Already in the election campaign, some financially wealthy financial oligarchs from Israel and the United States have pledged Donald Trump's promise to relocate his country's embassy to Jerusalem, which de facto equates to recognition as the new Israeli capital. In the end, the funders had to help a little, so that the elected with Jewish money new US President also keeps his word. For Donald Trump, however, the deal with the Israel lobby is likely to prove lucrative.
Ever since the American president decided to transfer his country's embassy to Jerusalem, a contested international law, the Middle East policy has once again been in turmoil. The governments of all Arab states verbally condemned the decision, even those that, like Saudi Arabia and Jordan, are very close to the current Israeli government. Egypt has submitted a draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council, which declares that any change in the status and demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem is "null and void".
The representative of the US government vetoed her as expected. For the Trump government, the business has gone, and lucrative. Although the dispute over the status of Jerusalem has been part of the Israel conflict since the beginning. For the current party politics in Washington applies however also: In cunctis domina pecunia est - In all affairs the money prevails. The sentence is attributed to the Roman antics writer and moralist Publilius Syrus.
However, it is particularly pertinent to how American politicians manage to move from declaring their candidacy to being nominated by the party to becoming the United States Supreme Leader. Without enormous sums of donations and the associated liabilities, the office can not be reached. In the case of Donald Trump, donors from the Conservative Israel lobby made large sums of money in the real estate industry last year.
The billionaire's anger and rage again
The New York Times wrote that ten days before Donald Trump took office, Sheldon Adelson, considered one of the ten richest men in the world, went to a private meeting in the Trump Tower. Then, Adelson, a casino billionaire and Republican big donor, called an old friend, Morton Klein, to report that Trump had assured him that the move of the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was "a high priority."
"He was very excited, just like me," said Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, "This is something in his heart and soul."
But just a few months later, in April 2017, the billionaire and casino mogul was mad at the president. He had until then not kept the promise, which was also one of his central election promises. Adelson, who once blamed the Palestinians for "destroying Israel," froze the donations for the Trump force. Even more angry, however, was the new Foreign Minister Rex Tillerson. Shortly afterwards, in May 2017, he publicly suggested that "the laying of the embassy should be dependent on the peace process".
The news magazine Axios reported that the Las Vegas billionaire let the argument do not apply. He told Trump that Palestinians were "impossible negotiators" and made demands that Israel could never fulfill. Just a short time later, in October 2017, the Las Vegas Review Journal, a paper owned by Adelson himself, recounted the continuing rage of the billionaire family:
"The Adelsons are reportedly disappointed with Trump's failure to keep his campaign promise to relocate the US Embassy to Jerusalem on its first day."
Sheldon Adelson made history when he publicly handed over a $ 5 million check to Donald Trump in early 2017. With the money, the new president financed the ceremony for his inauguration. The billionaire was already known for being an important donor to Israeli rights. He is considered an unwavering supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had also spoken out in favor of the removal of the embassy. Adelson and his wife spent over $ 80 million on the Republicans in 2016, including $ 35 million for Donald Trump's election campaign.
Trump had already made his Jerusalem promise in March 2016. He then gave an interview to news channel CNN and mentioned this point in a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most aggressive lobbying organization for right-wing Israeli governments in the US. Apparently he wanted to convince skeptical conservatives at the time that he is an uncompromising supporter of the current Israeli government. Since taking office, Trump has closely coordinated the Jerusalem Initiative with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as with Vice-President Mike Pence and CIA Director Mike Pompeo.
Time and again money for the Jerusalem project
In 2012, when Donald Trump was still a businessman, he praised the then Republican US presidential candidate Mitt Romney, because he had declared that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich also participated in the presidential primaries this year. He was Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. From him comes the saying that "unconditional support for Israel is Adelson's central value".
The billionaire had previously put five million dollars into the Political Action Committee of Gingrich's presidential campaign. Later Adelson pushed another $ 10 million. The Adelson family particularly liked the fact that Gingrich called the Palestinians "fictitious people" and that he "wanted to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem on its first day."
