Following the money: How pro-Israel megadonors are working to stop politicians who might uphold Palestinian rights

[D. Schlenk]

https://israelpalestinenews.org/these-are-the-jewish-megadonors-helping-fund-bidens-republican-congress-members-reelection-campaigns/


Following the money: How pro-Israel megadonors are working
to stop politicians who might uphold Palestinian rights


con...@ifamericansknew.org

February 14, 2024


https://israelpalestinenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/2-14-hal-624x410.jpg
Follow the Benjamins from Biden to his faithful donors
(photo)

These two articles give us a peek into how some uber-wealthy
Americans spend big bucks, betting on political candidates
with whom they may have nothing in common…except Israel.
[jump to 2nd article]


These Are the Jewish Megadonors Helping Fund Biden’s – and
Republican Congress Members’ – Reelection Campaigns

by Ben Samuels, reposted from Ha’aretz, February 9, 2024

U.S. President Joe Biden’s reelection bid has some tough
sledding ahead if the majority of polls that have emerged in
recent months are to be believed. His fundraising efforts
tell another story, though, with his reelection campaign
already raking in significant donations – many coming from
longtime Jewish Democratic megadonors.

An analysis of campaign finance disclosures showing
contributions to Biden’s campaign and pro-Biden PACs and
super PACs for 2023 illustrates a deep groundswell of
support from Jewish-Democratic benefactors. They make up a
significant portion of the president’s fundraising as he
begins his reelection bid in earnest.

The donors in question – many of whom are in the finance
industry, with others connected to Hollywood and Silicon
Valley – vary in their prioritization of Israel as a
campaign issue, as well as their respective involvements in
local Jewish communities and philanthropies.

Their steadfast and deep-pocketed support for Biden,
however, indicate how the Democratic Party has
generations-deep support within the American-Jewish
community.

Polls have continuously shown that Jewish voters vastly
prefer Biden over Donald Trump, with Israel rarely being
among voters’ top priorities. Despite this, American Jews
are among the few groups who have stuck with Biden amid
plummeting poll numbers (many of which stem from his
approach to Israel, which centrist Democrats deem a
threshold issue).

https://israelpalestinenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/2-14-hil-768x511.jpg
Haim Saban attending the 2012 Saban Forum on U.S.-Israel
relations gala dinner with Tzipi Livni, left, and Hillary
Clinton. (photo)

Haim Saban is perhaps the key pro-Israel megadonor for
Biden, significantly overlapping between both the
president’s reelection bid and AIPAC’s United Democracy
Project super PAC. He has given over $936,000 to Biden,
after donating $1 million to the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee’s super PAC. (While federal political
action committees have strict limits on the amounts they can
contribute, a super PAC is allowed to raise and spend
unlimited amounts of money to campaign independently for
candidates for federal office.)

Saban has long been one of the most important donors and
fundraisers for the Democrats, generating millions of
dollars for the party over the years. He has also made
significant financial investments in pro-Israel
organizations such as AIPAC and Friends of the Israel
Defense Forces.

He also collaborated with late Republican megadonor Sheldon
Adelson on the Israeli American Council, which was founded
to organize Israeli expats living in the United States. He
told The New Yorker in 2010 that he was “a one-issue guy,
and my issue is Israel.”

Joining Saban as an overlapping megadonor is casino magnate
Neil Bluhm. He has already given more than $1.4 million this
cycle to the Biden super PAC, on top of $200,000 to United
Democracy Project. His daughter Leslie, a social
entrepreneur who sits on the AmeriCorps board of directors
following an appointment from Biden in 2021, has given over
$554,000.



California leaning

On the other end of the Democratic Party’s pro-Israel
political spectrum, J Street’s political action committee
has already contributed more than $1.4 million. J Street
PAC’s donations, made over the course of 40 separate
contributions in 2023, were largely buoyed by $500,000
contributions from career diplomat Jon Greenwald and
radiation oncologist Patricia Gordon (both J Street board
members).

Billionaire philanthropist George Soros – one of J Street’s
previous key political contributors and longtime Democratic
megadonor, who has steadily become synonymous with
Republican attacks that have too often masqueraded as
antisemitic dog whistles – has given Biden $758,000.

Left-wing pro-Israel donations go beyond J Street, though.
Michael Sonnenfeldt – co-founder of the Israel Policy Forum,
and a massive donor to Israel-related causes like Ben-Gurion
University of the Negev and the Institute for National
Security Studies – has given more than $200,000.

Many of Biden’s key Jewish donors are based in California,
both in the Los Angeles entertainment and business sector,
and Silicon Valley.

