No one was surprised to see Republican hawk Lindsey Graham, or even Mitt Romney, line up to kiss Sheldon Adelson’s ring at the Israel-American Council conference in Washington last weekend. Adelson has urged that the United States drop nuclear weapons on Iran as a “negotiating” tactic; he dreams that his son will be a sniper in the Israeli army; he is basically the kind of hawk with maximal loyalties to Israel and minimal ones to the United States that one might wish held no position of honor in the Republican Party.
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But the Twittersphere was set aflame at the Sunday plenary session, where Adelson held court with fellow billionaire and Israel supporter Haim Saban. Saban does not have the public persona of Adelson. The Power Ranger mogul is a major Democratic Party donor, perhaps the largest of all. ... He is on first-name terms with the liberal hawk or liberal internationalist elite, “Tony” and “Shimon” and of course “Hillary.” You can get a sense of Saban’s world from the fulsome video made to introduce Hillary when she spoke two years ago at the Saban Center—where she received a parade of warm endorsements from Israeli politicians well known in the U.S.
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But last weekend here was Saban, Democratic mogul, on stage alongside Sheldon Adelson, the two performing sort of duet: One could title it “Pity the Zionist Billionaires Who Can’t Always Get What They Want.” Adelson claimed the Palestinian were an “invented people” Saban came back with the retort that in the event of a “bad” Iran nuclear deal, Bibi “should bomb the living daylights of the sons of bitches [the Iranians].”
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The two naturally agreed that the American media was terribly biased against Israel, except for maybe Fox News, and that they discussed whether they could buy the Washington Post or New York Times to correct the problem. This aspect of the performance was comic, the lament, commonplace enough among neoconservatives, that the American press is biased against Israel. Consider that the Washington Post runs (the Wall Street Journal aside), the most neoconservative major editorial page in the country,...
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Sheldon and Haim then amused themselves and their audience by talking about taking over the Times and Washington Post.
The whole affair might have been comical but for the serious issues it raises for presumed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Haim Saban is her close friend and major financial backer: one could go so far as to say that he and his donor circle constitute her “base” or at least a significant part of it.
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Hillary has never paid a political price for her ties to right-wing Israel supporters, though she has reaped the usual benefits. Might the American political culture be ready to turn on this, at least to the extent that she will no longer get a free pass?
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A recent J Street-sponsored poll found that 84 percent of American Jews backed an Iran deal which restricts Iranian nuclear enrichment and subjected Iran’s nuclear sites to inspection. But Adelson and Saban do not.
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More:
http://www.theamericanconservative.c...eldon-adelson/
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