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COMMENT: In our dis­cus­sions of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work, the pro­gram notes that the net­work has long made a point of uti­liz­ing Jews. (A syn­op­tic overview of the Bor­mann net­work can be found in the descrip­tion for FTR #305.)

Using Jews as pri­ma­ry oper­a­tives has a num­ber of advan­tages: it pro­vides an excel­lent cov­er for a Nazi mon­ey-laun­der­ing oper­a­tion; the cap­i­tal derived for the state of Israel helps to assure con­nivance and silence on the part of the Israeli author­i­ties with regard to the exis­tence of the Bor­mann net­work and the Under­ground Reich; peo­ple can point to the great wealth of Bor­mann Jews and blame eco­nom­ic dis­tress on them, sim­i­lar to the Inter­net chat­ter gen­er­at­ed by the col­lapse of Bernard Mad­of­f’s Ponzi scheme.

It turns out that Ben­jamin Netanyahu and close asso­ciates–“Team Netanyahu,” if you will–appear to have an ongo­ing sweet­heart deal with ThyssenK­rupp Marine Sys­tems to pro­vide war­ships for the Israeli Navy. (We have talked about the pro­found links between the Thyssen inter­ests, the Bor­mann group and the Bush fam­i­ly in numer­ous pro­grams and posts, includ­ing FTR #‘s 273, 332, 370, 435 and 894.)

Note that ThyssenK­rupp Marine Sys­tems sub­con­tract­ed busi­ness for Israeli war­ship deals to a Lebanese-con­trolled firm Priv­in­vest. Such firms are char­ac­ter­is­tic of Bor­mann group busi­ness enti­ties.

Recall, also, that the Netanyahu fam­i­ly has been very close to Vladimir Jabotin­sky, the prog­en­i­tor of the Betar, arguably the most impor­tant of the fas­cist ele­ments with­in the Zion­ist move­ment.

We ana­lyze the oper­a­tions of Shel­don Adel­son, the Las Vegas-based casi­no mogul who was (in the 2012 cam­paign) both the sin­gle biggest con­trib­u­tor to the GOP and the most impor­tant finan­cial backer of Ben­jamin Netanyahu. We have not­ed in the past that both the GOP and the Likud sent rep­re­sen­ta­tives to the nation­al con­gress of the Ital­ian Allean­za Nazionale, the Ital­ian fas­cist par­ty. 

The Likud/Netanyahu/Sheldon Adel­son influ­ence cre­ates a sit­u­a­tion that plays per­fect­ly into Nazi and Islamist pro­pa­gan­da, set­ting the stage for the incul­ca­tion of young peo­ple with an anti-Semit­ic view­point mas­querad­ing as “anti-Zion­ist.”

A key to under­stand­ing pol­i­tics is “fol­low the mon­ey.” In Israel, as in most places, there has been an enor­mous con­cen­tra­tion of wealth. Rough­ly 20 indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions con­trol the coun­try.

It is no acci­dent that both the GOP and the Likud sent rep­re­sen­ta­tives to the con­gress of Gian­fran­co Fini’s Allean­za Nazionale in the late ’90s.

Much of Adel­son’s finan­cial largesse comes from his Macao-based casi­no invest­ments. Macao was a for­mer Por­tugese colony that was the focal point of huge gold ship­ments by the Third Reich dur­ing the clos­ing phas­es of the war and also of Gold­en Lily loot accu­mu­lat­ed by the Japan­ese. It would be dif­fi­cult to imag­ine a bet­ter vehi­cle for laun­der­ing large amounts of clan­des­tine Axis loot than gam­bling casi­nos.

Anoth­er fac­tor to be con­sid­ered  is the fact that Por­tu­gal under Anto­nio Salazar was sim­i­lar (although not as well known) to Fran­cis­co Fran­co’s fas­cist regime in Spain. Salazar was also a fas­cist, although offi­cial­ly neu­tral. Macau was an ide­al place for the “off­shoring” of Axis loot.

Adel­son’s Las Vegas base of oper­a­tions is also worth con­sid­er­ing in con­nec­tion with the Mos­sack Fon­se­ca oper­a­tions. One of their pri­ma­ry sub­sidiary orga­ni­za­tions was in Neva­da.

There was a recent full-page ad in the New York Times by numer­ous for­mer chiefs of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, heads of both Shin-Bet (Israel’s mil­i­tary intel­li­gence agency) and Mossad (Israel’s civil­ian for­eign intel­li­gence ser­vice) crit­i­ciz­ing Israeli pol­i­cy in this regard in strong terms.

http://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/2016/07/israeli-military-and-intelligence.html

One termed the fail­ure to arrive at a two-state solu­tion “an exis­ten­tial threat.” There were five or six of EACH! They could not be called anti-Semi­tes, nor dis­missed as “self-hat­ing Jews.”

Ehud Barak–former Prime Min­is­ter and Defense Min­is­ter of Israel and its most dec­o­rat­ed veteran–recently not­ed that “the seeds of fas­cism” have been sown in Israel.

The deputy chief of the Israel Defense Force said–on Holo­caust Rem­brance Day, no less–that what hap­pened in Europe in the 1930s was hap­pen­ing in Israel now. Nei­ther he nor Barak can be char­ac­ter­ized as anti-Semi­tes, nor “self-hat­ing Jews.”

The best thing for the Under­ground Reich is to main­tain the sit­u­a­tion as is, with young peo­ple–includ­ing well-edu­cat­ed young peo­ple, increas­ing­ly sus­cep­ti­ble to the “Inter­na­tion­al Jew­ish Con­spir­a­cy” meme.

