Civil trial attorney Baruch C. Cohen meets Sheldon Adelson, CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corp., at Paramount Theater welcoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

LA Times interview of Sheldon Adelson- discusses Palestinians, peace efforts

JERUSALEM -- Casino billionaire and Israel supporter Sheldon Adelson said Tuesday that U.S. efforts to restart Mideast peace talks are doomed until Palestinians accept Israel as a Jewish state.

Speaking during a break at the Jerusalem International Tourism Summit, Adelson, 80, also said he would not be investing any of his fortune in Secretary of State John F. Kerry’s new $4-billion private investment plan to develop the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
What do you think about what Secretary Kerry is doing? Is there any chance to move the ball forward on the peace process?
I won’t comment about Kerry. But I’ll ask you: How can you move the ball forward when the Israelis legitimately want peace and the Palestinians want Israel, piece by piece. I don’t know one Israeli that doesn’t want peace. It’s the other side that doesn’t want peace. When they teach their children that Jews are descended from swine and apes, pigs and monkeys, and their charter calls for the destruction of Israel ... how are you going to have peace? I’m all in favor of peace. I don’t care if it’s [a] two-state solution or not. Everybody deserves to live in peace. But I don’t see the leadership from the so-called Palestinians that says to their people, "We have to prepare to give up our charter that calls for the destruction of the state of Israel." Have you heard any Palestinian say we have to give up our hope of destroying Israel in favor of living in peace?
I don’t think the destruction of Israel is in the minds of a lot of Palestinians.
Really? How naïve and how ignorant can you be? I don’t understand why they teach their children to hate and kill Jews.
A lot of Israeli Jews are concerned about what the lack of peace is doing to the Jewish, democratic state. Are you worried that if there is no two-state solution, it will threaten Israel?
That’s completely irrelevant and that’s propaganda-ish. It’s plain stupidity to recognize a partner that wants to kill you [in order to achieve] peace.
So what’s the solution?
Put a big fence around our country and say to the guys over there that the trucks can’t go over our land if they carry weapons, the planes can’t go over our airspace if they carry weapons. Period. [Tell them,] you want to have a state, go do it the way you want.
Kerry is proposing a $4-billion private investment plan for the Palestinian territories and says it’s important to coordinate the tourism industries of Israel, West Bank and Jordan. Would you want to participate in that?
Why would I want to invest money with people who want to kill me? Of course I won’t be part.
How is Israel Today doing? [Israel Today is the Adelson-owned free-distribution daily newspaper in Israel.]
We are the No.1 newspaper.
Is it making a profit yet or breaking even?
It’s doing what we wanted it to do.
How involved are you with Israel Today?
I hesitate because I’d rather not talk about my involvement. But the fact of the matter is, I’m not involved. The newspaper goes by itself.

NYT: Mogul’s Latest Foray Courts Jews for the G.O.P.

WASHINGTON — A Republican group backed by the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is starting a new effort in battleground states to win over Jewish voters who could be persuaded to turn away from President Obama and support Mitt Romney.

The group, the Republican Jewish Coalition, plans to begin a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign in the coming weeks called “My Buyer’s Remorse,” targeting voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, aides said. The campaign uses testimonials from people who say they regret supporting Mr. Obama because of his economic policies and his posture toward Israel, in hopes of cutting into the wide advantage Democrats have held over Republicans among Jewish voters.

It is the latest foray into the election by Mr. Adelson, a staunch supporter of Israel who has vowed to spend as much as $100 million to defeat Mr. Obama. It marks an escalation of the partisan politics over Middle East policy and represents an emerging Republican strategy of highlighting voters who supported Mr. Obama four years ago but are now expressing disappointment, while signaling to others that they are not alone in shifting their allegiances.

Mr. Adelson and other members of the group’s board have pledged at least $6.5 million to build a comprehensive list of Jewish voters and to wage a word-of-mouth campaign, amplified through social media and television advertising.

The intensified pursuit of Jewish voters is coming into sharper view as Mr. Romney leaves on a trip that will take him to Israel this weekend. It is a closely watched visit, especially given the often-tense relations between Mr. Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has known Mr. Romney for three decades.

Mr. Adelson has emerged as potentially the largest single donor in American politics this year. After initially backing Newt Gingrich in the Republican primary race, Mr. Adelson eased his skepticism of Mr. Romney, and his support has steadily grown.

In May, Mr. Adelson and Mr. Romney held a private meeting in Las Vegas, and aides said the two men have communicated occasionally since then. In June, Mr. Adelson and his wife each gave $5 million to a pro-Romney “super PAC.” His support for Israel aligns him with other influential Republican constituencies, including evangelical Christians, who see Mr. Obama as failing to support Israel sufficiently.

