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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