We note, in pass­ing, that the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Jews in Bor­mann enter­pris­es will play effec­tive­ly into the meme that “the Jews con­trol all the money”–a major theme of Nazi pro­pa­gan­da and one that sur­vives and is thriv­ing today. ” . . . . So much empha­sis is placed on select Jew­ish par­tic­i­pa­tion in Bor­mann com­pa­nies that when Adolf Eich­mann was seized and tak­en to Tel Aviv to stand tri­al, it pro­duced a shock wave in the Jew­ish and Ger­man com­mu­ni­ties of Buenos Aires. Jew­ish lead­ers informed the Israeli author­i­ties in no uncer­tain terms that this must nev­er hap­pen again because a rep­e­ti­tion would per­ma­nent­ly rup­ture rela­tions with the Ger­mans of Latin Amer­i­ca, as well as with the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion, and cut off the flow of Jew­ish mon­ey to Israel. It nev­er hap­pened again, and the pur­suit of Bor­mann qui­et­ed down at the request of these Jew­ish lead­ers. . . .”

We also note, in pass­ing, that con­tin­ued U.S. mil­i­tary cam­paigns against Mus­lims, Arabs and Ira­ni­ans and/or Iran­ian-backed Shi­ite Mus­lims also plays effec­tive­ly into “The Jews con­trol Amer­i­ca” and are, there­fore, killing Arabs/Iranians/Muslims on behalf of the Jews, who run Amer­i­ca.

In 200 years, we fear, Hitler’s birth­day will be cel­e­brat­ed as an inter­na­tion­al hol­i­day. It will be said that “Yes, Hitler went too far, but he was just try­ing to save Ger­many from expe­ri­enc­ing the fate that befell the Unit­ed States.”

This, after the U.S. has been brought low by a series of WMD ter­ror­ist and/or cyber-ter­ror­ist attacks by Al-Qae­da, ISIS or oth­er Mus­lim Broth­er­hood linked and/or inspired ter­ror­ist groups. (Prob­a­bly assist­ed by Nazi/White suprema­cist ele­ments.) They will ratio­nal­ize this in their PR com­miniques after the acts have been com­mit­ted as strik­ing back at the inter­na­tion­al Zion­ist con­spir­a­cy.

1a. Bor­man­n’s busi­ness oper­a­tions have includ­ed Jew­ish par­tic­i­pants as a mat­ter of strate­gic intent. In turn, this has giv­en the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion con­sid­er­able influ­ence in Israel. 

Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile by Paul Man­ning; Lyle Stu­art [HC]; Copy­right 1981 by Paul Man­ning; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; pp.226–227.

. . . . Since the found­ing of Israel, the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many had paid out 85.3 bil­lion marks, by the end of 1977, to sur­vivors of the Holo­caust. East Ger­many ignores any such lia­bil­i­ty. From South Amer­i­ca, where pay­ment must be made with sub­tle­ty, the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion has made a sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tion. It has drawn many of the bright­est Jew­ish busi­ness­men into a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry role in the devel­op­ment of many of its cor­po­ra­tions, and many of these Jews share their pros­per­i­ty most gen­er­ous­ly with Israel. If their pro­pos­als are sound, they are even pro­vid­ed with a spe­cial­ly dis­pensed ven­ture cap­i­tal fund.

I spoke with one Jew­ish busi­ness­man in Hart­ford, Con­necti­cut. He had arrived there quite unknown sev­er­al years before our con­ver­sa­tion, but with Bor­mann mon­ey as his lever­age. Today he is more than a mil­lion­aire, a qui­et leader in the com­mu­ni­ty with a cer­tain share of his prof­its ear­marked, as always, for his ven­ture cap­i­tal bene­fac­tors. This has tak­en place in many oth­er instances across Amer­i­ca and demon­strates how Bor­man­n’s peo­ple oper­ate in the con­tem­po­rary com­mer­cial world, in con­trast to the fan­ci­ful non­sense with which Nazis are described in so much ‘lit­er­a­ture.’

So much empha­sis is placed on select Jew­ish par­tic­i­pa­tion in Bor­mann com­pa­nies that when Adolf Eich­mann was seized and tak­en to Tel Aviv to stand tri­al, it pro­duced a shock wave in the Jew­ish and Ger­man com­mu­ni­ties of Buenos Aires. Jew­ish lead­ers informed the Israeli author­i­ties in no uncer­tain terms that this must nev­er hap­pen again because a rep­e­ti­tion would per­ma­nent­ly rup­ture rela­tions with the Ger­mans of Latin Amer­i­ca, as well as with the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion, and cut off the flow of Jew­ish mon­ey to Israel. It nev­er hap­pened again, and the pur­suit of Bor­mann qui­et­ed down at the request of these Jew­ish lead­ers. He is resid­ing in an Argen­tine safe haven, pro­tect­ed by the most effi­cient Ger­man infra­struc­ture in his­to­ry as well as by all those whose pros­per­i­ty depends on his well-being. Per­son­al invi­ta­tion is the only way to reach him. . . .

1b. “Sub­ma­rine Case Is Haunt­ing Netanyahu at a Crit­i­cal Time” by Isabel Ker­sh­n­er; The New York Times; 2/8/2017.

Amid a swirl of police inves­ti­ga­tions and ethics probes envelop­ing Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu of Israel and his inner cir­cle, a bud­ding scan­dal over con­tracts for new sub­marines and oth­er war­ships appears to be gain­ing momen­tum as anoth­er poten­tial threat to his polit­i­cal future.

