Political Satire by Mr. Fish: An Israeli Real Estate Agent
Category: Zionism
Dissecting Christian Zionist (and Israeli) Propaganda
Let’s begin by watching a recent CBN (Christian Broadcast Network) report on the violence unfolding in Israel/Palestine. The reporter is Chris Mitchell who lives in Israel.
As far as I can tell, all the on-screen personnel at CBN are avid Christian Zionists, meaning that they believe Israel is God’s chosen nation now preparing the way for the second coming of Christ.
Let’s start by observing the major points in this report:
- The current violence in Jerusalem begins with Hamas rockets launched at Israel from Gaza. Thus, Palestinians are the aggressors. Jews are only defending themselves.
- Netanyahu warns the Palestinian “terrorists” that Israel will respond firmly and decisively in self-defense.
- Mahmud Abbas (the West Bank leader of Fatah) is the instigator behind all the Palestinian “riots” in Jerusalem
- Palestinian residents in Sheikh Jarrah are protesting their home evictions unreasonably because the original Jewish property owners had reached a generous compromise that was then rejected by Mr. Abbas.
Let’s take these points one at a time:
First, CBN adopts the standard storyline of explaining the issues according to something I call APR time. APR time means After Palestinians Respond. It’s as if the Palestinians simply woke up one morning and decided to riot and fire rockets in Israel, just for the fun of it.
Actually, the current violence has its roots in Israel’s unilateral decision, made several weeks ago, to close off the Damascus Gate entrance to the Old City during the Muslim period of Ramadan. The Damascus Gate is the main thoroughfare used by Palestinians going to pray at al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock during Ramadan.
Palestinians naturally took offense at this closure and challenged the decision in the streets. Events have escalated from there.
Second, Israel’s current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been unable to form a new government since the recent national elections. As a right-wing politician, he knows that the easiest way to gather support is to rally people by fear-mongering over an alleged, national threat. American politicians do it all the time. In Israel, Palestinians serve as the standard, cardboard cutout for the state’s ever-present boogeyman.
Third, Mahmud Abbas is the leader of the Palestinian political party known as Fatah and the head of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank. Since the Oslo Accords, the PA has served as the West Bank wing of the Israeli security forces.
Abbas has no connection to the Hamas party in Gaza. In fact, Hamas considers the PA to be a traitorous organization given its cooperation with the Israeli military.
Mitchell’s claim that Abbas has somehow orchestrated the Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza is ludicrous. Here he reveals that he is not a journalist but a faithful propagandist for the Israeli government.
It is true that Abbas is a corrupt scoundrel who has postponed the West Bank elections. But there is no evidence that he can influence the Palestinians citizens of Israel to take up mass demonstrations to distract from his shenanigans in the West Bank.
That claim makes no sense. Palestinian Israelis cannot vote in the West Bank elections. They don’t have a dog in Abbas’s election fight. He has no influence over them and they have little to no regard for him.
Fourth, Mitchell’s attempt to explain the tensions raised by Palestinian evictions in Sheikh Jarrah is a complete fabrication. Once again, he shows that he works as a tool for the Israeli government. He is not a journalist.
Mr. Mitchell is merely repeating the public relations bulletin handed to him by the Israeli Ministry of Public Affairs.
I shared a document yesterday that explains the actual history of the Sheikh Jarrah evictions, and it has nothing to do with the foolishness repeated by Mr. Mitchell. You can read it here.
The CBN anchorman asks the question, “Why are we not hearing that story in the western media?” The implication is that this is “omission” yet another instance of the western, antisemitic conspiracy against Israel.
In fact, the reason this supposed story has not been mentioned by other western, news outlets is because it is complete balderdash; another Zionist myth fed to gullible, ignorant devotees of Israeli apartheid who will foolishly repeat it for American, Christian Zionist consumption.
Sadly, this fallacious, inaccurate reporting on Israel/Palestine is typical of the “news” made available on Christian broadcasting.
I strongly suggest that my readers not take it seriously. It is NOT a reliable source of accurate information about the world we live in.