Film producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, renowned as one of the
most prolific Democratic fundraisers, has given nearly $2.9
million, while his DreamWorks Pictures co-founder Steven
Spielberg has given more than $936,000. (The “Schindler’s
List” director also said his USC Shoah Foundation would
launch a new project aimed at collecting and acquiring
testimonies from survivors and witnesses of the Oct. 7
attack.) His wife, Kate Capshaw, donated the same sum.

https://israelpalestinenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/2-14-star-768x512.jpg
Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg attending the Golden Globe
Awards in Beverly Hills last month. (photo)

Entertainment executive Casey Wasserman, who gave the Biden
super PAC more than $936,000, also spoke out in support of
Israel following Oct. 7, invoking the terror attack on
Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics during an
International Olympic Committee session in his role as
chairman of the 2028 Olympics in LA.

Billionaire investor Peter Lowy donated the same figure. A
major benefactor to Jewish causes like the American Jewish
University and the Jewish Journal, he is the son of Frank
Lowy – who fought in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence,
before becoming one of Australia’s richest businessmen and
chairing Israel’s Institute for National Securities Studies.
Lowy Sr. moved to Israel at the end of 2018.

Ellen Bronfman Hauptman, a private investment firm co-chair
whose Canadian-American father Charles is one of the most
significant Jewish and pro-Israel philanthropists, is
another LA-based scion megadonor who donated the same
figure.

Attorney Martha Karsh, who is one of LA’s most noted
philanthropists (including backing a nationally recognized
social services initiative at LA’s Wilshire Boulevard
Temple), has given Biden more than $556,000.

Further north in California, Eli Reinhard – a San Jose land
developer who is one of Silicon Valley’s most prolific
contributors to Jewish philanthropies, as well as Jewish and
Mideast-centric programs at Stanford University and the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank – has
given nearly $927,000.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who met with Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu last September to discuss artificial
intelligence, gave Biden $506,000. Alex Karp, the Palantir
co-founder who recently flew the data-analysis software
giant’s board to Tel Aviv in a show of solidarity, has given
more than $366,000.

Sheryl Sandberg, the former Meta executive who has been
among the most outspoken public figures attempting to draw
attention to Hamas’ use of sexual violence during the Oct. 7
attack, donated more than $500,000 to the Future Forward
pro-Biden super PAC, as did her husband Tom Bernthal.

Other key donors have been longtime supporters of Democratic
candidates and causes, though their Jewish connections are
not perhaps as obvious as those previously mentioned.

Biden enjoys significant support from the finance world,
particularly among Jewish megadonors in the northeast.

Jim Simons – who grew up in the heavily Jewish Brookline,
Massachusetts, before becoming one of the most successful
Wall Street investors of all time – has given more than $3.6
million, alongside his wife Marilyn. Their daughter,
educator and philanthropist Liz Simons, and her investor
husband Mark Heising, have given Biden $800,000.

Simons’ longtime colleague Henry Laufer and his wife Marsha,
an institutional Democratic donor and power player, have
given more than $865,000. Hedge fund manager Stephen Mandel
and his wife Susan, who have largely given to education
causes as well as the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, gave Biden
$832,000.

Another anti-Trump megadonor worth noting is Seth Klarman,
the hedge fund manager and Times Of Israel co-founder who
strayed from the Republican Party following Trump’s
ascendance. Klarman has given Biden more than $409,000.

Deborah Simon, daughter of late shopping mall magnate and
philanthropist Mel Simon, has also donated at least $1
million in support of Biden. The Indiana-based Simon has
long been a supporter of Jewish causes and charities,
specifically the U.S. Holocaust Museum and the
Anti-Defamation League. The co-chair of NFL club Tampa Bay
Buccaneers, Avram Glazer – whose family has been deeply
involved in Jewish philanthropic causes across the United
States – also donated more than $888,000.

Some of Biden’s most important and long-standing donations,
meanwhile, came from the finance world. Jonathan Lavine,
co-managing partner of Bain Capital (the Mitt Romney-founded
investment firm), and his wife Jeannie have cited “bedrock
Jewish values” in their prolific Jewish philanthropic
efforts. They have contributed over $832,000.

Joshua Bekenstein (Lavine’s co-chair) and his wife Anita
have donated over $819,000 – part of the Massachusetts
couple’s long history of giving to the Democratic Party,
accompanied by their charitable contributions via a
donor-advised fund with the Combined Jewish Philanthropies
of Boston.

Venture capitalist Bob Goodman and his wife Jayne Lipman –
a board member for American Jewish World Service and
benefactor to the American Jewish Joint Distribution
Committee – have contributed $677,000.

