One time, in court, Sheldon Adelson said that everything he had achieved in life he did so himself. When it comes to challenging Yedioth Ahronoth's monopoly in the Israeli media, he was the only one who came up with a solution. By himself. Like always.
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It's been said of Sheldon Adelson that he didn't give interviews on open, general subjects, but only on narrow and specific ones. But he was the subject of quite a few profile stories, in which his career was examined inch by inch – from age 12 until the end of his life.
Adelson was part of the failed generation of legendary Jewish capitalists of the past. He was not Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He was not Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos or former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. He was part of the "old world." Because who in this era bets on the printed press? But Adelson's life is the classic story of a Jewish child who grew up in poverty during the Great Depression and reached unimaginable wealth.
Some say that had Adelson kept his love for Israel to himself, he would have remained sheltered in relative anonymity. It wasn't his ideological and emotional investment in Israel and whole-hearted sympathy and support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that attracted the media's attention, which turned him into an enemy.
Almost twenty years ago, around 2002 or 2003, I met with the then-Israel Antitrust Authority Commissioner Dror Strum. The subject of Yedioth Ahronoth's monopoly in the local media came up during our conversation. It wasn't a monopoly in the legal sense, although this issue was also on the agenda, but a monopoly in the conceptual sense. Yedioth Ahronoth controlled more than half of the market at the time, around 70%.
With such a vast and unlimited control, the newspaper also ruled over the Israeli public's opinion. Later, when Israel Hayom was established, leading columnist of Yedioth Ahronoth Nahum Barnea claimed that owners of his newspaper, and Maariv and Haaretz as well, had a certain influence on the paper, but they did still present opposing views and different opinions. Israel Hayom, he said, only published news and articles that Sheldon Adelson would have liked to read.
His statement wasn't just false. It was malicious. The Antitrust Authority commissioner, along with several Knesset members created legislation that would try and solve the issue of Yedioth Ahronoth's unlimited control.
To the best of my recollection, the commissioner had no practical solution for how to deal with the issue, and the Knesset members said that they were terrified because of the pressure from Yedioth Ahronoth.
In the end, the legislation did not go through, but the meaning behind Yedioth Ahronoth's monopoly was clear: it would lead the media in such an intense campaign of hatred and slander against Benjamin Netanyahu that had never been seen before.
The turn to negativity in the Israeli media took place after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. It turned the ordinary hostilities into the demonization of Netanyahu as the person who "murdered and won." For the current generation, the closest example to understanding this issue infected the entire US media after Donald Trump's victory in 2016.
The next time I met the commissioner was in the spring of 2014 when the Makor Rishon newspaper went bankrupt and was in danger of closure. Adelson's willingness to buy the newspaper, and thus save it, upset quite a few officials and medial people. Obviously, they did not object to the very existence of Makor Rishon, just not under the ownership of Adelson.
We sat down with the Antitrust Authority and several of the Makor Rishon writers and editors to convince them that the newspaper would maintain its independence, and Israel Hayom and Makor Rishon should not be viewed as a monopoly. That was the media's latest invention, made up by those who wanted to bury Makor Rishon. I told the commissioner that in the end, when the actual destructive monopoly of Yedioth Ahronoth will come about, the system would have no solution for the situation. Sheldon Adelson was the only one who came up with a solution. He created competition when he established Israel Hayom, and undermined Yedioth Ahronoth's limitless control.
And this is essentially the story of Israel Hayom, that everyone understands and knows. But despite the newspaper's tremendous success in its mission to free the Israeli press from the informational monopoly that was suffocating it, the newspaper has been delegitimized continuously since its founding in August 2007.
In a profile story for the New Yorker (June 2008), journalist Connie Bruck quoted then-President George W. Bush, who told Adelson at the end of a meeting: "You tell your Prime Minister [Ehud Olmert] that I need to know what's right for your people – because at the end of the day it's going to be my policy, not Condi's [Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.] But I can't be more Catholic than the Pope."
The hint was clear: Olmert was willing to make concessions during the negotiations, and it was later announced that "Condi" was indeed stunned.
Olmert and his spokesmen accused Adelson of trying to dismantle the coalition. For years Olmert claimed that huge capital was invested in overthrowing him.
The Left did not fancy Adelson's involvement in the Israeli public life, especially via Israel Hayom. Ari Shavit's "year of hatred" from 1997 turned into an entire generation of hatred. An entire generation demands revenge. Nahum Barnea expressed the position of the Left: Adelson thinks he knows better than Israelis what is good for their country, that Adelson is "extremely right-wing" who is convinced that Israel is led by a corrupt and illegitimate government. Over the years, the attacks were turned by famous journalists into threats.
From the beginning, there was criticism in Israel Hayom against Netanyahu, who became prime minister in 2009. But unlike other media outlets, this criticism was based on the events, not on toxic hatred against the prime minister. Today, the dominant approach in the media has an approval from the justice system: anyone who is not against the prime minister is automatically viewed as a criminal. This is the generally accepted view in the media, who are in a competition of infamy, defamation, and angry outbursts against the prime minister, against the Right, and against the Likud.
During it's 13 and a half years of existence, Israel Hayom has succeeded in paving the way for journalists with original and, most importantly, diverse opinions who are able to respond to the epileptic disorders of left-wing media.
Adelson realized that in his beloved Israel, it is normal for journalists and publishers to be dragged into police interrogation rooms. That is is normal for the police to monitor freedom of press and freedom of expression, and for the State Attorney's Office to decides what the norms are in the relations between journalists and political leaders. And so he was dragged into an interrogation room as part of Case 2000, that focuses on an illicit deal Netanyahu allegedly tried to strike with Yedioth Ahronoth publisher Arnon Mozes by which the newspaper would soften its aggressive anti-Netanyahu stance in return for the prime minister working to pass legislation that would help Yedioth financially or use his influence to curtail Israel Hayom, Yedioth's chief competitor.
This case revealed that Mozes possessed great and dangerous political power. This time, the legislation in the Knesset was supposed to lead to the closure of Israel Hayom. Mozes had control in those years, 2013-2015, over two or three coalition parties, and had the judges and politicians in his pocket.
In any case, Adelson proved his greatness not only with his notable contributions to medical research and Zionist projects but he also completely transformed the Israeli media. One time in court, Adelson said that everything he had achieved he did on his own, that he started out in great poverty and became a great philanthropist, how if one gets a bad reputation in business, nobody will want to with that person anymore, but everybody wanted to do business with him.
And perhaps a deeper layer in Adelson's personality is revealed through the story of his first visit to Israel in 1988. Sheldon's father always dreamed of visiting Israel but never got the chance to. Sheldon took his late father's shoes with him and wore them throughout his visit.
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