Reframing: It’s Not a “Conflict.” It’s Colonialism
Israel was the last successful colonial project taken on by the British Empire — THE western, colonial power par excellence. We cannot accurately understand what is happening in Israel/Palestine today until we grasp that point.
As in every project of settler colonialism throughout history, the native people must be replaced, eliminated, expelled, made to disappear.
When the natives resist, the colonizers justify their rampant land theft and brutalization of the indigenous people by labeling them as sub-human savages, blood thirsty brutes, terrorists who live only for violence.
This dehumanization of the native people frames the settlers’ ongoing attacks against the stubborn natives as justifiable acts of “self-defense.” Even ethnic cleansing is excusable as the noble act of brave pioneers paving the way for civilization.
Colonialism always creates conflict. But colonial conflicts are always asymmetrical. That is, one side is the conquering aggressor who comes with superior weapons and technology.
For my money, the colonial aggressor is always in the wrong.
The other side, the native side, is always the victim forced to act defensively, whose resistance against colonial aggression is turned against them as justification for another wave of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Remember Geronimo.
What is happening right now is Israel/Palestine is NOT another round in a long-standing “conflict” between Jews and Arabs.
That is the dominant framing chosen by Israel’s Jewish colonizers. It is the framing that gets all the air-time and publicity because Israel is the overpowering aggressor who holds all the power in a very, very asymmetrical relationship with the suppressed and occupied Palestinians.
The only accurate, historical framing for the violence occurring today in Jerusalem is to see that Israeli colonialism continues by force of arms.
Israel is still colonizing the West Bank; still working to eradicate “the natives.” Oh, how troublesome those pesky natives can be.
Palestinians, for their part, are still resisting their colonizers; still standing up against the most powerful military in the Middle East.
No, this is not a conflict. It is a bloody, grotesque anachronism.
An outpost of western colonialism in the Middle East, originally underwritten by a now defunct imperial empire, is still trying to use 19th century tactics in a 21st century world.
So far, the world has turned a blind eye to Israel’s colonial, ethnic cleansing industry. I hope and pray that that time is coming to an end.
Below is a good clip from Al Jazeera News giving a fairly balanced perspective on the recent attacks against Palestinian worshippers at the al-Aqsa mosque.
At the 6:47 mark, an interview begins with Ines Abdel Razek, the Advocacy Director for the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy (PIPD). She does an excellent job of explaining what is happening today in Jerusalem and placing it in its proper context.
The Historical and Legal Background to the Sheikh Jarrah Evictions
Today I am writing a series of posts about the tragic stream of events unfolding in Israel.
The Israeli government is in the process of evicting numerous Palestinian
families from their homes in the East Jerusalem area called Sheikh Jarrah. East Jerusalem, including the Old City of Jerusalem, is part of the occupied West Bank.
The entire West Bank was captured and occupied by Israel during the Six Day War in 1967 — a war begun by Israel’s offensive attacks against Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.
Ever since, Israel has persisted in violating International Law and the
Geneva Convention by a) forcing Palestinian residents from their homes, and b) encouraging Jewish settlers to move into Palestinian Occupied Territory.
These types of evictions have been happening for a long time all throughout Israel/Palestine. The Israeli government refers to the process as “Judaization.” That’s Israel’s term, not mine.
The Israeli government is justifying the Sheikh Jarrah evictions by claiming that these properties were originally owned by Jews prior to the war in 1948. So, they are only “reclaiming” Jewish property.
Imagine an Irish-American organization sending its “settlers” into what are now Jewish neighborhoods in New York City. They pass through the streets knocking on doors announcing, “This property used to be owned by Irish people. Get out.”
I would call that kind of behavior racist. The Jewish Defense League would call it antisemitic.
Can these displaced Palestinians return to their original homes and properties taken from them (or more likely demolished) by Jewish militias in 1948?
Of course not. They are Palestinians. They have no right of return. Only Jews can claim that “right” in Israel.
