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'Illiberal and dangerous' behavior of far-left is destroying Democratic Party: op-ed
"The Democratic opposition to Donald Trump is getting shut down by mobs shouting abuse at Joe Biden supporters and disrupting events with physical intimidation and racial epithets — but it's not rabid Trump supporters who are partaking in this particular brand of "illiberal and dangerous" behavior, a columnist wrote Tuesday.
It's members of the far-left, particularly pro-Palestinian activists.
New Yorker columnist Jonathan Chait wrote that pro-Palestinian activists are either trying to teach the Democratic Party a lesson by helping Trump get elected, or they're trying to push the party to move further to the left.
"Because Democrats perceive some of the protesters as potential Biden voters, they have soft-pedaled their criticism of their tactics, Chait wrote. "The handful of critics have focused on the political ramifications of the protest movement, but the problem is not one of mere efficacy.
"Drowning out speakers and disrupting exercises in politics, regardless of its cause or the target, is wrong on principle."
Chait argues that the goal of this kind of behavior is not to help Palestinians, but to "abuse and deny basic rights to those who fail to endorse the protesters’ beliefs."
"And yes, being prevented from holding a planned speech to supporters, stalked on the street, or subjected to sleep denial are all forms of abuse. Almost nobody believes these are all just natural parts of the give and take of public disagreement," Chait writes, adding that a noticeable and growing split is opening up between liberals and their activist wing, which he labels as the "illiberal left."
https://www.rawstory.com/pro-palestinian-activists/
186 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
The other poster falsely tried to frame the pointing out (by the poster they replied to) actual problematic Biden policy actions in re Israel as being 'disinformation':
I simply provided two clear examples of actual Biden policy/actions that many (far from jiust some small group) do take issue with.
Israel was not engaged in the mass slaughter of then of thousands of innocent Gazans back then.
Bottom line, you do not get to declare who is a good Democrat and who is not just because millions (tens of millions probably) of us Democratic Party members disagree with a certain policy that you apparently are fully invested in.
It certain is NOT some nefarious disinformation campaign to point out indisputable facts (ie Biden twice going around Congress to send military aid to Israel) nor is it somehow anti-Democratic Party to voice dissent over those policy decisions/acts.
Dissent is cherished American right, as laid out in the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution
You are not the doorkeeper of what makes one a proper Democrat or not in regards to the peaceful exercise of said dissent and/or the petition for redress of grievances. We are not an authoritarian, top-down, 100 per cent support 'anything and everything that a Democratic POTUS does' Party. I leave that to the Rethugs. If you think we should be such a party, then I would posit that says more about you than me.
On these things I shall never yield, be it on DU or anywhere else I happen to find myself engaged in American political debate.
I AM a good Democrat. I make a lot of monetary political contributions to Democratic candidates and causes, I vote 100% straight Democratic tickets, I actively work to GOTV here overseas (and also with people living in the US), and I am always trying to win hearts and minds for our Party within my social set.
Had they not protested the convention so much, Nixon never would have won.
for the impaired
Seems kind of weird for a Democratic website to be shitting on left protesters. But you do you, I guess.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/astroturfing
organized activity that is intended to create a false impression of a widespread, spontaneously arising, grassroots movement in support of or in opposition to something (such as a political policy) but that is in reality initiated and controlled by a concealed group or organization (such as a corporation)
Classic astroturfing is the practice of disguising an orchestrated campaign as a spontaneous upwelling of public opinion. … The term itself appears to have been coined in 1985 by then Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen, who noted that the mountains of letters he received about legislation on insurance originated with insurers.—
New Scientist, 10 Feb. 2007
snip...
There is something about how some of these protests, under cover of the atrocities being committed in the Israeli war, that seems to purposefully bash Biden in order to harm his political campaign. Maybe I'm just imagining things.
organized activity that is intended to create a false impression of a widespread, spontaneously arising, grassroots movement in support of or in opposition to something (such as a political policy) but that is in reality initiated and controlled by a concealed group or organization (such as a corporation)
Classic astroturfing is the practice of disguising an orchestrated campaign as a spontaneous upwelling of public opinion. … The term itself appears to have been coined in 1985 by then Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen, who noted that the mountains of letters he received about legislation on insurance originated with insurers.—
New Scientist, 10 Feb. 2007
snip...