For weeks, the police have been car­ry­ing out an inquiry into the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Israeli con­tracts with a Ger­man ship­build­ing com­pa­ny for the pur­chase of sub­marines and new mis­sile ships that Mr. Netanyahu cham­pi­oned. His per­son­al lawyer, David Shim­ron, also rep­re­sents the Israeli agent for the com­pa­ny, which has led to accu­sa­tions of a con­flict of inter­est in con­tracts that involve bil­lions of dol­lars of busi­ness and the shape of Israel’s defense strat­e­gy.

Moshe Yaalon, whom Mr. Netanyahu oust­ed as defense min­is­ter last year and who was against adding the new sub­marines, is report­ed to have recent­ly giv­en tes­ti­mo­ny. . . .

. . . . Ini­tial­ly, Israel’s Chan­nel 10 tele­vi­sion report­ed a poten­tial link between the Ger­man ship­build­ing com­pa­ny, ThyssenK­rupp Marine Sys­tems, and Mr. Netanyahu through his per­son­al lawyer, Mr. Shim­ron.

Soon came more reports of the seem­ing­ly strange cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Israeli pro­cure­ments of oth­er war­ships. There was the sud­den can­cel­la­tion in 2014 of an in6ternational bid­ding process for the con­struc­tion of four mis­sile corvettes in favor of the same Ger­man ship­yard. The ships are meant to pro­tect Israel’s nat­ur­al gas rigs in the Mediter­ranean against threats, par­tic­u­lar­ly from Hezbol­lah, the Lebanese mil­i­tant orga­ni­za­tion.

In anoth­er twist, the firm sub­con­tract­ed by ThyssenK­rupp Marine Sys­tems to build the four mis­sile boats for Israel is con­trolled by Priv­in­vest, a hold­ing com­pa­ny reg­is­tered in Beirut, Lebanon—technically an ene­my of Israel’s.  The sub­con­trac­tor, Ger­man  Naval Yards Kiel, is list­ed on Privinest’s web­site as a mem­ber of its major inter­na­tion­al ship­build­ing group, which has a pres­ence in 40 coun­tries. . . .

. . . . Describ­ing the deci­sion-mak­ing process in a detailed time­line, the office attrib­uted the deci­sion to the For­eign Min­istry, the Defense Min­istry and the navy after the Ger­man gov­ern­ment offered a 27.5 per­cent dis­count.

Mr. Shim­ron con­firmed that he rep­re­sent­ed Michael Ganor, the Israeli agent of ThyssenK­rupp Marine Sys­tems, and has rep­re­sent­ed Mr. Ganor  “in cer­tain aspects of an agree­ment” relat­ed to Mr. Ganor’s con­sul­tan­cy for the Ger­man com­pa­ny. . . .

. . . . Mr. Mar­galit, a mem­ber of the par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee that approves bud­gets for mil­i­tary acqui­si­tions, was a tech­nol­o­gy entre­pre­neur before he entered pol­i­tics.

“I am used to hear­ing about big deals,” he said in a recent inter­view in his office at the Knes­set. “I devel­oped an ear for lis­ten­ing for when things add up and when they don’t.”

He said the ship­ping deals sound­ed “very fishy,” so he trav­eled to Ger­many in Decem­ber to do what he called some “due dili­gence.” On his return, he sent a let­ter to the attor­ney gen­er­al. In ti, he detailed the Lebanese con­nec­tion to the con­tract. And he assert­ed that anoth­er Priv­in­vest group mem­ber, Abu Dhabi Mar, has changed its name to Ger­man Naval Yards Kiel in 2015, while the deal with Israel was being for­mu­lat­ed, under pres­sure form three promi­nent Israelis who want­ed to obscure the com­pa­ny’s Arab own­er­ship. . . .

1c. “A Holo­caust Rem­brance Day to Remem­ber” by Adviv Ster­man; Times of Israel; 5/6/2016.

. . . . Yedio­th Ahronoth, Israel Hayom and Haaretz all rehash yesterday’s top sto­ry about a senior IDF offi­cer who seemed to com­pare some trends tak­ing place cur­rent­ly in Israeli soci­ety to the sit­u­a­tion in pre-war Ger­many.

“If there is some­thing that fright­ens me in the mem­o­ry of the Holo­caust, it is iden­ti­fy­ing hor­ri­fy­ing process­es that occurred in Europe… 70, 80 and 90 years ago and find­ing evi­dence of their exis­tence here in our midst, today, in 2016,” IDF Deputy Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Yair Golan said. But while Holo­caust Remem­brance Day had pre­vi­ous­ly pre­vent­ed the papers’ edi­tors of play­ing up the com­ments and stir­ring a fiery debate, now the gloves come off, and Golan is scru­ti­nized — or praised — with­out fil­ters. . . .

1d. “Is Fas­cism Ris­ing in Israel?” by Luke Bak­er [Reuters]; The Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor; 5/23/2016. 

For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Ehud Barak warns of “the seeds of fas­cism.” Moshe Arens, who served as defense min­is­ter three times, sees it as a turn­ing point in Israeli pol­i­tics and expects it to cause a “polit­i­cal earth­quake.”

The past five days have pro­duced tumult in Israeli pol­i­tics, since con­ser­v­a­tive Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu unex­pect­ed­ly turned his back on a deal to bring the cen­ter-left into his coali­tion and instead joined hands with far-right nation­al­ist Avig­dor Lieber­man, one of his most vir­u­lent crit­ics. . . .

