The other night at Yeshiva University, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach introduced Sheldon Adelson as having the ear of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Adelson said that he has met often with the prime minister, and that a recent Wall Street Journal column by fellow-panelist Bret Stephens saying that Netanyahu was not willing to attack Iran without US support was wrong. Adelson compared Netanyahu to the former prime minister, Ehud Olmert.
Adelson: Knowing both men, my conclusion is very simple. Olmert is a political person. He will– his wind blows in the direction of the polls. Bibi is not a political person. Bibi’s wind blows in the direction of his ideology, and his deep and unwavering support and love for the Jewish people and the state of Israel. I am absolutely convinced that Bibi says what he means, means what he says, and if he says that Iran is an existential threat, he would not live, not only as just prime minister, he would not live to face these issues without taking some type of action.
Boteach asks, He’d act on his own if the U.S. doesn’t act?
Under the threat of harm or damage to the Jewish people or the state of Israel, in my opinion…. I’ve purposely never discussed it with him….I don’t want to know. I don’t want him to tell me or say he can’t tell me… But knowing him as well as we do, I’d say if it involves the security and safety of the Jewish people worldwide, not only just in Israel, and the state of Israel, he’d be prepared to walk on his head from Israel to the United States and back. He will do whatever it takes.
Boteach: So Bret’s column is wrong.
Completely. Maybe not completely. 98 percent. Not that we don’t think that Olmert is not a patriot. He is a patriot. But his patriotism extends sort of modified by the political considerations.
Anti-Zionists long contented that a problem with Zionism is that it creates dual loyalty, and suspicions about Jews in the countries where they are citizens, because of its definition of a “Jewish people” that transcends borders. Adelson gave Romney’s presidential campaign $30 million last year, and millions to Newt Gingrich. What did he want from them?
P.S. Adelson served in the US army.
I say, however difficult the described action is — it seems to entail the crossing of Bering Strait in winter — it falls short of taking an action independent from United States.
I was prepared to ask if Adelson should be aware that rattlesnakes do not live in Iran (being confined to Americas), but he seems to have cognitive problems that are much more profound.
I repeat that Israel is the biggest threat to Jewish wellbeing worldwide, and Adelson is its messenger. He puts the lives of Jews on the line by his agressive hatespeech. Who is supporting this outside the Chosen State and the US Congress?
“He is a patriot.”
Who do these “duals” pledge allegiance to??? What patriots are these?
“Bibi’s wind blows in the direction of his ideology, and his deep and unwavering support and love for the Jewish people and the state of Israel.”
Driving Israel under the bus does not strike me as loving behavior.
Feed Mama whiskey because she’s an alcoholic but don’t call it love .
old news-israel as the commodity,to traded as a unit of the jewish religion company
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/30/080630fa_fact_bruck?currentPage=all
the third-richest person in the United States, according to Forbes. He is fiercely opposed to a two-state solution; and he had contributed so generously to Bush’s reëlection campaign that he qualified as a Bush Pioneer. A short, rotund man, with sparse reddish hair and a pale countenance that colors when he is angered, Adelson protested to Bush that Rice was thinking of her legacy, not the President’s, and that she would ruin him if she continued to pursue this disastrous course. Then, as Adelson later told an acquaintance, Bush put one arm around his shoulder and another around that of his wife, Miriam, who was born in Israel, and said to her, “You tell your Prime Minister that I need to know what’s right for your people—because at the end of the day it’s going to be my policy, not Condi’s. But I can’t be more Catholic than the Pope.” (The White House denies this account.)
Perhaps this exchange contributed to a growing resolve on Adelson’s part to try to force the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, out of office. Adelson and Olmert had been friendly since the nineteen-nineties, when Olmert was a member of the hard-line Likud Party. Olmert became Prime Minister in January, 2006, following Ariel Sharon’s stroke. He, like Sharon, came to recognize the inexorability of Jewish-Arab demographic trends. Olmert declared that a two-state solution was the only way of preserving Israel as a democratic state with a Jewish majority, and he said that he was ready to negotiate with the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. Adelson saw Olmert’s actions as a betrayal of principle. He had long wanted to see the Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu returned as Prime Minister, but a revived peace process gave that goal new urgency.