By Chris Menahan – Information Liberation
Miriam Adelson, the wife of the late Israel First GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson, is reportedly donating at least $100 million to Donald Trump and wants his support for Israel annexing the West Bank in return.
That’s according to a new column from the Israeli paper Haaretz titled, “Trump is Desperate for Miriam Adelson’s Cash. Her Condition: West Bank Annexation” (Archive):
After five months during which he refused to make clear his position on the Israel-Hamas war, instead sniping at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, thanks to [pressure from Miriam] Adelson [withhold donations], Trump finally expressed unequivocal support for Israel. However, according to [New York Magazine’s Elizabeth Weil’s recent article on Miriam Adelson], Trump made a tactical error that distanced him from the money he so desperately wants. “You have to finish up your war,” he said. “You have to finish it up. You got it done. And I’m sure you’ll do that. And we got to get to peace.” Adelson, a resident of Herzliya and a megadonor for settlement development in the West Bank, did not wish to hear Trump yearning for peace. She didn’t want to hear anything that could have been construed as criticism of Israel. According to the report, what she really wants from Trump’s second term is an Israeli annexation of the West Bank and a U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty in all the regions of the land. Under these conditions, there’s no room for the Palestinian Authority, and nobody to sign a peace accord with.
The New York Magazine story ends with an implicit threat to Trump: “The presidential election is five months away. Adelson continues to sit out the race.” Within just 10 days, Politico reported that the former president and Adelson met and spoke on the phone several times since that March dinner. What they talked about remained unreported, but Trump’s give-and-take relationships with his billionaire donors tend to replicate themselves.
Adelson is not the only major donor; others also come with their lists of demands. The Washington Post recently reported about another meeting between Trump and some donors, a group which, Trump said, included “98 percent of my Jewish friends.” During this meeting in New York on May 14, donors asked Trump about students demonstrating against Israel on campuses, and he replied: “Any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave.” When one of the unnamed donors complained that students and professors could one day hold positions of power, Trump called the demonstrators part of a “radical revolution” that he vowed to defeat. “If you get me elected, and you should really be doing this, … we’re going to set that [pro-Palestinian] movement back 25 or 30 years.”
During Trump’s first term, he did everything Sheldon Adelson wanted and more for Israel while fulfilling only a few of the promises he made to his own voters.
To help Israel, Trump:
– Pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal
– Appointed Nikki Haley to fight for Israel at the UN
– Pushed forward with a bill to give Israel $38 billion from US taxpayers
– Put maximum sanctions on Iran
– Endorsed the expansion of settlements
– Moved the US embassy to Jerusalem
– Cut all US aid to the Palestinians
– Backed Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights
– Outlawed criticism of Israel on college campuses by executive order
– Gave speeches commanding Americans to “love Israel”
– Assassinated Iranian General Qassem Soleimani
– Pardoned a host of Chabad-linked supercriminals
Trump is now promising Jewish megadonors he will crush pro-Palestine protests and deport demonstrators and he’s talking about bringing Nikki Haley onto his “team” if he win the White House.
Trump’s potential second term is already gearing up to be even more Israel First than his first term!