. . . . The deci­sion to jet­ti­son Yaalon in favor of Lieber­man was all too much for Roni Daniel, a vet­er­an mil­i­tary affairs com­men­ta­tor on Chan­nel 2.

“I can­not urge my chil­dren to stay here, because it is a place that is not nice to be in,” he said in his monolog, going on to name a num­ber of far-right politi­cians. . . .

. . . . “What has hap­pened is a hos­tile takeover of the Israeli gov­ern­ment by dan­ger­ous ele­ments,” Ehud Barak, Israel’s most dec­o­rat­ed sol­dier and a for­mer defense min­is­ter fol­low­ing his spell as head of gov­ern­ment, told Chan­nel 10 TV.

Israel has been “infect­ed by the seeds of fas­cism,” he said, adding that it should be “a red light for all of us regard­ing what’s going on in the gov­ern­ment.” . . . .

2. “Israel’s Gild­ed Age” by Paul Krug­man; The New York Times; 3/16/2015/.

Why did Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu of Israel feel the need to wag the dog in Wash­ing­ton? For that was, of course, what he was doing in his anti-Iran speech to Con­gress. If you’re seri­ous­ly try­ing to affect Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy, you don’t insult the pres­i­dent and so obvi­ous­ly align your­self with his polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion.

No, the real pur­pose of that speech was to dis­tract the Israeli elec­torate with saber-rat­tling bom­bast, to shift its atten­tion away from the eco­nom­ic dis­con­tent that, polls sug­gest, may well boot Mr. Netanyahu from office in Tuesday’s elec­tion. But wait: Why are Israelis dis­con­tent­ed? After all, Israel’s econ­o­my has per­formed well by the usu­al mea­sures. It weath­ered the finan­cial cri­sis with min­i­mal dam­age. Over the longer term, it has grown more rapid­ly than most oth­er advanced economies, and has devel­oped into a high-tech­nol­o­gy pow­er­house. What is there to com­plain about?

The answer, which I don’t think is wide­ly appre­ci­at­ed here, is that while Israel’s econ­o­my has grown, this growth has been accom­pa­nied by a dis­turb­ing trans­for­ma­tion in the country’s income dis­tri­b­u­tion and soci­ety. Once upon a time, Israel was a coun­try of egal­i­tar­i­an ideals — the kib­butz pop­u­la­tion was always a small minor­i­ty, but it had a large impact on the nation’s self-per­cep­tion. And it was a fair­ly equal soci­ety in real­i­ty, too, right up to the ear­ly 1990s.

Since then, how­ev­er, Israel has expe­ri­enced a dra­mat­ic widen­ing of income dis­par­i­ties. Key mea­sures of inequal­i­ty have soared; Israel is now right up there with Amer­i­ca as one of the most unequal soci­eties in the advanced world. And Israel’s expe­ri­ence shows that this mat­ters, that extreme inequal­i­ty has a cor­ro­sive effect on social and polit­i­cal life. Con­sid­er what has hap­pened at either end of the spec­trum — the growth in pover­ty, on one side, and extreme wealth, on the oth­er.

Accord­ing to Lux­em­bourg Income Study data, the share of Israel’s pop­u­la­tion liv­ing on less than half the country’s medi­an income — a wide­ly accept­ed def­i­n­i­tion of rel­a­tive pover­ty — more than dou­bled, to 20.5 per­cent from 10.2 per­cent, between 1992 and 2010. The share of chil­dren in pover­ty almost quadru­pled, to 27.4 per­cent from 7.8 per­cent. Both num­bers are the worst in the advanced world, by a large mar­gin. And when it comes to chil­dren, in par­tic­u­lar, rel­a­tive pover­ty is the right con­cept. Fam­i­lies that live on much low­er incomes than those of their fel­low cit­i­zens will, in impor­tant ways, be alien­at­ed from the soci­ety around them, unable to par­tic­i­pate ful­ly in the life of the nation. Chil­dren grow­ing up in such fam­i­lies will sure­ly be placed at a per­ma­nent dis­ad­van­tage.

At the oth­er end, while the avail­able data — puz­zling­ly — don’t show an espe­cial­ly large share of income going to the top 1 per­cent, there is an extreme con­cen­tra­tion of wealth and pow­er among a tiny group of peo­ple at the top. And I mean tiny. Accord­ing to the Bank of Israel, rough­ly 20 fam­i­lies con­trol com­pa­nies that account for half the total val­ue of Israel’s stock mar­ket. The nature of that con­trol is con­vo­lut­ed and obscure, work­ing through “pyra­mids” in which a fam­i­ly con­trols a firm that in turn con­trols oth­er firms and so on.

Although the Bank of Israel is cir­cum­spect in its lan­guage, it is clear­ly wor­ried about the poten­tial this con­cen­tra­tion of con­trol cre­ates for self-deal­ing. Still, why is Israeli inequal­i­ty a polit­i­cal issue? Because it didn’t have to be this extreme.

You might think that Israeli inequal­i­ty is a nat­ur­al out­come of a high-tech econ­o­my that gen­er­ates strong demand for skilled labor — or, per­haps, reflects the impor­tance of minor­i­ty pop­u­la­tions with low incomes, name­ly Arabs and ultra­reli­gious Jews. It turns out, how­ev­er, that those high pover­ty rates large­ly reflect pol­i­cy choic­es: Israel does less to lift peo­ple out of pover­ty than any oth­er advanced coun­try — yes, even less than the Unit­ed States.