The fight for the Jewish vote is more of a hunt-and-peck search for disgruntled voters, considering that Mr. Obama won more than 70 percent of votes among Jews in 2008, according to exit polls. But with an estimated 600,000 Jewish voters in Florida, a critical swing state, Democratic leaders said they were not taking the constituency for granted, and they acknowledged a need to increase enthusiasm among Jews before November.

“They figure if they shave off a few points here and a few points there in the Jewish population through lying and distortions, they can win,” said Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. “But they can’t dress themselves up to be something appealing to the Jewish community when they aren’t.”

The Republican Jewish Coalition, the party’s leading outreach group for Jewish voters, has spent months developing a campaign to find like-minded voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, the three swing states with the largest Jewish populations. It is the most extensive electoral effort undertaken by the group.

“We don’t need to get a majority of the vote to win,” said Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. “When we take votes away from Democrats, we are taking votes from a key part of their constituency.”

A Gallup poll of voters from June 1 to July 22 showed that Mr. Obama held a lead over Mr. Romney among Jewish voters of 67 percent to 25 percent. They said they strongly supported liberal issues that traditionally align with Democrats, including abortion rights, same-sex marriage and an overhaul of immigration laws.

But if Mr. Romney won 25 percent of the Jewish vote, it would be the best showing by a Republican candidate in more than two decades, which could be especially important in swing states, where the margin of victory could be narrow. Four years ago, Senator John McCain won about 21 percent of the Jewish vote.

The advertising campaign features a testimonial from Michael Goldstein, 48, a community college administrator from New Jersey, who said he enthusiastically supported Mr. Obama’s candidacy but became disillusioned by his administration. A lifelong Democrat, he said he was planning to support Mr. Romney by casting his first vote for a Republican in a presidential race.

“I was enamored with Obama,” Mr. Goldstein said in an interview. “I thought he was sharp, intelligent and brought a new sense of wonder to politics. The fact that we were helping elect the first African-American president of the United States made me very proud, but I don’t believe anything he says anymore. I go more by his actions than by what he says.”

Mr. Goldstein said he gradually became disenchanted with Mr. Obama when his promises to change Washington did not come to pass. He said he was particularly incensed by the administration’s stance toward Israel, particularly the president’s view that the 1967 borders should be a starting point for negotiations for a two-state peace solution. He said he also believed that Mr. Obama showed disrespect to Mr. Netanyahu.

It remains an open question how many voters share the views of Mr. Goldstein, who conceded that some of his frustrations at Mr. Obama were also a result of what he saw as the president’s failure to uphold liberal principles on gun control and some social issues. But he said that his discontent was strong enough that he would cast a vote for Mr. Romney and that he intended to campaign aggressively in Pennsylvania.

“It doesn’t take a lot of buyer’s remorse to potentially shift the outcome,” said Ari Fleischer, a member of the Republican Jewish Coalition’s board and a former press secretary to President George W. Bush.

While the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party have increased their outreach, leaders of several Jewish organizations dismissed the possibility that the Republicans could make significant inroads in the November election.

“There is a very large chunk of the Jewish community that is very Democratic that can’t be eaten into,” said Mik Moore, founder of the Jewish Council for Education and Research. “There is a fight for maybe 10-15 percent, but nobody is underestimating the impact that the massive independent spending can have on the campaign.”

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, a Jewish lobbying group in Washington that favors Democratic candidates, said the effort by Mr. Adelson and the Republican Jewish Coalition would fall short.

“Every single number indicates there is simply no such thing as a Jewish problem for the president,” Mr. Ben-Ami said. “The people who vote only on Israel didn’t vote for Obama last time and know who they are voting for already.

Billionaire Sheldon Adelson Says He Might Give $100M To Newt Gingrich Or Other Republican

This story is part of a larger profileappearing in the March 12th, 2012 issue of FORBES magazine. The complete cover story will appear onlinebeginning Wednesday, February 22nd.

Sheldon Adelson plays as stubbornly in politics as he does in business. So the criticisms that he’s trying to personally buy the presidential election for NewtGingrich are met with a roll of the eyes. “Those people are either jealous or professional critics,” Adelson tells me during his first interview since he andhis wife began funneling $11 million, with another $10 million injection widely expected, into the former speaker’s super PAC, Winning Our Future. “They like to trash other people. It’s unfair that I’ve been treated unfair—but it doesn’t stop me. I might give $10 million or $100 million to Gingrich.”

Adelson, the 78-year-old CEO of casino giant Las Vegas Sands,  certainly can afford to: With a net worth of roughly $25 billion, that $11 million, which jolted Gingrich’s flatlining presidential bid back to life, equates to 0.044% of his fortune. For someone with a $1 million net worth, the equivalent would be $440, or a two-night stay at Adelson’s Venetian casino. Adelson could personally fund an entire presidential campaign—say, $1 billion or so—andnot even notice.