That’s what makes Israel an apartheid Jewish Supremacist State.
Several Palestinian rights organizations have submitted a “Joint Urgent
Appeal to the United Nations Special Procedures on Forced Evictions in East Jerusalem” to the UN. This proposal carefully documents the legal circumstances at play in right now in East Jerusalem.
It is important to understand this history because most US media outlets will never fill-in these blanks. I have posted an excerpt below.
I encourage you to read the entire document, complete with its abundant citations and corroborating documentation:
Since the forcible displacement of 85 per cent of the Palestinian population during the Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948 by Zionist settler-colonial forces,
Israel designed and issued a series of discriminatory laws, policies, and practices, forming the foundation of its institutionalised regime of racial domination and oppression over the Palestinian people as a whole, including Palestinian citizens of Israel, Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory, and Palestinian refugees and exiles abroad.
Israel has ensured the maintenance of its apartheid regime over the Palestinian people through its policies and practices, such as the strategic fragmentation of the Palestinian people, including by denying Palestinian refugees and other persons displaced from their homes their inalienable right to return, and the appropriation of their homes, lands and property, coupled with the creation of a coercive environment designed to drive the ongoing transfer of Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line. In occupied and illegally-annexed East Jerusalem, 15 Jerusalemite families totalling 37 households of around 195 Palestinians, residing in Karm Al-Ja’ouni area in Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood and Batn Al-Hawa neighbourhood in Silwan, are currently at imminent risk of forced eviction. Unlawfully applying Israeli domestic law to occupied territory, Israeli courts have ruled in favour of lawsuits undertaken by settler organisations to evict the 15 Palestinian families. Most of the families living in Karm Al-Ja’ouni area and Batn Al-Hawa neighbourhood, who are facing the threat of forced eviction, are refugees. . .
. . . To cement Palestinian dispossession and displacement in East Jerusalem, Israel enacted the Legal and Administrative Matters Law in 1970, which exclusively allows Israeli Jews to pursue claims to land and property ownership allegedly owned by Jews in East Jerusalem before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. In accordance with the 1970 Law, “assets of Jews” in East Jerusalem, which were managed by the Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property until 1967, were transferred to the Israeli Custodian General within the Ministry of Justice. The Custodian General has the authority to release the properties to Israeli Jews who claim ownership, or claim that they inherited properties from before the establishment of the State of Israel, upon their request. Utilising the discriminatory aforementioned law, Jewish Trusts and Jewish entities with unclear legal status have secured land ownership in Batn Al-Hawa neighbourhood in Silwan and Karm AlJa’ouni area in Sheikh Jarrah by the Custodian General. Later, these Jewish Trusts and entities sold their ownership rights or transferred their management to settler organisations, which do not
have ties to the original alleged Jewish owners. In turn, the settler organisations, which envision further settlement expansion in occupied and illegally-annexed East Jerusalem, have been filing eviction lawsuits against Palestinians in Israeli courts.
You can read the entire document now before the United Nations here.
Join the Webinar: “Two Chosen People? Two Promised Lands? Christian Nationalism and Christian Zionism Under Trump and Biden”
Not long ago I was invited to participate in an online webinar happening May 18th, 12:00 pm (Eastern Time) sponsored by the Network of Evangelicals for the Middle East (NEME).
The discussion will focus on the different ways Americans and Israelis view themselves as “exceptional nations,” both fulfilling a unique, divinely ordained mission to world history.
The presidency of Donald Trump gave voice to evangelicalism’s (i.e., conservative Christianity’s) bellicose commitment to both Christian Nationalism (the belief that America is a Christian nation) and Christian Zionism (the belief that Christians must support the state of Israel).
Israel puts itself at the center of Jewish Nationalism.
How do these political beliefs relate to each other?
What does the Bible say about such things?
How should the Christian church relate to Israel and its continuing conflict 
with the Palestinian people?
I will share this conversation with Lisa Sharon Harper (founder and president of Freedom Road) and L. Daniel Hawk (Ashland Theological Seminary).
