A number of Bay Area Jewish community leaders may drop the San Francisco and San Jose Fairmont Hotels as venues for large-scale events, following controversial comments by the hotels’ co-owner, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia.
The prince made national headlines last week when an incensed New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani returned his $10 million check for disaster victims. The mayor’s action came after Alwaleed urged the United States to adopt a more pro-Palestinian foreign policy in light of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Ernest Weiner, executive director of the American Jewish Committee of San Francisco, said Alwaleed’s comments are “unacceptable. For this prince to demonstrate this kind of contempt for the U.S. and the victims of the terror attack is beyond outrageous. It’s disgusting.”
The AJCommittee last used the San Francisco Fairmont in June for its annual meeting, and usually holds one to three events a year at the hotel. Weiner said a board meeting would be convened within a week or so to decide whether to host future events at the Fairmont.
After touring the devastation in Manhattan on Oct. 11, the 44-year-old Alwaleed called the attacks “a tremendous crime,” and presented Giuliani with the check. In a subsequent press release, however, the multibillionaire investor urged the United States to “address some of the issues that led to such a criminal attack” and “adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause.”
The release also stated that “our Palestinian brethren continue to be slaughtered at the hands of the Israelis while the world turns the other cheek.”
A billionaire investor, Alwaleed has made major investments in such companies as Citicorp, Apple Computer, Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, Motorola, Saks Fifth Avenue, the Plaza Hotel in New York and Norwegian Cruise Lines. He bought a 50 percent share of the San Francisco Fairmont in 1994, and is also half-owner of the New Orleans and Dallas Fairmonts. Maritz, Wolff and Co. is also half-owner of those three hotels.
The prince is also the half-owner of the San Jose Fairmont.
The San Francisco Swig family, a prominent Jewish family that once owned the whole chain, also holds a share of the San Jose facility.
After the story began gaining steam last week, Alwaleed refused to back down from his statements. He claimed the negative reaction was based on “Jewish pressures.”
He noted, too, that Yasser Arafat sent him a thank-you letter.
Amy Friedkin, national president-elect of AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, said her organization is seriously considering moving its December Silicon Valley membership event out of the San Jose Fairmont. After holding its San Francisco membership event at the Fairmont for decades, AIPAC was unable to book the hotel last year and is holding this year’s event at the Westin St. Francis.
Rabbi Yosef Langer, spiritual leader of Chabad of S.F., said he didn’t want “to do business with someone that takes such a position and makes such crude remarks at the expense of thousands of people being killed.” After hosting High Holy Day events at the Fairmont this year, the rabbi said decisions on hosting future events at the 596-room Nob Hill hotel are up in the air.
At Jewish Vocational Service, Abby Snay, executive director, said a future meeting would determine whether JVS will continue to patronize the San Francisco Fairmont. The organization held a June luncheon there.
As far as holding future events at the Fairmont, Sam Salkin, chief executive officer of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation, said, “I can’t imagine we would.
“I think the community tends to spend their money with people who they feel they share a common cause with, and this doesn’t seem like a common cause.”
However, Salkin added that he intended to find out more about the situation before making a final decision.
The JCF hasn’t hosted an event at the Fairmont since the mid-1990s, however, utilizing other area hotels instead.
Jon Friedenberg, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater San Jose, said the prince’s comments irked him, but he didn’t see what boycotting the Fairmont would accomplish.
“I don’t anticipate at this time changing the venue because one of the investors in the hotel makes asinine comments,” he said. “They’re the one facility in the community that facilitates our having kosher events. As a hotel, they’ve been very, very good to us.”
Alwaleed’s comments do not sit well even with his own business partners.
“When I read that he gave that $10 million check, I thought, ‘Oh, that’s nice.’ When I read the second part, I thought, ‘Oh my God!’ I was incensed at that statement for other reasons than business reasons,” said Lew Wolff of Maritz, Wolff.
“The prince is his own person. I was surprised to see that statement myself. This gesture could have been so good, but that additional tagline was terrible.”
Wolff, who is Jewish, said he could understand an organization’s decisions to steer clear of the Fairmont, but he stressed that any possible monetary loss would only be “a drop in the bucket” to the prince, one of the world’s wealthiest men.
“The only people you’ll hurt are the people who work there. An attack on the Fairmont will not hurt him at all.”
Bill Fatt, the Toronto-based chief executive officer of Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, said Alwaleed does not speak for Fairmont hotels and is not in a policy-making position. He also noted that the prince holds roughly $70 million in the $1.5 billion company, which would not make it one of his larger investments.
“Speaking personally, I do feel the comments he made were inappropriate, although I do think his effort to give money to the New York relief fund was a good thing,” said Fatt. “Unfortunately, the remarks he made tainted that gesture. Fairmont employs about 6,000 Americans, and I wouldn’t be at all happy if we were singled out as a group to be identified with the prince’s unfortunate comments.”
Jeanne Myerson, president and CEO of the Swig Co., made a statement similar to Fatt’s.
Owned for years by the Swig family, the Fairmont used to be one of the only places in San Francisco where it was possible to have kosher meals at large Jewish events. Currently, an ancillary kitchen that can be kashered is overseen by Orthodox Rabbi Maklouf Benchlouch. Paul Moss, the Fairmont’s director of catering, said the extra kitchen is used at least once a month.
In San Francisco, facilities at the Crowne Plaza and Hilton can also be kashered for special events, while the Sheraton Palace and Westin St. Francis contract with kosher caterers. Rabbi Malcolm Sparer, the former longtime president of the Board of Rabbis of Northern California, said the only hotel in the entire state with a full-time kosher kitchen is the Century Plaza in Los Angeles.
No final decisions to abandon the Fairmont have yet been announced, but nearly every Jewish leader contacted by the Bulletin said the prince’s statements would play a large factor in future selections of banquet or meeting facilities.
Langer’s reponse was typical.
“The country has been turned upside down, and he tried to use this donation to make a political statement,” he said. “Of course this will weigh on my mind. I have to weigh my decision very heavily on that. It’s hard to say whether we’ll use the Fairmont again. I really don’t know.”