Коалиция подала этическую жалобу на четырех законодателей Нью-Гэмпшира за оплаченный Израилем визит

Bob Sanders, a retired journalist and activist in Not in My Name NH, speaks at a news conference Tuesday releasing an ethics complaint brought against four New Hampshire lawmakers who took a trip to Israel paid for by the Israeli government. Seated at the table from left are Mohammed Dana, Sharon Racusin and Will Thomas. A coalition opposed to Israel’s military response in Gaza filed an ethics complaint against four New Hampshire Republican state legislators, charging that their trip last September to Israel amounted to an improper gift from a foreign government. The N.H. Coalition for a Just Peace in the Middle East filed complaints with the Legislative Ethics Committee and publicly released them Tuesday against two state senators and two state representatives who made the expenses-paid trip to Israel last Sept. 14-19. The group protested that the lawmakers took the trip paid for by the Israeli government while the government was in the midst of killing civilians on the Gaza strip. “Not only is it unethical but it is deeply immoral to take advantage of the junket in the midst of the genocide,” said Sharon Racusin, a Hanover-based activist and representative for Jewish Voice for Peace (VT/NH), who is also a delegate with the coalition that brought the complaint. The four legislators named are Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairman Tim Lang, R-Sanbornton, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Kevin Avard, R-Nashua, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Robert Lynn, R-Windham, and House Housing Committee Chairman Joe Alexander, R-Goffstown. The complaint alleges that the four violated New Hampshire’s Legislative Ethics rules when they attended “50 States, One Israel,” an event held from Sept. 14 through 18, 2025. Israel chartered flights, and provided accommodations in luxury, five-star hotels, meals, and guided tours in Jerusalem two years into the Israeli response to terrorist attacks against their citizens in October 2023. The gifts were valued by the Israeli foreign ministry at $6,500 for each attendee. “To be wined and dined by Israel and get very choice hotels and nice accommodations when people are starving is unconscionable,” said Bob Sanders, a retired journalist and an activist in Not In My Name, NH, a diverse group of New Hampshire Jews advocating for a peaceful and just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “I know some of these representatives and senators; they are perfectly nice people, but what were they thinking?” Senator responds Lang said the accusing group committed a misdemeanor by releasing the ethics complaint publicly. Lang said he spoke with Senate Legal Counsel Rick Lehman to say he was waiving his own confidentiality to comment so that he too wasn’t breaking the law. “I am aware that a pro-Palestinian group has filed a complaint against the delegation that took this trip,” Lang said. “I am confident once the ethics committee looks into this that we will all be fully exonerated and the only party found to have violated any statute is the very group bringing this complaint.” The complaint included a copy of an email Rep. Lynn, a retired Supreme Court chief justice, had written to the Consulate General of Israel in Boston inquiring about the value of the trip. “Under the ethics rules applicable to me as a New Hampshire legislator, I must file a report regarding the cost of the trip with the New Hampshire Secretary of State (David Scanlan) by the end of October 2025,” Lynn emailed on Sept. 28, 2025, a short time after the trip concluded. “Therefore, there is some time sensitivity to receiving the documentation.” Bjorn Lange is a lawyer who advises the coalition and questioned if this would fall under the many exemptions in the ethics guidelines and state law regarding the ban and/or restrictions on the acceptance of gifts by legislators and staff. “Look at the legislation. This strikes me very much as a gift. I can’t predict what these people will do,” Lange said of the ethics panel. “I don’t have the crystal ball. Their track record in the past is not good.” In 2015, then Democratic Senators Dan Feltes of Concord and Donna Soucy of Manchester asked for, and received, an advisory opinion from the ethics panel before they took a trip to Israel. The committee approved the trip after reviewing a detailed educational agenda that showed the trip covered topics relevant to New Hampshire. Racusin said there’s no evidence the latest group of legislators approached the ethics panel before or after they took the trip. Lawmakers have relied on past advisory opinions to guide their own decisions about taking gifts or honoraria such as a fee to give a speech. Last January, the Jewish Voice for Peace Vermont-New Hampshire chapter filed formal ethics complaints against five Vermont legislators for going on this same trip. Vermont lawmakers argued the trip was official travel to a “widely-attended, educational and cultural event.” Rules in Vermont do not strictly require legislators to disclose gifted trips received in an official capacity. Last April, the House Ethics Panel voted to dismiss the complaints against Vermont lawmakers concluding the trip did not violate the Legislature’s Code of Ethics.