I hope you will join us for what, I am convinced, will be a fascinating conversation. For those who can’t make it, the webinar will be recorded and made available at the NEME website.
You can register online here.
Israeli Soldiers Arrest 230 Palestinian Children in the West Bank During the First Three Months of 2021
Imagine that one of these children is your son or daughter.
Imagine that you live under military law.
You have no civil rights; no freedom of speech; no freedom of movement or right to assemble; no right to protest or object to your mistreatment.
Imagine that you can be arrested without charge for anything at any time, based solely on the whim of the soldier who grabs you and throws you into the back of his truck.
Imagine that your child will be forcefully “interrogated” as he/she sits alone in a concrete cell surrounded by hostile, aggressive soldiers.
Imagine that these soldiers will hit, kick, slap, punch, ridicule, and humiliate your child with impunity. And you alone will be left to treat his/her injuries.
Imagine that you have no recourse for complaint. No one listens to your demands for an explanation. They may not even tell you where your child was taken.
Imagine that your complaints can only be heard by a military judge in a military court where Palestinians effectively never win a case.
This is Palestinian life under Israeli occupation.
Business as Usual: Israeli Soldiers Arrest Palestinian Children for Picking Wild Vegetables on Their Own Land
Below is a video of Israeli soldiers arresting 5 Palestinian children, ages 8 through 13. Their “crime” was picking wild herbs and vegetables near an
illegal Jewish-only settlement in the West Bank.
It is another example of the way Israel criminalizes Palestinians for merely existing in their own land.
The video was released by B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization. Below is an excerpt from Aljazeera describing the arrest.
Israeli forces detained five Palestinian children for several hours after they were confronted by Jewish settlers while gathering wild vegetables near a settlement outpost in the occupied West Bank, an Israeli human rights group said on Thursday.
B’Tselem released video of the arrest in the southern Hebron Hills, in which heavily armed Israeli soldiers can be seen dragging the children away.
Footage shot earlier shows the children gathering akoub, a plant similar to 
artichoke, when two masked settlers emerge from a grove of trees near the illegal settler outpost of Havat Maon.
The outpost is located near Masafer Yatta, a collection of about 19 Palestinian hamlets. The area is a frequent target of assaults by the Israeli military and settlers.
“This is another example of the absolute disregard on the part of Israeli authorities and forces on the ground to the wellbeing and rights of Palestinians, no matter how young or vulnerable,” B’Tselem spokesman Amit Gilutz said.
“The youngest boy from yesterday’s incident is eight years old,” he added.
The children, whose ages range from eight to 13, were held for about five hours
at a police station in the settlement of Kiryat Arba, according to Gaby Lasky, a human rights lawyer who is representing them. The two eldest, who are 12 and 13, were ordered to return next week for more questioning as, under Israeli military law, they are deemed old enough to face charges. . .
. . . According to Defense for Children International, Israel prosecutes between 500 and 700 Palestinian children in military courts each year. Prisoners’ rights group Addameer has said 140 Palestinian children are currently imprisoned by Israel.
Click here to read the entire article.
Why is Facebook Censoring My Wife’s Comments About Israel?
Recently, one of Terry’s (my wife) Facebook posts was flagged and deleted for violating Facebook’s content policies.
Her censored comment advocated for Palestinian human rights in the Israeli occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. She noted that it was the Israeli government, not the occupied Palestinians, who were regularly committing acts of terrorism.
That particular political observation is no longer permitted by the Facebook censorship policies — which we all know are expanding rapidly.
It’s more evidence of the power of the pro-Israel lobby in this country which would love to censor ALL criticism of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinian people living under its control.
Fortunately, the Jewish-led, Palestinian rights organization called Jewish Voice for Peace has begun a campaign on Facebook aimed at combating the Israel Lobby’s dangerous, anti-first amendment influence online.
