Billionaire Miriam Adelson Spearheading Release of Israeli Hostages Shows How Rotten the System Is - Opinion - Haaretz.com
▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2025-03-02/ty-article-opinion/.premium/miriam-adelson-spearheading-release-of-israeli-hostages-shows-how-rotten-the-system-is/00000195-5332-d636-a3df-7b7f34b60000
The current enthusiasm for Adelson is blind to the fact that even her activity on behalf of the hostages is chilling proof of our entry into a dark, plutocratic era, in which a handful of billionaires like Adelson and Elon Musk enjoy unprecedented global influence and are turning from donors into de facto rulers.
The new era was exemplified by the front-row seats given to Silicon Valley tycoons at Trump’s inauguration. A few days after the farewell speech in which President Joe Biden warned of the “oligarchy” that is taking shape in America, Trump, promised to return America to the Golden Age – 150 years back, to the era of the robber barons who made their wealth in industries such as tobacco, oil and banking and exploited their power to bend the government to their needs and to become even richer, at the expense of the public.
Money has always been translated into influence. But in light of the erosion of democratic mechanisms in Israel and abroad, and the concentration of tremendous wealth in so few hands (Adelson’s personal wealth is about $32 billion, Musk’s is about $385 billion) – this influence becomes a genuine danger.
Today’s politicians are people with all-embracing economic interests, whose wealth sets election campaigns in motion, but they themselves are not elected officials and are not accountable to the poor. Their decisions, which affect all our lives, are made without discussion and transparency and can change at a moment’s notice. Occasionally they do something good, and we’re expected to wave to them in admiration when they pass by in their golden carriages. Hurray, today there’s bread! Tomorrow – who knows?
The paradox of the rule of the billionaires is that after implementing harmful policies for the sake of their profit line, they style themselves as philanthropists who are fixing the system they themselves broke. Just as an example, someone who earned her immense wealth from the gambling industry and then invests a tiny fraction of it in the treatment of addicts. In that way, Adelson is now emerging as a hero who is saving the people who were abducted under Netanyahu’s rule and because of his destructive policy – a government and a policy she herself funded and shaped.
Our political situation is so broken and rotten that we yearn for a savior to appear and rescue us – Adelson, Steve Witkoff, Naftali Bennett, Spiderman if he’s free. But the pursuit of quick fixes is precisely what brought us to this place, where spin is more important than policy and appearance trumps reality.