Mean­while, Israel’s oli­garchs owe their posi­tion not to inno­va­tion and entre­pre­neur­ship but to their fam­i­lies’ suc­cess in gain­ing con­trol of busi­ness­es that the gov­ern­ment pri­va­tized in the 1980s — and they arguably retain that posi­tion part­ly by hav­ing undue influ­ence over gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy, com­bined with con­trol of major banks. In short, the polit­i­cal econ­o­my of the promised land is now char­ac­ter­ized by harsh­ness at the bot­tom and at least soft cor­rup­tion at the top.

And many Israelis see Mr. Netanyahu as part of the prob­lem. He’s an advo­cate of free-mar­ket poli­cies; he has a Chris Christie-like pen­chant for liv­ing large at tax­pay­ers’ expense, while clum­si­ly pre­tend­ing oth­er­wise. So Mr. Netanyahu tried to change the sub­ject from inter­nal inequal­i­ty to exter­nal threats, a tac­tic those who remem­ber the Bush years should find com­plete­ly famil­iar. We’ll find out on Tues­day whether he suc­ceed­ed.

3a. “Is It Shel­don Adel­son’s World?” by Thomas Fried­man; The New York Times; 3/11/2015.

The sym­bol­ism was too pow­er­ful to ignore. As any­one who watched Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu’s speech last week in Con­gress knows, one of the peo­ple promi­nent­ly seat­ed in the House gallery was the casi­no mag­nate Shel­don Adel­son, a pri­ma­ry finan­cial backer of both the Repub­li­can Par­ty and Netanyahu.

As The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Col­by Itkowitz report­ed, at one point Adelson’s wife, Miri­am, acci­den­tal­ly knocked her purse off the House gallery rail­ing and it hit Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Brad Ash­ford, a Nebras­ka Demo­c­rat seat­ed below. The Post not­ed that Adel­son had giv­en $5 mil­lion to the G.O.P.’s Con­gres­sion­al Lead­er­ship Fund super PAC, which had spent $35,000 in a failed effort to defeat Ash­ford in his 2014 race against Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Lee Ter­ry. Ash­ford lat­er joked to The Oma­ha World-Her­ald: “I wish I’d opened the purse. Do you think she car­ries cash?”

We cer­tain­ly know that Mr. Adel­son does. And when it came to show­er­ing that cash on Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial hope­fuls and right-wing PACs try­ing to defeat Pres­i­dent Oba­ma (report­ed­ly $150 mil­lion in 2012), and on keep­ing Netanyahu and his Likud par­ty in office, no sin­gle bil­lion­aire-donor is more influ­en­tial than Shel­don. No mat­ter what his agen­da, it is trou­bling that one man, with a will­ing­ness and abil­i­ty to give away giant sums, can now tilt Israeli and Amer­i­can pol­i­tics his way at the same time.

Israel has much stricter laws on indi­vid­u­als donat­ing to polit­i­cal cam­paigns, so Adel­son got around that in 2007 by found­ing a free, give­away news­pa­per in Israel — Israel Hayom — whose sole pur­pose is to back Netanyahu, attack his ene­mies in pol­i­tics and the media, and enforce a far-right polit­i­cal agen­da to pre­vent any Israeli ter­ri­to­r­i­al com­pro­mise on the West Bank (which, in time, could under­mine Israel as a Jew­ish democ­ra­cy). [Walkin’ the Snake in Israel?–D.E.] Graph­i­cal­ly attrac­tive, Israel Hay­om is now the biggest cir­cu­la­tion dai­ly in Israel. Pre­cise­ly because it is free, it is putting a heavy strain on com­peti­tors, like Yediot and Haaretz, which both charge and are not pro-Netanyahu.

Adel­son then bought the most impor­tant news­pa­per of the reli­gious-nation­al­ist right in Israel, Makor Ris­hon, long con­sid­ered the main backer of Netanyahu’s biggest right-wing rival, Econ­o­my Min­is­ter Naf­tali Ben­nett. Last March, in an inter­view with Israel Army Radio after the Makor Ris­hon sale, Ben­nett said: “It sad­dens me. Israel Hay­om is not a news­pa­per. It is Prav­da. It’s the mouth­piece of one per­son, the prime min­is­ter.

At every junc­tion point, every point of fric­tion between the nation­al inter­est and the inter­est of the prime min­is­ter, they chose the side of the prime min­is­ter.” The Wash­ing­ton Post said that last Novem­ber at a con­fer­ence of the Israel Amer­i­can Coun­cil, a lob­by­ing group Adel­son has fund­ed, he joked in a pub­lic dis­cus­sion with a wealthy Israeli: “Why don’t you and I go after The New York Times?” Told it was fam­i­ly owned, Adel­son quipped, “There is only one way to fight it: mon­ey.”

At this same con­fer­ence Adel­son was quot­ed as say­ing that Israel would not be able to sur­vive as a democ­ra­cy: “So Israel won’t be a demo­c­ra­t­ic state,” he added. “So what?”

Last March in Las Vegas Adel­son orga­nized his own pri­vate Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry. Politi­co wrote at the time: “Adel­son sum­moned [Jeb] Bush and Govs. Chris Christie of New Jer­sey, John Kasich of Ohio and Scott Walk­er of Wis­con­sin to Las Vegas. ... The new big-mon­ey polit­i­cal land­scape — in which a hand­ful of donors can dra­mat­i­cal­ly alter a cam­paign with just a check or two.” When Christie, in his speech before Adel­son, described the West Bank as “occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries,” some Repub­li­can Jews in the audi­ence were appalled. So, Politi­co report­ed, Christie hasti­ly arranged a meet­ing with Adel­son to explain that he had mis­spo­ken and that he was a true friend of Israel. “The New Jer­sey gov­er­nor apol­o­gized in a pri­vate meet­ing in the casi­no mogul’s Venet­ian office short­ly after­ward,” Politi­co report­ed.