There is something about how some of these protests, under cover of the atrocities being committed in the Israeli war, that seems to purposefully bash Biden in order to harm his political campaign. Maybe I'm just imagining things.
and his wife Jodie Evans, founder of Code Pink.
The American Multimillionaire Marxists Funding Pro-Palestinian Rage
Neville Roy Singham and his wife Jodie Evans are China propagandists—and a primary source of the fury exploding on our streets
Neville Roy Singham and his wife Jodie Evans are China propagandists—and a primary source of the fury exploding on our streets
https://www.thefp.com/p/american-marxists-funding-pro-palestinian-rage
--------------------------------------------------
A Global Web of Chinese Propaganda Leads to a U.S. Tech Mogul
The Times unraveled a financial network that stretches from Chicago to Shanghai and uses American nonprofits to push Chinese talking points worldwide.
The Times unraveled a financial network that stretches from Chicago to Shanghai and uses American nonprofits to push Chinese talking points worldwide.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/world/europe/neville-roy-singham-china-propaganda.html
---------------------------------------------------
Businessman Neville Roy Singham quietly sponsors an initiative opposing US assistance to Kyiv
https://www.intelligenceonline.com/corporate-intelligence/2022/11/11/businessman-neville-roy-singham-quietly-sponsors-an-initiative-opposing-us-assistance-to-kyiv,109863896-art
---------------------------------------------------
The Big Business of Uyghur Genocide Denial
A New Lines investigation reveals a network of charities funneling millions into left-wing platforms that take Beijing’s side on the genocide allegations — and they’re all connected to an American tech magnate.
A New Lines investigation reveals a network of charities funneling millions into left-wing platforms that take Beijing’s side on the genocide allegations — and they’re all connected to an American tech magnate.
https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/the-big-business-of-uyghur-genocide-denial/
-----------------------------------------------------
"The People's Forum" is organizing and conducting anti-Israel protests across the country.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Singham and Evans launder their funding of pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, anti-Biden "protests" through the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund which distributes "charitable donations" at the direct request of donors.
The Influence Watch page on The People's Forum:
Funding
In 2019, The People’s Forum received $12 million through the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund, a donor-advised fund provider. This was not the first time the Forum received a hefty sum in this manner: it was given $4,400,000 in 2018 and $2,500,000 in 2017 through the Philanthropy Fund.
In 2019, The People’s Forum received $12 million through the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund, a donor-advised fund provider. This was not the first time the Forum received a hefty sum in this manner: it was given $4,400,000 in 2018 and $2,500,000 in 2017 through the Philanthropy Fund.
https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/the-peoples-forum/
In 2017, Mr. Singham married Jodie Evans, a former Democratic political adviser and the co-founder of Code Pink. The wedding, in Jamaica, was a “Who’s Who” of progressivism. Photos from the event show Amy Goodman, host of “Democracy Theocracy Now!”; Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream; and V, the playwright formerly known as Eve Ensler, who wrote “The Vagina Monologues.”
It was also a working event. The invitation described a panel discussion called “The Future of the Left.”
It was also a working event. The invitation described a panel discussion called “The Future of the Left.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/world/europe/neville-roy-singham-china-propaganda.html
=================================================
It's a cozy little circle, with Goodman's hyper-lucrative, third-party-amplifying "news" outlet stoking pro-terrorist, anti-Israel, anti-US messaging.
Chait wrote these back during the 2015/2016 election slog:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/02/why-liberals-should-support-a-trump-nomination.html
https://archive.is/tVH0x
The initial stupefaction and dismay with which liberals greeted Donald Trump’s candidacy have slowly given way to feelings of Schadenfreude— reveling in the suffering of others, in this case the apoplectic members of the Republican Establishment. Are such feelings morally wrong? Or can liberals enjoy the spectacle unleavened by guilt? As Republican voters start actually voting, is it okay to be sad — alarmed, even — by the prospect that the Trump hostile takeover of the GOP may fail?