They call it, “Facebook We Have to Talk: On Distinguishing Anti-Semitism from Anti-Zionism in Public Spaces.” Below is an excerpt:
In January 2021, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) announced a global campaign “Facebook, we need to talk” about the social media giant’s inquiry into whether criticism of the movement Zionism “falls within the rubric of hate speech as per Facebook’s Community Standards.”
In its current form, the controversy centers around forcing universities, social media platforms, and other public spaces to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) standard which defines current anti-Semitism to include “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “applying double standards” to Israel, overall a definition that would essentially shut down any criticism of the Zionist state.
According to Lara Friedman, the goal of Zionist groups who are pushing for this action “isn’t to get Facebook to deplatform antisemitism, but to get Facebook to deplatform criticism of Israel.”
In response, hundreds of activists, intellectuals and artists from around the world have launched a petition to ensure that Facebook does not include “Zionist” as a protected category in its hate speech policy—“that is, to treat ‘Zionist’ as a proxy for “Jew or “Jewish.” In its first 24 hours, the open letter gathered over 14,500 signatures, including such figures as Hanan Ashrawi, Norita Cortiñas, Wallace Shawn and Peter Gabriel.
“Cooperating with the Israeli government’s request,” the petition notes, “would undermine efforts to dismantle antisemitism, deprive Palestinians of a crucial venue for expressing their political viewpoints to the world, and help the Israeli government avoid accountability for its violations of Palestinian rights.”
The ICC Opens Investigation into Israeli War Crimes
Juan Cole has a new article at his news site, Informed Comment, discussing
the recent decision by the International Criminal Court to investigate numerous charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity made against Israel.
I examine these issues in my new book, tentatively titled, Like Birds in a Cage: How Bad Bible-Reading Leads Christian Zionists to Collaborate in Israeli War Crimes and Palestinian Suffering (Cascade, forthcoming).
Israel’s defensive public relations campaign is already in full swing, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others unleashing the now standard canard of accusing such investigations as expressions of antisemitic hatred.
This action by the ICC is an important first step that needed to happen years ago. What will come of it is anyone’s guess.
But I know this: Christians must stand on the side of justice and oppose all oppressors. That means that God’s people must stand with the Palestinian people while condemning Israeli racism and apartheid.
Here is professor Cole’s article:
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Friday, the International Criminal Court found that it had jurisdiction to consider war crimes and crimes against humanity and the crime of Apartheid in the Palestinian territories.
Israeli politician Abba Eban once quipped that Palestinians never lost the opportunity to lose an opportunity. But Palestinians have carefully, methodically created this opportunity to be heard in an international tribunal. It is the ruling Israeli right wing about which one can now quip about missing opportunities.
Israel has egregiously violated the 1949 Geneva Convention on the treatment of people in Occupied territories by flooding its own citizens into the Palestinian Territories, by stealing Palestinian land from its owners and building squatter settlements on it, and by using disproportional force against Palestinian demonstrators at the Gaza border.
The court will also look into war crimes by Hamas, which was elected in 2006 and retains control of the Gaza Strip.
It has been impossible for anyone to stop Israel’s repeated and serious crimes against the Palestinians because the United States backs them to the hilt and is deeply implicated itself in keeping Palestinians stateless. (The “two-state solution” long since became geographically impossible, and invoking it and an alleged “peace process,” as the Biden administration does, is just a way of keeping the Palestinians from enjoying any human rights).
Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu cynically called the ruling “anti-Semitic,” in the ultimate debasement of a term that has otherwise been central to human rights struggles.
Filistin al-Yawm (Palestine Today) quotes Rami Abdu, head of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor as saying that the International Criminal Court announcement that it has jurisdiction over the Palestinian Territories represents a victory, won by many sacrifices, for justice, freedom and ethical values in the world. It is, he said, the fruit of a Palestinian struggle that has lasted decades to win recognition of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.
As a result, he said, Palestinian victims of Israeli war crimes from various generations will gain the right to seek justice after decades of occupation and to see the perpetrators tried in the Hague. He cautioned, however, that “The decision does not mean the end of the road, and the task will not be easy. The hope is that the Biden administration will adopt a different course from its predecessor, and will refrain from putting any pressure on the court.”
