Cross-posted from Mondoweiss
Mainstream reporters love to talk about Sheldon Adelson's interest in gambling legislation as the motivation for his political giving -- and leave out the Israel angle. NPR did it a month ago. Not a word about Israel. The Washington Post's Tom Hamburger did it yesterday..."Adelson's political beneficiaries adopt casino magnate's cause to ban Internet gambling...
"Many of the beneficiaries of Adelson's state donations are now siding with the billionaire as he seeks to outlaw a practice he views as a threat to the economic health of the casino industry on which he built a personal fortune."
Israel wasn't mentioned. Really, how much of Adelson's tens of millions of presidential giving is about casino regulation? Very little, I venture. When Adelson holds forth about his political views, here and here, he talks about Muslims wanting to kill Jews and his own regret over not serving in the Israeli military, not a word about gambling.
"'All we care about is being good Zionists,' [he says of himself and his wife] being good citizens of Israel, 'because even though I am not Israeli born, Israel is in my heart.'"
And this is Hamburger's second paragraph:
"Adelson became a political force in 2012 when he poured more than $90 million into Republican presidential campaigns."
Wait: Adelson has been around for a while. He gave $300,000 to the Republican Party in the 2000 election to put an end to the peace process; and George W. Bush was obedient to the neocons. The New Yorker's Connie Bruck chronicled some of that history.
And last October, Adelson called on Obama to nuke Iran. Shouldn't the Washington Post and NPR be telling that to their audiences?