There are three reasons, in descending order of obviousness, for a liberal to earnestly and patriotically support a Trump Republican nomination. The first, of course, is that he would almost certainly lose. Trump’s ability to stay atop the polls for months, even as critics predicted his demise, has given him an aura of voodoo magic that frightens some Democrats. But whatever wizardry Trump has used to defy the laws of political gravity has worked only within his party. Among the electorate as a whole, he is massively — indeed, historically — unpopular, with unfavorable ratings now hovering around 60 percent and a public persona almost perfectly designed to repel the Obama coalition: racial minorities, single women, and college-educated whites. It would take a landscape-altering event like a recession for him to win; even that might not be enough.
Second, a Trump nomination might upend his party. The GOP is a machine that harnesses ethno-nationalistic fear — of communists, criminals, matrimonial gays, terrorists, snooty cultural elites ?? to win elections and then, once in office, caters to its wealthy donor base. (This is why even a social firebrand like Ted Cruz would privately assure the billionaire investor Paul Singer that he wasn’t particularly concerned about gay-marriage laws.) As its voting base has lost college-educated voters and gained blue-collar whites, the fissure between the means by which Republicans attain power and the ends they pursue once they have it has widened.
What has most horrified conservative activists about Trump’s rise is how little he or his supporters seem to care about their anti-government ideology. When presented with the candidate’s previous support for higher taxes on the rich or single-payer insurance, heresies of the highest order, Trump fans merely shrug. During this campaign, Trump has mostly conformed to party doctrine, but without much conviction. Trump does not mouth the rote conservative formulation that government is failing because it can’t work and that the solution is to cut it down to size. Instead, he says it is failing because it is run by idiots and that the solution is for it to instead be run by Trump. About half of Republicans favor higher taxes on the rich, a position that has zero representation among their party’s leaders. And those Republicans are the most likely to support Trump.
snip
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2015/04/disastrous-clinton-post-presidency.html
https://archive.is/0BsIY
The qualities of an effective presidency do not seem to transfer onto a post-presidency. Jimmy Carter was an ineffective president who became an exemplary post-president. Bill Clinton appears to be the reverse. All sorts of unproven worst-case-scenario questions float around the web of connections between Bill’s private work, Hillary Clinton’s public role as secretary of State, the Clintons’ quasi-public charity, and Hillary’s noncompliant email system. But the best-case scenario is bad enough: The Clintons have been disorganized and greedy. The news today about the Clintons all fleshes out, in one way or another, their lack of interest in policing serious conflict-of-interest problems that arise in their overlapping roles:
The Clinton campaign is [link:http://images.businessweek.com/cms/2015-04-23/MEMO-Clinton-Cash-Claims.pdf|batting down] the darkest and most conspiratorial interpretation of these stories, and where this all leads remains to be seen. But the most positive interpretation is not exactly good. When you are a power couple consisting of a former president and a current secretary of State and likely presidential candidate, you have the ability to raise a lot of money for charitable purposes that can do a lot of good. But some of the potential sources of donations will be looking to get something in return for their money other than moral satisfaction or the chance to hobnob with celebrities. Some of them want preferential treatment from the State Department, and others want access to a potential future Clinton administration. To run a private operation where Bill Clinton will deliver a speech for a (huge) fee and a charity that raises money from some of the same clients is a difficult situation to navigate. To overlay that fraught situation onto Hillary’s ongoing and likely future government service makes it all much harder.