In spring of 2020, Trump declared a national emergency as a pretext for being able to target justices and staff of the International Criminal Court with sanctions because they were looking into alleged crimes by US military personnel in Afghanistan. These outrageous and ineffectual sanctions have been lifted by the Biden administration.
The International Criminal Court was established by the Rome Statute circulated to UN member states in the late 1990s and finalized in 2002. The United States and Israel refused to sign or to recognize the court’s jurisdiction. Some 123 countries have, however, ratified the treaty and so incorporated it into their national law.
The court can take up cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and Apartheid committed by officials in the signatory states. It can apply sanctions to individuals in those governments after trying them. It does not sanction states but individuals. So far its cases have been entirely from Africa.
But the court’s hands are usually tied with regard to non-signatory governments. It cannot move against their officials unless the United Nations Security Council forwards a case to them. Thus, when the murderous regime of Muammar Gaddafi attacked civilians in winter-spring of 2011 during the Arab Spring youth revolt, the Security Council referred the case to the ICC. Its justices considered evidence against Muammar Gaddafi and his son Saif Gaddafi, as well as interior minister Abdullah Sanusi. Arrest warrants were issued by the court for these individuals on June 27, 2011.
The State of Palestine led by Mahmoud Abbas had little hope of the US Security Council asking the ICC to look into Israeli war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza, since the United States almost always uses its veto to protect Israeli officials from sanctions for their illegal occupation policies in the Palestinian Territories that they grabbed beginning in 1967.
The Palestinian David very carefully and with foresight therefore moved to join the International Criminal Court. The first obstacle they faced is that court members have to be members of the United Nations. Since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the eclipse of Labor in favor of the far, far right Likud and its offshoots, Israel’s policy against the Palestinian people has been predicated on preventing Palestinians from ever having a state. They are to be kept stateless and deprived of the basic human rights that come with citizenship in a state.
So, Palestine sought the same status at the U.N. as is enjoyed by the Vatican, of
permanent observer state. The General Assembly can grant this status, and did so for Palestine in 2012. Permanent observer states cannot vote, but they are not voiceless and can attend sessions. Palestine’s prerogatives were expanded in 2019 when the Group of 77 at the UN elected it their chairman that year.
In 2015, the state of Palestine (as the UN calls it) acceded to the International Criminal Court and recognized its jurisdiction in the Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem.
This is like three dimensional chess on the part of the Palestinians. Because they now have what is called in the law “standing.” They are a permanent observer state at the UN and they are signatories to the Rome Statute.
Now just one step was left, which was to take to the ICC those Israeli officials operating in the Palestinian Territories in such a way as to violate the Rome Statute. Palestine did not hurry to do so, hoping that the government of Binyamin Netanyahu would see the legal peril and become more reasonable. But Netanyahu kept stealing their land and urging Trump to cut their funding (which he did), and by 2019 the Palestinians concluded that they had nothing left to lose by filing a claim.
The ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, declared a delay while she sought reassurances that the court had jurisdiction over Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
A little over a year later, she has been assured that it does, given the recognition of the Palestine Authority as the government of those region in the Oslo Accords.
As Mr. Abdu said, this step is more the beginning of something rather than its end. Netanyahu will attempt to obstruct the workings of the court. But this is a great day for the international rule of law, and all believers in human rights should rejoice.
Israel and Sheldon Adelson: Another Example of How Money Influences US Foreign Policy
The Las Vegas casino billionaire, Sheldon Adelson, died on January 11, 2021.
Adelson (and his Israeli born wife) was a fanatical political Zionist who, sadly, was the living embodiment of the old antisemitic slander that Jews all secretly loved Israel more than their country of residence.
Occasionally, caricatures — even slanderous caricatures — can be true.
The day after Adelson’s death Alex Kane of The Intercept published an article entitled, “Sheldon Adelson’s Fortune Helped Turn the GOP Into the Party of Israeli Apartheid.”
