Abe Foxman Slams Sheldon Adelson for ‘Disturbing’ Remark on Israel Democracy
Image by getty images
By Josh Nathan-Kazis November 10, 2014
Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham Foxman slammed Sheldon Adelson for his “disturbing” dismissal of democracy in Israel.
Foxman said the casino billionaire ignored Israel’s founders when he told a conference that God didn’t mandate democracy in Israel.
“Sheldon Adelson’s comment suggesting that it’s not so important that Israel remain a democracy is disturbing on many levels,” Foxman wrote in a statement to the Forward. “In fact, the founders of Israel got it exactly right when they emphasized the country being both a Jewish and democratic state. Any initiatives that move Israel away from either value would ill-serve the state and people of Israel.”
Foxman was responding to Adelson’s comments at a conference put on by the Israel American Council on November 9.
“God talked about all the good things in life,” Adelson said. “He didn’t talk about Israel remaining as a democratic state, otherwise Israel isn’t going to be a democratic state — so what?”
Adelson, among the leading American Jewish philanthropists and political donors in the world, is a major backer of the Israel American Council, among a bevy of other charities.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