And yet the Clintons paid little to no attention to this problem. Nicholas Confessore described their operation as “a sprawling concern, supervised by a rotating board of old Clinton hands, vulnerable to distraction and threatened by conflicts of interest. It ran multimillion-dollar deficits for several years, despite vast amounts of money flowing in.” Indeed, as Ryan Lizza reported in 2012, Bill Clinton seemed to see the nexus between his role and his wife’s as a positive rather than a negative:
The Obama administration wanted Hillary Clinton to use official government email. She didn’t. The Obama administration also demanded that the Clinton Foundation disclose all its donors while she served as Secretary of State. It didn’t comply with that request, either. The Clintons’ charitable initiatives were a kind of quasi-government run by themselves, which was staffed by their own loyalists and made up the rules as it went along. Their experience running the actual government, with its formal accountability and disclosure, went reasonably well. Their experience running their own privatized mini-state has been a fiasco.
snip
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/02/why-liberals-should-support-a-trump-nomination.html
https://archive.is/tVH0x
The initial stupefaction and dismay with which liberals greeted Donald Trump’s candidacy have slowly given way to feelings of Schadenfreude— reveling in the suffering of others, in this case the apoplectic members of the Republican Establishment. Are such feelings morally wrong? Or can liberals enjoy the spectacle unleavened by guilt? As Republican voters start actually voting, is it okay to be sad — alarmed, even — by the prospect that the Trump hostile takeover of the GOP may fail?
There are three reasons, in descending order of obviousness, for a liberal to earnestly and patriotically support a Trump Republican nomination. The first, of course, is that he would almost certainly lose. Trump’s ability to stay atop the polls for months, even as critics predicted his demise, has given him an aura of voodoo magic that frightens some Democrats. But whatever wizardry Trump has used to defy the laws of political gravity has worked only within his party. Among the electorate as a whole, he is massively — indeed, historically — unpopular, with unfavorable ratings now hovering around 60 percent and a public persona almost perfectly designed to repel the Obama coalition: racial minorities, single women, and college-educated whites. It would take a landscape-altering event like a recession for him to win; even that might not be enough.
Second, a Trump nomination might upend his party. The GOP is a machine that harnesses ethno-nationalistic fear — of communists, criminals, matrimonial gays, terrorists, snooty cultural elites ?? to win elections and then, once in office, caters to its wealthy donor base. (This is why even a social firebrand like Ted Cruz would privately assure the billionaire investor Paul Singer that he wasn’t particularly concerned about gay-marriage laws.) As its voting base has lost college-educated voters and gained blue-collar whites, the fissure between the means by which Republicans attain power and the ends they pursue once they have it has widened.
What has most horrified conservative activists about Trump’s rise is how little he or his supporters seem to care about their anti-government ideology. When presented with the candidate’s previous support for higher taxes on the rich or single-payer insurance, heresies of the highest order, Trump fans merely shrug. During this campaign, Trump has mostly conformed to party doctrine, but without much conviction. Trump does not mouth the rote conservative formulation that government is failing because it can’t work and that the solution is to cut it down to size. Instead, he says it is failing because it is run by idiots and that the solution is for it to instead be run by Trump. About half of Republicans favor higher taxes on the rich, a position that has zero representation among their party’s leaders. And those Republicans are the most likely to support Trump.
snip
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2015/04/disastrous-clinton-post-presidency.html
https://archive.is/0BsIY
The qualities of an effective presidency do not seem to transfer onto a post-presidency. Jimmy Carter was an ineffective president who became an exemplary post-president. Bill Clinton appears to be the reverse. All sorts of unproven worst-case-scenario questions float around the web of connections between Bill’s private work, Hillary Clinton’s public role as secretary of State, the Clintons’ quasi-public charity, and Hillary’s noncompliant email system. But the best-case scenario is bad enough: The Clintons have been disorganized and greedy. The news today about the Clintons all fleshes out, in one way or another, their lack of interest in policing serious conflict-of-interest problems that arise in their overlapping roles:
The Clinton campaign is [link:http://images.businessweek.com/cms/2015-04-23/MEMO-Clinton-Cash-Claims.pdf|batting down] the darkest and most conspiratorial interpretation of these stories, and where this all leads remains to be seen. But the most positive interpretation is not exactly good. When you are a power couple consisting of a former president and a current secretary of State and likely presidential candidate, you have the ability to raise a lot of money for charitable purposes that can do a lot of good. But some of the potential sources of donations will be looking to get something in return for their money other than moral satisfaction or the chance to hobnob with celebrities. Some of them want preferential treatment from the State Department, and others want access to a potential future Clinton administration. To run a private operation where Bill Clinton will deliver a speech for a (huge) fee and a charity that raises money from some of the same clients is a difficult situation to navigate. To overlay that fraught situation onto Hillary’s ongoing and likely future government service makes it all much harder.
