The Corrupt Trifecta of Yass, Trump, and Netanyahu

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-03-27-corrupt-trifecta-yass-trump-netanyahu/



In the past few days, we’ve learned that Donald Trump’s reversal on whether TikTok should be barred from the U.S. is mainly a payback to Trump mega-donor Jeff Yass, who owns 15 percent of TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance. But it gets so much worse. Now it turns out that Yass’s money helped Trump reap a multibillion-dollar windfall when his social media company went public. Yass’s company has been the biggest institutional shareholder of the shell company that has merged with Trump’s Truth Social. What else do we need in this corrupt dance? How about the destruction of what’s left of Israel’s democracy.

Yass is also a major donor to an Israeli think tank and strategy group, called the Kohelet Forum, that has been a prime architect of Netanyahu’s attempt at one-man rule, the weakening of Israel’s democracy, and the elimination of what remains of the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel. Kohelet’s founder helped draft Israel’s Basic Law on the Nation-State, which took effect in 2018. This law established Jewish people as having the sole right to self-determination, and downgraded Arabic as one of Israel’s official languages. Kohelet also drafted the law that gives the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, the power to override Supreme Court decisions, and grants the government total control over judicial appointments. This is a core part of Netanyahu’s strategy for clinging to power by evading prosecution.

One of Kohelet’s close allies is the Shiloh Policy Forum, which promotes illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and far-right Israeli politicians who support that policy. In the U.S., Eugene Kontorovich, head of Kohelet’s international law department and director of the Center for the Middle East and International Law at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, has been instrumental in the movement to brand all criticisms of Israeli policy as antisemitic.

If we connect these dots, they display Trump’s effort to cash in by reversing his stance on China and U.S. national security, and the blowback between billionaire efforts to destroy democracy in Israel and similar moves to destroy it in the U.S. There is a dance between would-be dictators of similar mind (Trump and Netanyahu) and the oligarch who connects them. You might think that someone who professes to care about antisemitism would think twice about providing so much ammunition. But Yass’s cynicism knows no bounds, matched only by that of Trump and Netanyahu. The fates of democracy in the U.S. and in Israel are indeed linked. But not in the way the propagandists for AIPAC and Netanyahu would have us believe.

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related:



https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-02-12/ty-article-magazine/.premium/the-kohelet-tentacles-these-organizations-operate-around-the-right-wing-think-tank/00000186-44c3-de50-a1af-76eb01860000

https://archive.is/np3ap

The Kohelet Policy Forum, a conservative think tank that seeks to “broaden individual liberty and free-market principles in Israel,” generally flew under the radar for the Israeli public. That is, until the unveiling of Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s controversial plan to overhaul the Israeli judicial system, thanks to the forum’s influence over the Israeli right and state institutions. It now appears that the Kohelet Policy Forum is not working alone in exerting this influence. An investigative report by Shomrim has found that the think tank has taken an entire network of organizations and associations under its wing – and the connections between them are often obscure, downplayed or outright hidden from public scrutiny.

The Kohelet network can be divided into three categories. The first are organizations or associations, of which there are six, with a direct link to the Kohelet Policy Forum; most of them were established by officials from the forum or received funding from it. The second category is organizations that collaborate with the forum, and the third is organizations that share a managerial committee with them. In NGOs and civil society groups, it is a common and accepted practice for one large association to support several satellite groups, either financially or organizationally. This allows the larger groups to decentralize, and let groups with specialized knowledge handle particular issues. It also enables NGOs to maximize their resources – and significantly increase the scope and influence of their activities.

In the past, right-wing Knesset members have been fiercely critical of so-called left-wing organizations which operated in this way. The New Israel Fund frequently draws ire from the Israeli right, which has argued that, due to the extent of the organizations activities – of some of which the public is unaware – the NIF should be reined in. Now it seems that the conservative, libertarian Kohelet Policy Forum has adopted similar tactics – at least in some cases. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Makor Rishon in October 2021, Prof. Moshe Koppel, the founder and chairman of the forum, was asked about this very issue but refused to give a clear answer.

“The New Israel Fund gets donations and invests them; we are just a research institute,” he said. “Until recently, most of our work was internal, but not every project needs to be like that. If someone is crazy about a certain issue, why shouldn’t they work directly with me? We can help them with whatever they’re lacking.” When reached for comment, Kohelet said that these organizations are completely independent, and that “the forum is proud to play its part in helping Israeli civil society – of every type – blossom.”

From Pompeo to the teachers’ union...................................

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