YES. Israel is an apartheid state.
Israeli apartheid is not limited to the Occupied Territories.
Apartheid reigns within Israel’s recognized borders as well.
Israel is NOT “the only democracy in the Middle East” because Israel is not
a democracy.
As I show in my forthcoming book exposing the many errors of Christian Zionism, Israel is actually an extremely rigid ethnocracy. That is, a hierarchical state where one ethnic group (Jews) exercises the legal privilege of systematically discriminating against everyone else in the state (primarily Palestinians).
This is much more than a story about Adelson’s control over the Republican party. It is an expose in how big money donors, CEOs, and corporations are able to control American politics, including our foreign policy.
Below is an excerpt from Kane’s article, or you can read the entire piece by clicking on the title above:
WITH THE death of 87-year-old billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, the Republican Party has lost its biggest benefactor.
Adelson’s legacy, however, will live on for generations, not only in his Israeli-born wife Miriam, who is expected to continue giving millions of dollars to the Republican Party, but in the shape of the U.S.-Israel relationship, Adelson’s top concern. “I’m a one-issue person. That issue is Israel,” Adelson said in 2017.
More than anyone else, Adelson can claim credit for transforming the GOP into a party devoted to bolstering Israel’s military occupation and its expansion of West Bank settlements. And the Israeli
right, also bankrolled by Adelson, saw many of its political aspirations realized under Donald Trump’s presidency, a political turn that has fractured the long-standing bipartisan consensus on the Jewish state.
Adelson’s most important political conviction was that the Israeli right must be supported. The 19th-richest American used his $35 billion fortune to ensure that the GOP’s policy goals united with the Israeli right’s. In a 2010 speech, Adelson, a U.S. Army veteran, lamented that “the uniform that I wore in the military, unfortunately, was not an Israeli uniform.” He added: “All we care about is being good Zionists, being good citizens of Israel, because even though I am not Israeli-born, Israel is in my heart.”
As for the Palestinians, Adelson saw them as an invented nation and nothing more than a political obstacle. “The purpose of the existence of Palestinians is to destroy Israel,” he said in remarks made in 2014 at an Israeli-American Council conference. During that same appearance, Adelson dismissed concerns about whether Israeli democracy can coexist while Israel rules millions of Palestinians who have no voting rights. So Israel won’t be a democratic state, so what?” he said. . .
. . . FROM 2008 TO 2016, Adelson opposed President Barack Obama at every turn, backing John McCain and Mitt Romney’s failed attempts at defeating him and bankrolling the groups that fiercely wanted to defeat Obama’s Iran policies. In 2013, Adelson suggested that Obama launch a nuclear strike on Iran. Obama instead pursued his landmark nuclear deal with Iran, which he sealed in 2015.
But Adelson’s crowning achievements were yet to come. During the 2016
presidential primary, after all the GOP candidates traipsed to Las Vegas to meet with the casino magnate as part of what’s known as the “Adelson primary,” Adelson appeared to back Sen. Marco Rubio, a foreign policy hawk thought to be a top contender for winning the nomination. The casino magnate was said to be wary of Trump, who had demurred on whether he backed Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital in a speech to the Adelson-backed Republican Jewish Coalition. For his part, Trump, in October 2015, mocked Rubio for being Adelson’s “perfect little puppet.”
. . . Adelson wanted Trump to torpedo diplomacy with Iran; Trump backed out of the Iran deal in May 2018. Adelson believed the U.S. Embassy should move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; Trump did so, also in May 2018. (In September 2020, Adelson bought the U.S ambassador’s beach-view residence in the affluent Israeli city of Herzliya near Tel Aviv for $67 million, ensuring that the next U.S. ambassador won’t have a place to live near the old location of the U.S. Embassy.) Adelson wanted the U.S. to legitimize Israel’s policy of building settlements in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem; Trump did so in January 2019, reversing long-standing bipartisan U.S. policy that saw settlements as illegitimate obstacles to peace because they make a geographically viable Palestinian state impossible.