Robert Stavis, Goodman’s colleague at Bessemer Venture
Partners, is treasurer of the ADL’s board and active in the
Westchester Jewish Community Services alongside his wife,
Amy. They have contributed over $654,000.

In Chicago, hedge fund manager Michael Sacks and his
philanthropist wife Cari have given Biden more than
$613,000. They also give to a wide array of Jewish
organizations, like synagogue Am Shalom, Birthright Israel
Foundation and the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education
Center.

Amy Goldman Fowler, “the world’s premier vegetable gardener”
and billionaire heiress to late real-estate investor Sol
Goldman, gave Biden $450,000. Daniel Tishman, who runs the
New York construction behemoth named after his family, has
given Biden more than $381,000.

There are dozens more Jewish megadonors who have given Biden
at least $100,000, further illustrating the deep support the
president will enjoy from the Jewish community ahead of what
is sure to be a bruising national election campaign.




Uber-wealthy Republicans are funding Democratic primaries in
a very big way – to unseat pro-Palestine Congress members.

by Alexander Sammon, reposted from Slate

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/02/ilhan-omar-jamaal-bowman-rashida-tlaib-aipac-israel-lobby-democratic-primary-megadonors.html

The presidential field is basically set, but before the
Trump vs. Biden rematch begins in earnest, there are still a
bunch of highly contentious primaries for the House and
Senate left to be decided. On the Democratic side, none will
draw more attention and money than the campaign to knock the
Squad—the famed young, progressive legislators of color—out
of Congress. And now, thanks to the most recent round of
fundraising reports filed to the Federal Election
Commission, we know exactly who’s funding that campaign.

Surprise! It’s Republican billionaires and megadonors.

Let’s back up: During the 2022 midterms, one of the super
PACs affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee lobbying group—called the United Democracy
Project—spent more than any other outside group during the
Democratic primaries. Yes, it was spending on Democrats. But
it boosted only conservative Democrats who were in races
against progressive legislators, in part because
progressives are, as a whole, willing to criticize Israel,
and sometimes even question unconditional military aid to
Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

AIPAC’s most successful sally in 2022 was kicking Andy
Levin — not only one of the most prominent Jewish members
of the House, but also a former synagogue president — out
of his House seat in Michigan, in favor of a more conserva-
tive, non-Jewish representative in Haley Stevens. (Levin
had dared to indicate support for a two-state solution,
introducing a bill that would have prevented U.S. aid from
being used to fund Israeli settlements in the West Bank and
that recognized East Jerusalem as “occupied territory,”
among other provisions.)

And all of that was before Israel’s devastating war in Gaza
began.

Now, AIPAC has made it a clear goal to defeat every
progressive Democrat it can in 2024. At the end of January,
Federal Election Commission filings revealed that the United
Democracy Project super PAC already had $40 million on hand
by the end of 2023, nearly double the $26 million it spent
on the 2022 midterms. Those numbers will likely skyrocket
further.

Massive though it is, the dollar figure is actually less
notable than who donated it. Of the top 10 biggest donors to
the Democrats-only super PAC during the past six months,
boosters of Donald Trump abound. GOP megadonor Bernie
Marcus, former CEO of the Home Depot, kicked in $1 million.
An LLC affiliated with Bob Kraft, owner of the New England
Patriots (who gave $1 million to Trump’s inauguration)
chipped in $500,000. Paul Singer, another billionaire
financier—and Nikki Haley megadonor, and Rudy Giuliani
fundraiser—also kicked in $1 million. (Singer is perhaps
best known as the luxury vacation sponsor of Supreme Court
Justice Samuel Alito.)

Singer and Marcus also sponsored AIPAC’s guerrilla campaign
to overrun the Democratic primary process back in 2022; some
of the even more generous donors in this cycle are new to
the project. The top individual United Democracy Project
donor during the past six months was Jan Koum, billionaire
founder of WhatsApp. He donated $5 million to UDP over the
final half of 2023; during that very same period, he also
gave $5 million to the super PAC of Republican presidential
candidate Nikki Haley.

Behind Koum was financier Jonathon Jacobson, who contributed
$2.5 million. Jacobson has a long history of political
giving; since 2008, the top beneficiaries of his largesse,
other than the $1 million he gave UDP Project in 2022, have
been Republican super PACs, Republican candidates including
Scott Brown and Lindsey Graham, and Republican fundraising
committees, including Mitch McConnell’s National Republican
Senatorial Committee. David Zalik, who gave $2 million, is a
Haley, Giuliani, and Mitt Romney donor as well…(more)


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