It said Adel­son “accept­ed” Christie’s “expla­na­tion” and “quick apol­o­gy.” When mon­ey in pol­i­tics gets this big, when it can make elect­ed offi­cials bow and scrape in two dif­fer­ent coun­tries at the same time, it is trou­bling. I’m sure Adel­son cares deeply about Israel, but he lacks any sense of lim­its in how he exer­cis­es his extra­or­di­nary finan­cial pow­er — pow­er he is using to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly push Israel and Amer­i­ca toward elim­i­nat­ing any two-state solu­tion between Israelis and Pales­tini­ans, toward defund­ing the Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty and toward a con­fronta­tion with Iran, not a diplo­mat­ic solu­tion.

Peo­ple need to know this. The most impor­tant bonds between Israel and Amer­i­ca always emerged from the bot­tom up — a mutu­al respect between two democ­ra­cy-lov­ing peo­ples. Mon­ey can’t buy those bonds, but it can threat­en them by going to excess — by tak­ing Israel’s true good will in Amer­i­ca and using it to help one par­ty “stick it” to the pres­i­dent, one big donor dri­ve his extreme agen­da, one par­ty appear more pro-Israel than the oth­er for elec­toral rea­sons or one Israeli politi­cian win re-elec­tion. Peo­ple who go “all the way” like this will one day go over a cliff. They will regret it. So will the rest of us.

3b. “Shel­don Adel­son Bets It All” by Matt Isaacs; Moth­er Jones; April/2016.

. . . . Adel­son has used his for­tune to reshape right-wing pol­i­tics in both Amer­i­ca and Israel, estab­lish­ing him­self as a GOP king­mak­er in the post-Cit­i­zens Unit­ed era. In Decem­ber, he backed a secre­tive $140 mil­lion pur­chase of the Review-Jour­nal, putting Nevada’s largest paper in the hands of its rich­est res­i­dent and a fix­ture of its biggest indus­try, and increas­ing his influ­ence on Nevada’s ear­ly pres­i­den­tial cau­cus­es. . . .

. . . . All this is why Jacobs’ case, due to go to tri­al in June, is so sig­nif­i­cant: The pro­tract­ed lit­i­ga­tion has illu­mi­nat­ed just how Adel­son built one of the world’s largest for­tunes through his casi­nos in Macau—a Chi­nese ter­ri­to­ry rife with cor­rup­tion where, Jacobs’ law­suit alleges, Adel­son not only tol­er­at­ed, but some­times even encour­aged, ille­gal and uneth­i­cal acts. . . .

4. Gold Warriors–America’s Secret Recov­ery of Yamashita’s Gold; by Ster­ling Sea­grave and Peg­gy Sea­grave; pp. 52–53.

 . . . .  Nazi Ger­many typ­i­cal­ly laun­dered loot­ed gold and non-mon­e­tary gold by re-smelt­ing it and cast­ing it into bars that were hall­marked with black eagle swastikas, num­bered in keep­ing with stan­dard prac­tice of the Reichs­bank. This gold was moved to banks in Switzer­land, Swe­den, Por­tu­gal or Argenti­na. Japan used the same tech­niques, mov­ing gold through Swiss banks in Tokyo, Por­tugese banks in Macao, and banks in Chile and Argenti­na. When gold was phys­i­cal­ly moved to those coun­tries it was car­ried by large car­go sub­marines.

As a cen­ter of the world’s unof­fi­cial gold trade, Macao was enriched. When the Allies got togeth­er at the Bret­ton Woods Con­fer­ence in 1944 to put a stop to the laun­der­ing of Nazi and Japan­ese war loot through neu­tral coun­tries, Por­tu­gal some­how for­got to include Macao on the list, and nobody drew atten­tion to the over­sight. As his­to­ri­an Bertil Lint­ner not­ed: “Macao mer­chants were soon buy­ing gold abroad at $35 an ounce from banks, ship­ping it back to the enclave and sell­ing it at a pre­mi­um to who­ev­er want­ed to buy it. The syn­di­cate was led by Ho Yin, an Over­seas Chi­nese who had fled from Guang­dong to sit out the war.” Macao was a wartime haven for rich Over­seas Chi­nese who enlarged their for­tunes by pre­cious met­al trad­ing. The only sig­nif­i­cant source of gold at the time was Japan­ese plun­der. In the Chi­na Seas, only Japan­ese banks were open for busi­ness. Macao pawn­shops,  bro­kers, and pri­vate cit­i­zens made for­tunes turn­ing hard cur­ren­cies into gold for the Japan­ese. At war’s end, when colo­nial author­i­ties returned, Macao mil­lion­aires were able to use the colo­nial cur­ren­cy they had acquired to buy the most desir­able land, build­ings, and fac­to­ries at knock-down prices.