And yet the Clintons paid little to no attention to this problem. Nicholas Confessore described their operation as “a sprawling concern, supervised by a rotating board of old Clinton hands, vulnerable to distraction and threatened by conflicts of interest. It ran multimillion-dollar deficits for several years, despite vast amounts of money flowing in.” Indeed, as Ryan Lizza reported in 2012, Bill Clinton seemed to see the nexus between his role and his wife’s as a positive rather than a negative:
The Obama administration wanted Hillary Clinton to use official government email. She didn’t. The Obama administration also demanded that the Clinton Foundation disclose all its donors while she served as Secretary of State. It didn’t comply with that request, either. The Clintons’ charitable initiatives were a kind of quasi-government run by themselves, which was staffed by their own loyalists and made up the rules as it went along. Their experience running the actual government, with its formal accountability and disclosure, went reasonably well. Their experience running their own privatized mini-state has been a fiasco.
snip
wish for.
Fuckers harass and Attack Jewish Students and Businesses when it is Hamas that Refuses to accept a Ceasefire.
Will those Anti Pres Biden Protesters EVER Address Hamas for a Ceasefire? Yeah I don't think that's on their Agenda.
Hamas Rejects Ceasefire
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100218846756
Pennsylvania businessperson Jeff Yass donated to Moderate PAC in recent weeks.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/03/summer-lee-primary-challenge-republican-00150278
Republican megadonor Jeff Yass recently gave to a super PAC that is trying to topple a progressive incumbent in Pittsburgh. The Moderate PAC, an outside group that aims to support centrist Democrats, has been boosting a primary challenge to Rep. Summer Lee, a member of “The Squad.” Lee and her supporters are quick to point out that Yass, a Pennsylvania businessperson, donated $1 million to the PAC in 2022, when it spent in support of Democratic Reps. Jared Golden of Maine and Don Davis of North Carolina. Yass has actually given more to the group in recent weeks, Moderate PAC’s president, Ty Strong, told POLITICO — the first time that donation is being disclosed publicly.
Moderate PAC was formed last cycle, and received almost no donations last year. When the PAC began airing its first ad last month — a contrast ad boosting Lee’s challenger Bhavini Patel, a member of the Edgewood Borough Council — Strong said that it was funded by donations raised in Lee’s 12th District. Strong declined to say how much the billionaire gave this time around, saying the details will be disclosed in a campaign finance filing due later this month. He said he approached Yass in March, after receiving the donations from constituents in the district. “I went to Jeff Yass and made a proposal,” Strong said. “He knew nothing about Summer. … He’s a really wealthy guy, so he made a donation in line with his wealth. But there’s other Pittsburgh people that are now seeing this and doing the same thing. And so it’s not Jeff Yass, it’s me and Pittsburgh who realized that this far-left member shouldn’t be representing a D-plus-eight district.” Strong said that Pittsburgh-based donations will match Yass’ contribution.
Yass is a major donor to the conservative Club for Growth. He has also been in headlines recently amid the congressional push for TikTok’s Chinese-owned parent company — which Yass has investments in — to sell the app. Strong said that Yass “has no lean in this other than he likes a moderate Democrat, as opposed to a far-left Democrat.” “He’s obviously painted a certain way in the media,” said Strong, a former financial analyst. “But I realized that what he really cares about is that he’s a libertarian, but he’s also free market. And so with my economic background, I kind of talked about that. … He does like certain Democrats, and he likes Bhavini as a Democrat.”
