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The CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corp. and one of the wealthiest men in the world, Sheldon Adelson is an important financial backer of rightist groups in Israel and the United States, and a prominent supporter of key Likud Party officials. Business troubles stemming from the global financial crisis reportedly forced Adelson to curtail his conservative philanthropy. [1] However, by late 2009, Adelson was once again drawing widespread attention in connection to his involvement in politics.

In December 2009, Adelson was given an award at a gala dinner put on by the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), a hardline group that opposes a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Adelson was awarded the "Theodor Herzl Gold Medallion," which is given to people who make a "unique, lasting, and historic contribution to the cause of Zionism and the Jewish people." [2] Speakers at the event included Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu (by video), Vice-Prime Minister and former Israel Defense Forces Chief-of-Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Yaalon, and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA).

ZOA leader Morton Klein used the event to denounce the Likud-led government's partial moratorium on Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank, calling the policy "racist." During his talk after receiving the Herzl award, Adelson commented that "Each time [Klein] opened up his mouth, I thought it was me talking." According to Forward, "A spokesman for Adelson stated later that his support for Netanyahu ‘has not changed.' But Klein disclosed that Adelson will travel to Israel soon to lobby Netanyahu against the settlement moratorium." [3]

Adelson's support for Netanyahu has also been at the center of a growing dispute over the future of Israel's print media. In 2007, Adelson founded Israel Hayom (or Israel Today), a free Hebrew-language newspaper that by the end of 2009 had a print circulation of some 250,000. [4] According to Forward, on its very first day in circulation, Yisrael Hayom was "already one of the largest-circulation papers in the country. Adelson's new paper is drawing questions from other journalists, who worry about the mogul's connections to Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, and also from the owners of other Israeli newspapers, who are a famously tight-knit club." [5]

In response to the growing influence of Israel Hayom, the country's two largest Hebrew newspapers, Yedioth Ahronoth and Maariv, began pushing a bill in late 2009 that would ban foreign ownership of newspapers (Adelson is a U.S. citizen). Haaretz, an English-language Israel daily, reported in January 2010 that Adelson's free tabloid posed "an existential threat" to the other Hebrew dailies. "Yedioth Ahronoth is bleeding and losing its hegemony. Maariv may fold in less than a year. The result is all-out war. Yedioth Ahronoth and Maariv are trying to silence Israel Hayom through a bill prohibiting foreign ownership of newspapers. Other bills are now in the pipeline. Meanwhile, in an amazing coincidence, the two newspapers are furiously assailing those perceived as Adelson's proteges: Benjamin and Sara Netanyahu. Bibi's immediate ouster is not only a political aspiration, but now also an essential business interest of the two veteran afternoon papers." [6]

Wading into the dispute, Adelson claimed in a high-profile interview with the Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA) in December 2009 that he and his newspaper are not political. Responding to a journalist's statement that "In Israel, your political involvement is well known," Adelson declaimed, "What political involvement? I am not involved politically in Israel. Period. And everybody thinks I started the newspaper Israel HaYom purely to benefit Bibi. Nothing could be further from the truth. I started the newspaper to give Israel, Israelis, a fair and balanced view of the news and the views. That's all. It is not ‘Bibi-ton.' It is not a newspaper started for and operated for Bibi. And this is the propaganda of our competitors to say to their customers, ‘Don't take Israel Hayom seriously because all it is is a promotion for Bibi. ...' All it is is just competitive propaganda. I am not involved politically whatsoever." [7]

Commented one Israel observer, "Adelson's self-proclaimed rejection of politics must be relatively new. Until the end of 2008 he was the primary funder of the pro-Republican, pro-Iraq War and pro-Bush administration Freedom's Watch advocacy group." [8]

Impact of Economic Crisis

In an October 2008 article for Right Web, Eli Clifton wrote, "With shares in his casino empire plunging 65 percent, Adelson could cut back on his charitable giving. In fact, he announced in September he would do just that. ‘On September 9, billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson announced that he was reducing his donations to Birthright Israel in 2009 and 2010, respectively, to $20 million and $10 million, after giving $70 million over the previous two years,' reported the Forward." [9]

In December 2008, Freedom's Watch, a neoconservative-aligned pressure group that received most of its funding from Adelson, shuttered. The right-wing Washington Times reported, "Freedom's Watch was foiled this year by stiff political and economic headwinds and ended up spending far less than the reported $200 million budget the organization had hoped for, and its dependence on Mr. Adelson was part of its undoing. Only a year ago, Mr. Adelson, 75, was the third-richest man in America, with a net worth of $28 billion. But since then, Mr. Adelson's company, Las Vegas Sands Corp., has lost 95 percent of its stock value. ... Mr. Adelson contributed most of Freedom's Watch's money, sources familiar with the group's operation said. The organization's reliance on his largesse was such that over the summer all staffers were herded in front of a video camera to sing ‘Happy Birthday' to Mr. Adelson." [10]

Conservative Philanthropy

Adelson's philanthropy is directed though the Adelson Family Foundation, which he created in January 2007. Among its grantees has been the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies, a project of the Shalem Center, a Likud Party-aligned group based in Jerusalem that claims on its website to engage "in research, education, and publications in areas that include Jewish moral and political thought, Zionist history and ideas, Biblical archaeology, democratic theory and practice, strategic studies, and economic and social policy." [11]

