Hopefully local and state-wide journalists will take note for when the Orange County Community Preservation Act again winds its way through the state’s government.

Mr. Yossi Gestetner also pulled an odd stunt back in March of 2010, when he announced on March 4th on the less than credible Yeshiva World News that he was considering a run for Congress in New York’s 17th District.

Then, eight days later, he declared he was not running for office. What he did with the alleged $4,200 he raised in those eight days is not known at this time, but should probably be looked into by the Federal Election Commission.

Representing Convicted Sex Offenders

According to The Jewish Channel’s 2012 investigation into Mr. Yossi Gestetner, he had actively downplayed a fire-bombing in New Square involving the home of Aron Rottenburg.

Rottenburg had attended prayer services separate from the rest of the community and, in response, he received third-degree burns on more than half of his body. (Once again proving that, any time you hear a haredi claim there is no crime in their community and no need for a police force, you know it’s bullshit.)

In a since deleted blog post, Mr. Gestetner defended the decision of the family of Leiby Kletzky — a little boy who was brutally murdered — to not seek the aid of the police, but instead rely on the shomrim (an informal “police” within the community) to investigate the abduction and murder. It’s possible this delay led to Leiby’s death, as the police were only later told of the abduction.

A year after his brief tenure with the New York State Republican Party, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes allegedly hired Gestetner to help salvage his reputation after it was found he often looked the other way or downplayed crimes involving the haredi community.

Gestetner had previously tried the same PR campaign for Nechmya Weberman, who was convicted of being a pedophile. (In 2022, Grand Rebbe Zalman Teitelbaum visited Weberman in prison.)

“The Target Is Chassidim, Not Overdevelopment”

But if locals oppose the vertical growth (“overdevelopment”) of chassidim within Lakewood, Monsey, and Kiryas Joel as well as the horizontal growth of chassidim into nearby towns and villages, where exactly should chassidim move to? Israel? Auschwitz? Let’s be clear. The opposition is not to overdevelopment. It’s to chassidim. - Yossi Gestetner (Source)

On September 12th, 2019, The Jewish Press ran a guest post by Mr. Yossi Gestetner. In it, he relies on the now half-century old tactic of comparing any denial of the haredi from getting what they want by invoking the Holocaust. He almost exclusively relies on Facebook comments to prove his points, even though it should be noted that in the fourth quarter of 2023, 691 million fake accounts were found to be operating on Facebook. In addition, only 5.74% of Facebook users are based in the United States, and since 2016, a known tactic of the Russian military is to sow discord on American Facebook groups by posting incendiary remarks.

Put another way, while there are absolutely bigots on Facebook, Facebook comments — much like Mr. Gestetner — don’t have much credibility. And yet, we’ve seen again and again anti-semitic comments on Facebook cited by members of hanhallah to “prove” the point that they are being discriminated against.

“The actions of the political class and many locals in Rockland prove that overdevelopment is not their real issue. They oppose chassidim in general due to their dress code, religion, family size, and a number of other reasons that can be properly called fake news.” - Yossi Gestetner. (Source)

As the new, 2024 version of the Orange County Community Preservation Act makes its way through New York State government, it’ll be important to keep an eye out for claims like this. Whether it come from Mr. Gestetner, Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein, and others.

Thankfully, the clear and present fact is that the only time these antisemitic/anti-chassidim claims are invoked are by the same people with something to gain from the development. We saw that first hand during the DEC public hearing in April where the only time antisemitism/anti-chassidim was claimed was by the United Jewish Community (the local hate group) and their associates.

It’ll be important for supporters of this new legislation to point this out, and make sure the press and the politicians are well aware of the lack of credibility many of these alleged spokespeople have.

Because as any haredi will tell you, there are over thirty different kinds of Hassidim, and with a few exceptions (Satmar), nobody’s really “in charge.” It’s a big, beautifully diverse group that is welcome wherever it goes.

The trouble was, is, and will forever be with members of hanhallah acting against the wishes of both their own followers and the communities that neighbor them.

(Update: Mr. Gestetner is now out of the PR business! Womp womp, loser.)