Adelson's activities date back to the year 2000. At that time, President Bill Summers held talks with Bill Clinton, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. The gathering, known as the Camp David II meeting, was to lead to a comprehensive defuse of the Middle East conflict on the basis of the 1993 Oslo Accords. The Oslo process had been completed between Jitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat.
Adelson, alarmed by the possible division of Jerusalem as a result of the negotiations at Camp David, promptly sponsored the group "One Jerusalem," an American neo-conservative structure led by Douglas Feith. He invested "tons of money in the Republican campaign". Feith was installed by this purchase in the Pentagon. Later he was able to stem the peace process initiated there, which had begun with the Oslo agreement.
Donations for the fight against the Oslo agreement
In October 1991, the then US President George Bush senior in Madrid had for the first time the Israeli government, Palestinians and Jordanians brought together for peace negotiations. Shortly thereafter, Jitzhak Rabin, who was elected Israeli Prime Minister in 1992, banned further expansion of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories. In addition, his government secretly met in Oslo with senior PLO officials and negotiated that Israel would step back from the occupied territories to hand them over to a Palestinian Authority.
In September 1993 Rabin and PLO chief Yassir Arafat finally signed the historic Oslo agreements. Her motto was "Land for Peace". Arafat and Rabin received the Nobel Peace Prize.
But the opponents of these peace negotiations in Israel, in the Palestinian territories and especially in the US stormed. In April 1993, ads appeared in Hebrew in the Israeli daily newspapers Ma'ariv and Haaretz. They were funded by the now deceased Zionist activist and patron, the casino millionaire Irving Moskowitz, Reuben and Rose Mattus, the owners of Häagen-Dazs-Eiscreme, and Manfred Lehmann. The numerous signatories form a crude mix of American senators, neoconservatives from the US and Israel as well as Christian rights.
On this list immortalized a certain political spectrum. These included Michael Leeden, a character from the Iran-Contra scandal and ardent advocate of Israeli interests in the United States. Later, he organized the war of aggression against Iraq. The champion of a regime change in Tehran, Elliot Abrams, former Head of Unit at the US State Department, also found himself there, as well as the Israel guru Frank Gaffney Junior from the Center for Security Policy. They all rejected peace negotiations with Arab Israelis or the Palestinians, because, as they advertised:
"The reality today is that Israel is in grave danger. Iran is working feverishly to gain nuclear capabilities (...) The East and its scientists are working day and night to develop chemical and biological weapons that can be used against the Jewish state ... Stones, incendiary bombs, knives, machine guns terrorize Israeli citizens . "
On July 8, 1993, the same circles re-submitted to the Jerusalem Post. Her ad was titled "Jerusalem is not negotiable". It said:
"Israel and its followers abroad are united in the conviction that Israel must retain exclusive sovereignty over the entire undivided Jerusalem, its eternal capital. Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish homeland since the time of King David 3,000 years ago.
It was the site of the two sacred temples, the centers of Jewish religious life. It was the focus of Jewish prayers during centuries of exile. Today, Jerusalem's Old City, where the Temple Mount and Wailing Wall are located, is the heart of world Jewry. It is unthinkable to leave any part of Jerusalem in any form of foreign rule. "
Since the spring of 1994, the leader of the conservative Israeli Likud party, Benjamin Netanyahu, has also made Washington's vote against Rabin's peace process. At that time, he sent several times his threesome, as his closest supporters in Tel Aviv were called. Led by Ben Aharon, the closest confidant of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, Yigal Carmon, Shamir's anti-terrorism adviser, and Yoram Ettinger are among the leaders. These three politicians traveled to the center of power in the United States:
"Ben Aharon has political power, Carmon the terrorist background and Ettinger the congress."
On September 29, 1994, the gang met on Capitol Hill with about 60 members of the congress. Israel's ambassador, Itamar Rabinovich, was not even informed. Already named Gingrich, however, then speaker of the House of Representatives, was the only one in the United States in the mid-nineties who wanted to receive Netanyahu in person. Adelson expects him to high today.
Netanyahu's trip to three had a controversial secret mission: it was to undermine the efforts of then Prime Minister Rabin to mobilize support for the peace process in the United States. The lack of support would have helped Netanyahu become a favorite for the post of prime minister in the upcoming 1996 election.
