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Washington Post front page: Adelson demanded that Romney ‘join him in steadfast support of Israel’

On its front page today, the Washington Post has a personality profile of Sheldon Adelson that follows the money, and dispenses with the usual horse-manure that Adelson thinks Romney will be better on labor issues in his casinos. Nope, it’s all about Israel, and they cut the deal last spring. Just what we’ve been saying. Here’s the lead, by Marc Fisher:

When casino magnate Sheldon Adelson switched his support from Newt Gingrich to Mitt Romney during the spring primaries, the billionaire and the candidate were eager to shed their skepticism of each other. If Adelson was going to give a political campaign more money than anyone ever had, he wanted to be certain Romney would join him in steadfast support of Israel. And Romney, according to friends of both, sought assurance that Adelson wouldn’t embarrass him.

Since then, Adelson has joined Romney during the candidate’s visit to Israel this summer, attended presidential debates and gotten together with Romney so often that their wives have become friends, according to confidants of the two men.

There’s a lot in this piece about motivation, and ethnic resentment, and Israel being at the heart of that motivation:

Adelson is driven by the idea of Israel as a muscular riposte to the Holocaust. Based on his experience as a Jewish kid who would get insulted and roughed up in a tough Boston neighborhood, Adelson believes Jewish Americans should back an Israel that puts security first and resists compromise with Arabs who do not accept its existence.

“Israel is at the core of everything he does,” says Fred Zeidman, a friend of Adelson, fellow Romney backer and former chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

And Fisher links it with generational Jewish identity issues, involving the Holocaust and anti-Semitism in the U.S.:

As World War II raged across the ocean, in a neighborhood of south Boston that was home to more Jews than any American city outside New York, kids like Sheldon Adelson learned that being a Jew in America both put a target on their backs and gave them a blessed refuge.

Like other Jewish teens in Dorchester, young Sheldon was occasionally beaten up by Irish kids full of anti-Semitic vinegar. Yet he knew that millions of other Jews faced vastly worse enemies in Europe….

More about how deep/ancestral this ideology is:

When Adelson first visited the Holy Land, he wore his father’s shoes as he stepped off the plane so something of his father’s would be the first to touch the ground.

Oh, and Israel led him to leave the Democratic Party. Just as the neocons did in the 1970s. They’re pro-choice, pro-Israel. And which comes first?

Well into adulthood, he was a Democrat, making large donations to the party until 1996. The next year, he switched to the GOP.

“As Jews in Boston, no one voted Republican, because the Republicans were the establishment,” Leven says. “But Sheldon saw the Democrats becoming less passionate about Israel.”

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This is an interesting article. I was struck by oppositions it sets up.

For instance, it says “he has also undergone a political conversion, from a Massachusetts Democrat who considered Republicans to be the establishment that resisted newcomers like him, to a Nevada Republican who believes that his former party coddles the idle and has fallen captive to identity politics.”

It says ” his pattern of giving supports both his own business interests and more selfless pursuits” (such as ” $100 million he has given to Birthright Israel”) & medical research.

So, economic class is separated from identity politics and from ‘altruism’. What bothers me about these oppositions, is that it doesn’t show the parallels & connections between class & identity politics — blurring ways in which his upward mobility was similar to other immigrant groups, who suffered from ethnic marginalization & stigmatization (identity politics) that was all tied in with competition for scarce jobs & neighborhoods. Why were those “Irish” kids beating him up? Well, I lived in Boston & suburbs as a kid — the ‘ethnic’ labels on people & places — were tied in complex ways to the economics of class struggle in Boston. I would say the “IRish” kids were taking in lessons from their parents who were casting *their* struggles with WASP ‘establishment’ in partially ethnic terms. So, then, isn’t Adelson in similar way passing on the hurt & stigmas to the “Arabs” threatening Israel? The WashPo writer obscures race by speaking of ‘identity politics’ in last 2 decades — isn’t that really about African Americans & gays & women? So, isn’t there a parallel between Jewish immigrant & Irish kids struggling to move up the ladder & other folks whose ‘identity’ labels have marginalized them in multiple ways.

So much of what is described as “Jewish” experience sounds to me as typical *American* experience of immigrants & other marginalized groups moving into the center — What worries me, are narratives & frames that make the “Jewish” experience seem exceptional & which puts ‘identity’ into a separate realm from economic issues. (Or, is this a topic that violates the new standards for comments? :))

You meant to say I think “him to leave the DEMOCRATIC party” (you wrote the Republican party)

This is a terrific article, part of the reason why come to this site. Great catch, even better analysis of the piece. But I am confused:

Talking about Jewish culture/history is supposed to be offlimits by now according to the new commenting rules(yet what is the Holocaust and the cultural aftereffects it has had on the Jewish psyche, for some, so vividly in display on Mr. Adelson?) It’s a classic example of how parts of this issue is driven by culture and not by greed, accidents or “imperialism”. It’s driven by Jewish fear for many on the neocon right.

This piece clearly shows it, and great analysis to boot, but how can we debate it when we aren’t even allowed to broach the subject? Or are we? Very confusing.

“Israel is at the core of everything he does,” says Fred Zeidman

He doesn’t live in Israel, and he doesn’t do business in Israel. Other than that, it’s at the core of everything he does.

RE: “Adelson is driven by the idea of Israel as a muscular riposte to the Holocaust. Based on his experience as a Jewish kid who would get insulted and roughed up in a tough Boston neighborhood . . .” ~ the Washington Post

PETER GABRIEL, 1992:

Something in me, dark and sticky
All the time it’s getting strong
No way of dealing with this feeling
Can’t go on like this too long

[Chorus]
This time you’ve gone too far [x3]
I told you [x4]
This time you’ve gone too far [x3]
I told you [x4]

Don’t talk back
Just drive the car
Shut your mouth
I know what you are
Don’t say nothing
Keep your hands on the wheel
Don’t turn around
This is for real
Digging in the dirt
Stay with me, I need support
I’m digging in the dirt
To find the places I got hurt

Open up the places I got hurt . . .

Peter Gabriel – Digging In The Dirt [VIDEO, 05:30] – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0C3DHp36zc