During the George W. Bush presidency, Adelson was supportive of the administration's Middle East policies, though he opposed its efforts to jump start peace talks on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the Condoleezza Rice-pushed Annapolis talks in late 2007. After the influential American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) issued a statement supporting the talks, which were aimed at a creating a framework for a two-state solution, Adelson told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he was withdrawing his support for AIPAC. He said: "I don't continue to support organizations that help friends committing suicide just because they say they want to jump." [12]

As a backer of Freedom's Watch, whose key leaders included former Bush White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and the strip-mall magnate Melvin Sembler, Adelson brought widespread media attention to his efforts to push for hawkish, Israel-centric U.S. policies. As the Washington Post reported, "Many in Freedom Watch's donor base-including Adelson ... and Sembler ... -have always been strong supporters of Israel. The group's initial ad blitz in defense of Bush's troop buildup in Iraq came naturally out of those interests." [13]

Commenting on the Post story, commentator Jim Lobe wrote: "I don't doubt that the group's donors consider themselves ‘strong supporters of Israel,' but what precisely is meant by that? ... It implies that neoconservatives have Israel's best interests at heart, which, as in the case of the Iraq war (and last summer's conflict with Hezbollah) and in so many other instances, is demonstrably not the case. It also puts those individuals or organizations-particularly in the American Jewish community-that are very concerned about Israel but that believe that the neoconservatives have actually undermined the country's security in a kind of political limbo." [14]

In mid-2007, Adelson attended a conference in Prague titled "Democracy and Security" that was cosponsored by the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies, the Czech Foreign Ministry, the Prague Security Studies Institute, and Spain's Foundation for Social Studies and Analysis (FAES), headed by former conservative Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar. Conference participants included Natan Sharanksy, former Czech President Vaclav Havel, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the "independent Democrat" from Connecticut who is closely associated with the neoconservative faction in the United States. Also in attendance were a number leading U.S. hawks, including the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies' (FDD) president Clifford May; the American Enterprise Institute's Richard Perle, Michael Rubin, Michael Novak, Joshua Muravchik, and Reuel Marc Gerecht; Herb London, John O'Sullivan, and Anne Bayefsky of the Hudson Institute; Bruce Jackson, a former director of the Project for the New American Century; and Tod Lindberg of the Hoover Institution. [15]

According to an Inter Press Service-sponsored blog, "Sharansky, chairman of both the Adelson Institute and of One Jerusalem, a group created to oppose any move under the Oslo peace process to recognise Palestinian sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem, is a former Soviet refusenik whose 2004 book, The Case for Democracy, helped inspire Bush's ringing 2005 Inaugural Address ... Aznar and Havel are co-chairs of the ‘international' section of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), which was launched by FDD in June 2004 and whose website is www.fightingterror.org. Sen. Joe Lieberman, an honorary co-chairman of CPD, keynoted the opening session. In other words, the conference constituted a kind of ‘Neo-Conservative International' designed to rally support for ‘dissidents,' primarily from the Islamic world, and give them hope that ‘regime change' in their countries is possible much as it was in the former Soviet bloc almost 20 years ago." [16]

Adelson is also a major political donor, having donated more than $1 million in to political candidates between 1984 and 2007, according to data gathered by campaign donor search engine Newsmeat. The vast majority of his donations, more than $800,000, have gone to key Republicans, including George W. Bush, Rick Santorum, Tom Delay, and Rudy Giuliani. [17]

Adelson has also supported political campaigns through a $1 million donation he made to the Newt Gingrich-run "527" organization, American Solutions for Winning the Future, a so-called soft-money political action committee (PAC) which is not subject to Federal Election Commission's PAC regulations. [18]

Biography

Forbes magazine's summary of Adelson's career reads: "Son of a Boston cabdriver. Borrowed $200 from his uncle to sell newspapers at age 12. Made first fortune in trade shows. Created computer industry's premier show, Comdex, mid-1980s; ran 70% profit margin renting space for 15 cents a square foot and leasing it to exhibitors for up to $40 a square foot. Sold show to Japan's Softbank for $862 million in 1995. Then Las Vegas: bought old Sands casino for $128 million, demolished it to build the $1.5 billion all-suites Venetian casino resort and the 1.2-million-square foot Sands Convention Center. Changed the way Vegas does business by enticing conventioneers to Sin City midweek, taking emphasis off gambling. Sold suites for $250 a night, added high-end retailers, celebrity-chef restaurants. Old guard mocked him: ‘I loved being the outsider. I didn't care what those guys said.' Took Las Vegas Sands public December 2004. Building $1.8 billion Palazzo resort adjacent to arch-rival Steve Wynn's Wynn Las Vegas. Big bet on Asia: opened $265 million Sands Macau casino May 2004, recouped entire investment in one year. Ramping up construction on Cotai Strip: $6 billion project will place 7 hotel-casinos on Macau's 2 islands, Taipa and Coloane. Cornerstone of project will be $1.8 billion Venetian Macau. Last May won coveted Singapore gaming license. Plans to build $3.5 billion Marina Bay Sands on 51-acre site with a view of the city's skyline." [19]