Is that fair? “I’m against very wealthy ­people attempting to or influencing elections,” he shrugs. “But as long as it’s doable I’m going to do it. Because I know that guys like Soros have been doing it for years, if not decades. Andthey stay below the radar by creating a network of corporations to funnel their money. I have my own philosophy and I’m not ashamed of it. I gave the money because there is no other legal way to do it. I don’t want to go through ten different corporations to hide my name. I’m proud of what I do and I’m not looking to escape recognition.”

He’s also proud of his hawkish defense of Israel—his wife is Israeli and his young sons carry Israeli passports. Yet those who have categorized his patronage of Gingrich and other Republicans as a one-issue investment have it wrong. The man whose net worth, by Forbes’ calculations, has jumped more ($21.6 billion) during the Obama administration than any other American —Mark Zuckerberg included — wants to take the president out for economic reasons.“What scares me is the continuation of the socialist-style economywe’ve been experiencing for almost four years. That scares me because the redistribution of wealth is the path to more socialism, and to more of the government controlling people’s lives. What scares me is the lack of accountability that people would prefer to experience, just let the government take care of everything and I’ll go fish or I won’t work, etc.”

“U.S. domestic politics is very important to me because I see that the things that made this country great are now being relegated into duplicating that which is making other countries less great. … I’m afraid of the trend where more and more people have the tendency to want to be given instead of wanting to give. People are less willing to share. There are fewer philanthropists being grown and there are greater expectations of the government. I believe that people will come to their senses and not extend the current Administration’s quest to socialize this country. It won’t be a socialist democracy because it won’t be a democracy.”

So with Gingrich looking increasingly unviable, does that mean he’ll throw his largess behind another candidate? “If Ron Paul is chosen I certainly wouldn’tdo that.” What about front-runner Mitt Romney? “I don’t want to say. Newspapers said I had two meetings with Romney and Gingrich [on Feb. 3], which is untrue. Most of what is being said about me in this current brouhaha is just not true. I know Romney; I like him. I know Santorum; I like him. … The likelihood is that I’m going to be supportive of whoever the candidate is. I just haven’t decided that yet and will wait to see what happens.”

Whomever he supports, Adelson claims he won’t pay for mudslinging. “I don’t believe in negative campaigning. I believe in saying that my opponents are very good people and I’m confident a lot of them would do a good job, but I would do a better job, and here’s why,” says Adelson. “Money is fungible, but you can’t take my money out of the total money you have and use it for negative campaigning.” Of course, that stance ignores the fact that an avalanche of negative ads against Romney won Gingrich South Carolina, andthat Adelson’s $5 million injection was the dominant source of his funding. “That’s what everybody says, but that doesn’t mean it’s true,” the billionaire says, waving his hands dismissively. “Most of what’s been written about me in this is untrue.”

ZOA Recognizes Distinguished Americans For Their Contributions To Israeli Security

 “The Pentagon should prepare a war plan, as a last resort, should all else fail in preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons,” stated U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) to a packed audience at the Zionist Organization of America’s Louis Brandeis Dinner held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City Sunday night.

Media superstar and best-selling author Glenn Beck was the keynote speaker and received the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon Adelson Defender of Israel Award. Beck warned of the serious dangers facing Israel and the West telling the crowd of almost 800 attendees, “Things could get worse.” Dr. Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, who are among America’s most generous Jewish philanthropists, presented the award.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, of Florida (R-FL), Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, received the Dr. Irving and Cherna Moskowitz Award. She gave a rousing speech strongly criticizing the Palestinian Authority for promoting hatred and violence against Israel in their media, schools, and speeches and stated “they should not be receiving any U.S. funds until they change.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the crowd by video, praising the ZOA as a remarkable and important pro-Israel organization that never stops telling the truth. He also strongly praised Glenn Beck and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen as long-time and strong friends of Israel. He had special kind words for the Adelsons, saying that naming an award after them signals the importance of that award.

Father and son real estate entrepreneurs William and Mark Langfan received the Louis D. Brandeis Award.

Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, rallied the crowd with a speech demanding, “the U.S. government, the Israeli government and Europe must begin to express their outrage at the PA forming an alliance with Hamas; never showing Israel on their maps; naming schools, streets, and sports teams after Jew-killing terrorists and openly stating that no Jew will be allowed in a future Palestinian state.”

U.S. Representatives Robert Turner (R-NY); Joe Walsh (R-IL); Dan Burton (RR-IN); and Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY) also were in attendance, as well as terrorism expert Steve Emerson and Richard Stone, Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.