Some of Hirohito’s per­son­al wealth was laun­dered through Macao, the rest through Swiss banks in Tokyo. Jour­nal­ist Paul Man­ning, who had a chance to review some of Hirohito’s finan­cial records at the end of the war, when they were in the cus­tody of U.S. Occu­pa­tion author­i­ties, saw that the emperor’s per­son­al assets began to be moved abroad to neu­tral havens at the end of 1943, prepar­ing for the inevitable defeat. Privy Seal Kido called a meet­ing of Japan’s lead­ing bankers, who were also the emperor’s finan­cial advi­sors. On their rec­om­men­da­tion, funds were trans­ferred fro Tokyo to Switer­land, vir­tu­al­ly emp­ty­ing Hirohito’s cash reserves in Tokyo. Nazi gold, which had been moved to the Swiss accounts of Yoko­hama Specie Bank to pay for pur­chas­es from Japan, also were trans­ferred to Hriohito’s accounts in Switzer­land. At the same time, Kido moved oth­er impe­r­i­al gold reserves to Argenti­na by sub, and to Macao, where it was sold for hard cur­ren­cies, and this mon­ey was then moved to Switzer­land by bank trans­fer. . . .

5. Gold Warriors—America’s Secret Recov­ery of Yamashita’s Gold; by Ster­ling Sea­grave and Peg­gy Sea­grave; p. 91.

. . . .In one instance, Amer­i­can agents in Switzer­land watched 280 trucks of Nazi gold move from Ger­many across France and Spain to the safe haven of neu­tral Por­tu­gal. Owned by pri­vate Swiss firms, the trucks were paint­ed with the Swiss cross, allow­ing the gold to be moved under ‘neu­tral’ cov­er. . . .

. . . . .The prob­lem of how to deal with plun­dered trea­sure, and what to do with Axis gold after the war, was dis­cussed in July 1944 when forty-four nations met at the resort at Bre­ton Woods, New Hamp­shire, to plan the post-war econ­o­my. These dis­cus­sions, some of them extreme­ly secret, revealed the flaws and loop­holes that exist­ed in the inter­na­tion­al finan­cial sys­tem, mak­ing any clear-curt res­o­lu­tion unlike­ly. Among the del­e­gates, trust was far from uni­ver­sal.  Many of them believed that the Bank of Inter­na­tion­al Set­tle­ments was secret­ly laun­der­ing Nazi loot.  That dis­trust set the tone.  Among oth­er things, the Bre­ton Woods agree­ment (as it was made pub­lic) set a fixed price for gold at $35 an ounce, and banned the impor­ta­tion of gold to Amer­i­ca for per­son­al use. Neu­tral coun­tries that signed the pact promised not to know­ing­ly keep stolen gold and oth­er loot­ed assets, but Por­tu­gal for­got to include Macao in the list of its depen­dent ter­ri­to­ries.  This was a con­ve­nient over­sight, for dur­ing the rest of the war, as we saw in chap­ter four, Macao became a world cen­ter for trade in illic­it gold and was heav­i­ly exploit­ed by Japan. . . . .

6. Esta­do Novo (Por­tu­gal)

. . . . With fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions being pop­u­lar and wide­ly sup­port­ed across many coun­tries (like Ital­ian Fas­cism and Nazism) as an antag­o­nist of com­mu­nist ide­olo­gies, António de Oliveira Salazar devel­oped the Esta­do Novo which can be described as a right lean­ing cor­po­ratist regime of para-fas­cist inspi­ra­tion. . . . .

. . . . The Esta­do Novo was an author­i­tar­i­an regime with an inte­gral­ist ori­en­ta­tion, which dif­fered great­ly from oth­er fas­cist regimes by its lack of expan­sion­ism, lack of a fanat­i­cal leader, lack of dog­mat­ic par­ty struc­ture, and more mod­er­ate use of state force.^[9] It incor­po­rat­ed, how­ev­er, the prin­ci­ples for its mil­i­tary from Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni’s sys­tem in Italy. Salazar was a Catholic tra­di­tion­al­ist who believed in the neces­si­ty of con­trol over the forces of eco­nom­ic mod­erni­sa­tion in order to defend the reli­gious and rur­al val­ues of the coun­try, which he per­ceived as being threat­ened. One of the pil­lars of the regime was the PIDE, the secret police. Many polit­i­cal dis­si­dents were impris­oned at the Tar­rafal prison in the African arch­i­pel­ago of Cape Verde, on the cap­i­tal island of San­ti­a­go, or in local jails. Strict state cen­sor­ship was in place. . . .

. . . . The Esta­do Novo accept­ed the idea of cor­po­ratism as an eco­nom­ic mod­el. Although Salazar refused to sign the Anti-Com­intern Pact in 1938, the Por­tuguese Com­mu­nist Par­ty was intense­ly per­se­cut­ed. So were Anar­chists, Lib­er­als, Repub­li­cans, and any­one opposed to the regime. The Nation­al Union embraced a wide array of right-wing pol­i­tics, pass­ing through monar­chism, cor­po­ratism, para-fas­cism, nation­al­ism, and cap­i­tal­ism.

The Legião Nacional was a pop­u­lar mili­tia sim­i­lar to the Ital­ian Black­shirts. For young peo­ple, there was the Moci­dade Por­tugue­sa, an orga­ni­za­tion sim­i­lar in orga­ni­za­tion (but not in ide­ol­o­gy) to the Hitler Youth. These two orga­ni­za­tions were heav­i­ly sup­port­ed by the State and imposed a mar­tial style of life. . . .

7. “The Span­ish Civ­il War: An Overview” by Cary Nel­son; english.illinois.edu. 

