[lbo-talk] Vegas Casino King Makes Bid For Israeli Media Moguldom

Robert Wrubel bobwrubel at yahoo.com
Thu Aug 16 10:40:37 PDT 2007


Anti-Zionist sites like Xymphora often mention the "Jewish billionaires" who fund AIPAC, and through it, control Congress. Can anyone give me the names and principal source of wealth of others beside Adelson?

BobW

--- Bryan Atinsky <bryan at alt-info.org> wrote:


> "American billionaire Sheldon Adelson yesterday
> pledged $60 million for
> the Taglit-birthright israel project
>
(http://www.birthrightisrael.com/bin/en.jsp?enPage=HomePage),
> which
> sponsors trips to Israel for Jewish youths who have
> never visited the
> country. Accompanying Adelson were some 20
> congressmen from the
> Republican Party, of which he is a staunch
> supporter. He has been
> organizing delegations of Republican congressmen and
> senators for the
> past 15 years. "They all come back Zionists," he
> said. An organizer for
> Taglit told Haaretz that Adelson shares his "clearly
> hawkish" views with
> program participants. "He talks with the
> participants about the dangers
> that Israel has to deal with and the risks from
> radical Islam. "He
> passed out copies of a documentary on how Islam is
> spreading in the West.""
>
>
> ---------
>
>
http://www.forward.com/articles/vegas-casino-king-makes-bid-for-israeli-media-mogu-00324/
>
> Vegas Casino King Makes Bid For Israeli Media
> Moguldom
>
> Alan D. Abbey | Wed. Aug 15, 2007
>
> *Jerusalem* - Sheldon Adelson has spent the past two
> decades collecting
> a string of casinos, but now the billionaire —
> considered by many to be
> the richest Jew in the world — is taking another
> kind of gamble.
>
> Two weeks ago, Adelson, CEO of the Las Vegas Sands
> Corp., launched
> Yisrael Hayom, or Israel Today, a free daily
> newspaper that on its first
> day was already one of the largest-circulation
> papers in the country.
> Adelson’s new paper is drawing questions from other
> journalists, who
> worry about the mogul’s connections to Likud leader
> Benjamin Netanyahu,
> and also from the owners of other Israeli
> newspapers, who are a famously
> tight-knit club.
>
> “Adelson has shaken things up. The doyens of the
> three dailies are
> alarmed by this ‘intrusion’ as they see it,” Amotz
> Asa-El, former
> executive editor of, and continuing columnist for,
> The Jerusalem Post
> told the Forward. “They feel very threatened by
> this.”
>
> The first edition of Yisrael Hayom appeared July 29
> and, like many new
> entrants onto the newspaper scene, was given out
> free to readers. Most
> free newspapers, including one that launched in
> Israel last year, are
> handed out at train and bus stations, but Adelson’s
> paper was delivered
> to 100,000 mailboxes in affluent parts of the
> country. Reports put
> Adelson’s planned investment in Yisrael Hayom at
> $180 million over three
> years. A first-day column by editor Amos Regev
> promised “a better
> press,” a “different kind of journalism” and even an
> occasional look at
> Israel’s positive news.
>
> Adelson is the latest foreign mogul to insert
> himself into the Israeli
> media scene. Canadian press magnate Conrad Black
> owned The Jerusalem
> Post for many years, and when he ended up in legal
> trouble it was
> another Canadian, Leonard Asper, who tried to buy
> him out. American
> media mogul Haim Saban has amassed a number of
> Israeli television
> holdings. Adelson’s first job, when he was a
> youngster in Boston, is
> said to have been selling newspapers on a street
> corner. But unlike past
> foreign investors in Israel, Adelson has no previous
> involvement in the
> media world. With his new paper, he is inserting
> himself into the Hebrew
> newspaper scene with a product created from scratch,
> according to his
> own vision.
>
> Israel’s largest existing newspapers are controlled
> by a few families:
> the left-leaning Ha’aretz by the Schocken family,
> and the more
> right-wing tabloid, Ma’ariv, by the Nimrodi family.
> Adelson’s moves have
> already evoked an immediate response from the
> establishment. Yediot
> Aharonot, the largest daily paper, has tasked a
> senior editor to begin
> developing its own free daily. Ma’ariv, believed to
> be the most
> vulnerable, immediately began running stories
> excoriating the new
> paper’s management for perceived ethical lapses.
>
> Adelson’s entry into the market comes at a sensitive
> time for rich
> foreign investors in Israel, according to Daniel Ben
> Simon, a journalist
> at Ha’aretz. Ben Simon noted that Adelson’s paper
> comes on the heels of
> ramped-up activity by such Russian Israelis as
> Arkady Gaydamak and
> Leonid Nevzlin, and this has some Israelis
> suspicious and worried.
>
> “They want to buy a share of Israel with their
> money,” Ben Simon said.
> “Israelis don’t want the country to be made into a
> casino for rich people.”
>
> Adelson, who made most of his money developing the
> Las Vegas Sands
> company, is reputed to be worth more than $26.5
> billion. Since the
> initial public offering of the Sands in 2004,
> Adelson and his wife, a
> doctor of Israeli origin, have ramped up their
> philanthropic
> involvement, particularly in the Jewish world. They
> have endowed a
> right-leaning think tank and a hospital ward in
> Israel. And last year
> they announced the formation of a family foundation
> that, it was
> rumored, would give away $200 million a year to
> Jewish causes.
>
> Those numbers have not been borne out yet, but
> Adelson has been making a
> splash. He was in Israel this week, apparently
> tending to a number of
> his different projects. It was the week of the Likud
> primaries, in which
> his friend, Netanyahu, was the front runner. He also
> held a meeting at
> the president’s house, in which he announced a new
> $30 million gift to
> Birthright Israel, a program that has received much
> of his philanthropic
> largesse thus far.
>
> In all this work, Adelson has not kept his
> ideological leanings secret.
> He came to Israel this week with a delegation of
> Republican congressmen
> from the United States. And an organizer for
> Birthright told Ha’aretz
> that Adelson shares his views with program
> participants and that he
> recently passed out copies of a documentary on how
> Islam is spreading in
> the West.
>
> Yisrael Hayom is Adelson’s third try in a year to
> gain a foothold in the
> Israeli media. Adelson was a backer of the Israeli,
> another free daily
> newspaper, but after the launch a year ago, Adelson
> ran into legal
> difficulties with his erstwhile partner and lost a
> court battle. This
> forced him out of the paper. Efforts by Adelson to
> acquire Ma’ariv
> collapsed earlier this year.
>
> Sources told the Forward that Netanyahu had an open
> line to the
> Israeli’s editorial department when Adelson was
> involved with the paper.
> Some of those editors have since moved to Yisrael
> Hayom. Adelson also
> plucked away some of the top writers from the
> right-leaning Ma’ariv,
> including columnist Dan Margalit. The fact that this
> group is perceived
>
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