Let's take something from history: Rabin was shot dead in Tel Aviv on 4 November 1995 by a Jewish extremist. Netanyahu became Israeli Prime Minister in May 1996.
Shortly before the murder of Rabin, on October 23, 1995, the US Congress passed at breathtaking speed and with overwhelming approval the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act, a law that would force then-President Clinton to send the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to relocate to Jerusalem, the capital claimed by Israel. The law, which stipulated that all of Jerusalem was the capital of Israel, had been introduced by more than 63 senators under the leadership of Republican majority leader Robert Joseph "Bob" Dole.
"Without the leadership of two prominent members of the Center for Security Policy's advisory panel, Senator Jon Kyl and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, that just would not have happened," Frank Gaffney Junior said.
He operated the center at that time with the money of millionaire Moskowitz. We recall Moskowitz, which in April 1993 had placed advertisements in the Israeli daily newspapers Ma'ariv and Haaretz. And we remember Adelson, whose money had brought Feith to the Pentagon to act as a buffer against the Oslo II treaties.
But briefly back to Bob Dole: Apparently, the Republican was turned around. As the New York Times reported on May 17, 1995, Bob Dole described the state of Israel as a "spoiled child" in 1990, even suggesting a five percent cut in US aid to Israel. In a statement he verbally announced that Israel had "gained control of East Jerusalem" by force. The sudden change had its reason: Dole was set up in 1996 as a presidential candidate of the Republican Party and wanted to beat the Democratic incumbent Bill Clinton.
For this he needed money, a lot of money, because election campaigns in the US are expensive. The right-wing Israel supporters who posted Jerusalem's "Non-Negotiable" ad in the Jerusalem Post on July 8, 1993, including the National Jewish Coalition and the Zionist Organization of America, took advantage of Dole's desirability. Brav sat in the fall of 1995, the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act through with the aim of earning appropriate funds for his election campaign. What sums were given him, remains partly in the dark.
It should be noted that a member of Netanyahu's threesome, Yigal Carmon, also received a five-digit sum from Moskowitz. Together with Israeli-born Middle Eastern analyst Meyrav Wurmser, Carmon founded the controversial Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which "casts a bad light on the Arab world through its selective selection," according to Deutschlandfunk ,
Already in 1996, Douglas Feith, Wurmser and others prepared for Netanyahu the six-page report "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," which called for Israel to abandon ongoing peace initiatives, topple Saddam Hussein, and attack Syrian military targets in Lebanon.
The dream couple Adelson and Netanyahu
Sheldon Adelson now sees the Prime Minister as his friend and protege, according to Nahum Barnea, dean of the Israeli press corps and leading columnist for the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. Since 2007, Adelson owns the daily newspaper Israel Hayom, which it distributes for free. The paper is extremely positive for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu both personally and ideologically. It is rumored that it was then founded extra to help him return to the premiership.
"If you're a person like me reading the paper every day, you can watch Israel support Hayan Netanyahu on every page of the paper," said Uzi Benziman, editor of Israeli media watch blog 7th Eye. "This happens not only on the opinion pages, but even on the news pages: they hide reports of news that are negative for Netanyahu, and they emphasize stories that are very good. This is Hayom: Bibi's political paper. "
Nahum Barnea believes Netanyahu must "take it very seriously", which is what Adelson says. But that's probably true of Donald Trump, too. Of course, at the first meeting between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu on 15 February 2017, the most urgent question for Adelson was raised: the transfer of the US Embassy to Jerusalem. "If you look at the name of Israel's capital, you can see that the US is already in Jerusalem," wrote Muscovy's former organization Americans For A Safe Israel.
What is the cost of Jerusalem? Maybe $ 200 million? That would roughly correspond to the sums of money that rich Israeli supporters in the United States have spent in the past three decades as bribes and bribes on US presidents and presidential candidates. A kind of financial incentive to recognize the divided city as the capital of Israel, to relocate the US embassy to Jerusalem. A business, then: One hand washes the other.
Many have benefited. Unfortunately not a single Palestinian. For the Palestinians claiming East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state, the US Embassy's announced move is a provocation. For this reason too, former US presidents have refused over the years to move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem because it would disrupt possible talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators.