Sheldon Adelson in the Wall Street Journal sees the same trend we’ve been pointing out for years: the leftwing base is getting educated on Israel and doesn’t like the special relationship. He was alarmed by the floor demonstration at the Democratic Convention when party leaders railroaded a platform plank calling Jerusalem the capital of Israel. Adelson:
So why did I leave the party? …[T]he truth is the Democratic Party has changed in ways that no longer fit with someone of my upbringing.
One obvious example is the party’s new attitude toward Israel. A sobering Gallup poll from last March asked: “Are your sympathies more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?” Barely 53% of Democrats chose Israel, the sole liberal democracy in the region. By contrast, an overwhelming 78% of Republicans sympathized with Israel.
Nowhere was this change in Democratic sympathies more evident than in the chilling reaction on the floor of the Democratic convention in September when the question of Israel’s capital came up for a vote. Anyone who witnessed the delegates’ angry screaming and fist-shaking could see that far more is going on in the Democratic Party than mere opposition to citing Jerusalem in their platform. There is now a visceral anti-Israel movement among rank-and-file Democrats, a disturbing development that my parents’ generation would not have ignored.
I’ve often said that Israel is the royal road to neoconservatism. Adelson left the Democrats for the same reason Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz turned on the party (back in the 70s)– not strong enough on Israel.
Sheldon Adelson, the casino mogul, and the current Israeli government make good bedfellows, as did Netanyahu and Mubarak. They are all cut from the same cloth but that cloth is now torn and full of holes.
In the 21st century, we are no longer prepared to accept neo-colonialism or Zionist imperialism. There are 5 million Palestinians who are still under the heel of this military regime that still holds thousands of political prisoners without trial. Gaza with its 1.6 million Arabs is now under its 6th year of an illegitimate blockade that seeks to effect a regime change under the pretext of stopping the importation of weapons. This from a secret nuclear state that is estimated to have a nuclear arsenal of up to 400 nuclear warheads all hidden from the UN’s IAEA inspectorate. This is the state that imports millions of dollars worth of weaponry every year. This is the state that offers financial inducements to its citizens to leave their homes in Israel and settle illegally on Arab land in order to frustrate the will of the UN in the establishment of a Palestinian state for the oldest and largest indigenous people of the region.
This is the state that claims, tongue in cheek, to be the only democracy in the Middle East! I think that the Democratic Party is well rid of Mr Adelson.
I wonder what his parents’ generation would do, ethnic-cleanse the Democrats? This dude seems a sack of money crowned with a cloud of nonsense. Isn’t it time to separate different concepts? I mean, this is sick “Israelism”. Nothing to do with Judaism and/or Jewish identity.
Thanks Phil. The divergence between the liberal rank-and-file who, as you say, are getting educated on I/P and losing patience with the “special relationship” and the Democratic Party leadership (e.g. Debbie Wasserman Schultz) who envision Israel and the US as conjoined Siamese twins is fascinating. It is a grassroots movement within the Democratic party. Maybe this will result in migration of the frustrated activist rank-and-file leftward into the open arms of the Justice or the Green Party. The latter party calls for a single, secular democracy in I/P based on equal human rights. (See for example item E.2.h. in the Green Party platform).
Sheldon Adelson grew up without a lot of money, but in recent decades he hasn’t consorted with any rank and file people of any sort. He consorts mainly with his fellow billionaires.
As others at Mondoweiss point out, Israel isn’t really a democracy, and it got even less democratic recently when the mainstream-conservative newspaper Maariv went bankrupt, trying to compete with Adelson’s Israel HaYom newspaper, a right-wing rag distributed for free (in Hebrew, a language that Adelson doesn’t understand). It’s hard to compete with free product.
Adelson’s only good side is that he’s surprisingly ineffective politically, consider the astounding sums of money he’s giving away. Ten million dollars to Gingrich? Totally wasted! Etc.
Adelson donates to ZOA and not AIPAC because AIPAC is not extreme enough for him.
Adelson has made a LOT of enemies over the years, including business rivals.
His wealth may allow him to think that he’s immune to the problems of mere mortals. But…Michael Millken went to jail. Martha Stewart went to jail. Ken Lay went to jail. Leona Helmsley went to jail.
RE: “A sobering Gallup poll from last March asked: ‘Are your sympathies more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?’ Barely 53% of Democrats chose Israel, the sole liberal democracy in the region.” – an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal supposedly written by Sheldon Adelson
MY QUESTION/COMMENT: Are we expected to believe that a man like Sheldon Adelson who fiercely opposes labor unions nonetheless supports liberal democracies (one of which is certainly not Likud-run Israel)?
I wonder who really wrote this propagandistic screed.
P.S. “FREE DON” SIEGELMAN PETITION – http://www.change.org/petitions/president-obama-please-restore-justice-and-pardon-my-dad