. . . . The mil­i­tary rebel­lion took place on July 18, with the offi­cers who orga­nized it expect­ing a quick vic­to­ry and a rapid takeover of the entire coun­try. What the mil­i­tary did not antic­i­pate was the deter­mi­na­tion of the Span­ish peo­ple, who broke into bar­racks, took up arms, and crushed the rebel­lion in key areas like the cities of Madrid and Barcelona. It was at that point that the char­ac­ter of the strug­gle changed, for the mil­i­tary real­ized they were not going to win by fiat. Instead they faced a pro­longed strug­gle against their own peo­ple and an uncer­tain out­come. They appealed to fas­cist dic­ta­tor­ships in Italy, Ger­many, and Por­tu­gal for assis­tance, and they soon began receiv­ing both men and sup­plies from Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni, Adolf Hitler, and Anto­nio Salazar. . . . 

8. “Anti-Semi­tism at My Uni­ver­si­ty, Hid­den in Plain Sight” by Ben­jamin Glad­stone; The New York Times; 10/1/2016.

Last semes­ter, a group came to Prov­i­dence to speak against admit­ting Syr­i­an refugees to this coun­try. As the pres­i­dent of the Brown Coali­tion for Syr­ia, I jumped into action with my peers to stage a coun­ter­demon­stra­tion. But I quick­ly found myself cut out of the plan­ning for this event: Oth­er stu­dent groups were not will­ing to work with me because of my lead­er­ship roles in cam­pus Jew­ish orga­ni­za­tions.

That was nei­ther the first nor the last time that I would be ostra­cized this way. Also last semes­ter, anti-Zion­ists at Brown cir­cu­lat­ed a peti­tion against a lec­ture by the trans­gen­der rights advo­cate Janet Mock because one of the spon­sors was the Jew­ish cam­pus group Hil­lel, even though the event was entire­ly unre­lat­ed to Israel or Zion­ism. Ms. Mock, who planned to talk about racism and trans­pho­bia, ulti­mate­ly can­celed. Anti-Zion­ist stu­dents would rather have no one speak on these issues than allow a Jew­ish group to par­tic­i­pate in that con­ver­sa­tion.

Of course, I still believe in the impor­tance of accept­ing refugees, com­bat­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion, abol­ish­ing racist law enforce­ment prac­tices and oth­er caus­es. Nev­er­the­less, it’s painful that Jew­ish issues are shut out of these move­ments. Jew­ish rights belong in any broad move­ment to fight oppres­sion.

My fel­low activists tend to dis­miss the anti-Semi­tism that stu­dents like me expe­ri­ence reg­u­lar­ly on cam­pus. They don’t acknowl­edge the swastikas that I see carved into bath­room stalls, scrawled across walls or left on chalk­boards. They don’t hear stu­dents accus­ing me of killing Jesus. They don’t notice pro­fes­sors glo­ri­fy­ing anti-Semit­ic fig­ures such as Gamal Abdel Nass­er of Egypt or the lead­er­ship of Hezbol­lah, as mine have.

Nor do they speak against the anti-Semi­tism in Amer­i­can cul­ture. Even as they right­ful­ly protest hate crimes against Mus­lim Amer­i­cans and dis­crim­i­na­tion against black peo­ple, they wrong­ful­ly dis­miss attacks on Jews (who are the most fre­quent tar­gets of reli­gious­ly moti­vat­ed hate crimes in the Unit­ed States) and increas­ing anti-Semi­tism in the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal are­na, as can be seen in Don­ald Trump’s flir­ta­tions with the “alt-right.” They don’t take issue with calls for the destruc­tion of the world’s only Jew­ish state.

Many of my fel­low activists also per­pet­u­ate anti-Semi­tism by dis­miss­ing Jews of col­or, espe­cial­ly the Mizrahi and Sephar­di major­i­ty of Israel’s Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion, descen­dants of refugees from South­west Asia and North Africa. Ignor­ing the expul­sion of 850,000 Mizrahi and Sephar­di Jews from Arab and Mus­lim coun­tries from 1948 to the ear­ly 1970s allows stu­dents to por­tray all Israelis as white and Euro­pean and get away with mak­ing a “pro­gres­sive” case for dis­man­tling the Jew­ish state.

Even hum­mus has become politi­cized: Anti-Zion­ists at my school who demand­ed that cafe­te­rias stop serv­ing hum­mus pro­duced by a com­pa­ny with Israeli own­er­ship, also claimed that the prod­uct showed cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion even though Mizrahim and Sephardim have been eat­ing South­west Asian cui­sine since long before the rise of orga­nized Zion­ism.

In my expe­ri­ence, anti-Semi­tes refuse to acknowl­edge Mizrahi and Sephar­di Jews to min­i­mize the his­to­ry of oppres­sion against Jews, and in doing so dis­miss con­tem­po­rary Jew­ish con­cerns. For exam­ple, non-Jew­ish stu­dents at Brown tell me that I can­not appre­ci­ate a his­to­ry of mar­gin­al­iza­tion because, as they see it, Jews have his­tor­i­cal­ly been a pow­er­ful group, the Holo­caust being the only few years of excep­tion. They play down the tem­po­ral and geo­graph­ic scope of that his­to­ry so that the oppres­sion appears cir­cum­stan­tial rather than glob­al and sys­temic.

These are seri­ous issues, and social jus­tice move­ments should be address­ing them. I rec­og­nize my white, male and oth­er priv­i­leges, and, accord­ing­ly, I lis­ten to peo­ple of col­or, women and mem­bers of oth­er mar­gin­al­ized groups and sup­port them as allies. Like­wise, I expect non-Jews at Brown and else­where to rec­og­nize our oppres­sion to include us in efforts for change.