Lee in a statement decried “super PACs bankrolled by Republican billionaires,” saying they “have no place in our Democratic primaries or our democracy.” “I am never going to stop defending our abortion rights, protecting our public schools, or demanding billionaires pay their fair share, so I welcome being an enemy to an extremist like Jeffrey Yass,” Lee said. Moderate PAC released its second ad on Tuesday, accusing Lee of “opposing” President Joe Biden. The group has placed more than $500,000 on television and digital advertising since the beginning of the year, according to ad tracker AdImpact. (Patel’s campaign has spent around $150,000.) Strong said that future investments will be dependent on fundraising, but the group will “stay in the race and keep up at the same pace as long as we can.”
snip
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/03/summer-lee-primary-challenge-republican-00150278
Republican megadonor Jeff Yass recently gave to a super PAC that is trying to topple a progressive incumbent in Pittsburgh. The Moderate PAC, an outside group that aims to support centrist Democrats, has been boosting a primary challenge to Rep. Summer Lee, a member of “The Squad.” Lee and her supporters are quick to point out that Yass, a Pennsylvania businessperson, donated $1 million to the PAC in 2022, when it spent in support of Democratic Reps. Jared Golden of Maine and Don Davis of North Carolina. Yass has actually given more to the group in recent weeks, Moderate PAC’s president, Ty Strong, told POLITICO — the first time that donation is being disclosed publicly.
Moderate PAC was formed last cycle, and received almost no donations last year. When the PAC began airing its first ad last month — a contrast ad boosting Lee’s challenger Bhavini Patel, a member of the Edgewood Borough Council — Strong said that it was funded by donations raised in Lee’s 12th District. Strong declined to say how much the billionaire gave this time around, saying the details will be disclosed in a campaign finance filing due later this month. He said he approached Yass in March, after receiving the donations from constituents in the district. “I went to Jeff Yass and made a proposal,” Strong said. “He knew nothing about Summer. … He’s a really wealthy guy, so he made a donation in line with his wealth. But there’s other Pittsburgh people that are now seeing this and doing the same thing. And so it’s not Jeff Yass, it’s me and Pittsburgh who realized that this far-left member shouldn’t be representing a D-plus-eight district.” Strong said that Pittsburgh-based donations will match Yass’ contribution.
Yass is a major donor to the conservative Club for Growth. He has also been in headlines recently amid the congressional push for TikTok’s Chinese-owned parent company — which Yass has investments in — to sell the app. Strong said that Yass “has no lean in this other than he likes a moderate Democrat, as opposed to a far-left Democrat.” “He’s obviously painted a certain way in the media,” said Strong, a former financial analyst. “But I realized that what he really cares about is that he’s a libertarian, but he’s also free market. And so with my economic background, I kind of talked about that. … He does like certain Democrats, and he likes Bhavini as a Democrat.”
Lee in a statement decried “super PACs bankrolled by Republican billionaires,” saying they “have no place in our Democratic primaries or our democracy.” “I am never going to stop defending our abortion rights, protecting our public schools, or demanding billionaires pay their fair share, so I welcome being an enemy to an extremist like Jeffrey Yass,” Lee said. Moderate PAC released its second ad on Tuesday, accusing Lee of “opposing” President Joe Biden. The group has placed more than $500,000 on television and digital advertising since the beginning of the year, according to ad tracker AdImpact. (Patel’s campaign has spent around $150,000.) Strong said that future investments will be dependent on fundraising, but the group will “stay in the race and keep up at the same pace as long as we can.”
snip
Pa. billionaire Jeffrey Yass' firm has a large holding in company that merged with Trump's Truth Social
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100218802295
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100218802295
Republican trading firm owner and TikTok investor Yass emerges as top donor in US election
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100218797308
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100218797308
Top billionaire GOP megadonor had big stake in Trump's Social deal: report
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143216263
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143216263
The anti-abortion Republican billionaire trying to buy a Supreme Court seat in PA
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100218402594
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100218402594
The Corrupt Trifecta of Yass, Trump, and Netanyahu
https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-03-27-corrupt-trifecta-yass-trump-netanyahu/
Jeffrey Yass, in a recent corporate video
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.
snip
https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-03-27-corrupt-trifecta-yass-trump-netanyahu/
Jeffrey Yass, in a recent corporate video
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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family dying and living in danger in Gaza. If I did I might feel different, I don't know.
:kick:
