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Philanthropist Sheldon Adelson Offers $5B to Build US Embassy in Jerusalem

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Hails Trump’s Decision as ‘Historic’

Las Vegas Sands Corp. CEO Sheldon G. Adelson’s offer to help pay for the new American Embassy in Jerusalem is yet another vote of confidence for President Trump as perhaps the best friend Jews have ever had in the White House.

A State Department spokesperson has said officials were reviewing whether it could legally accept such a donation. The price tag to build the new embassy to replace the current one in Tel Aviv has been estimated to be about $500 million.

The Trump administration has said it will open a temporary embassy in Jerusalem in time to mark the 70th anniversary of the creation of the State of Israel on May 14.

The Jerusalem Post recently reported that Adelson and his wife remain close to President Trump, “to whom they made massive contributions during the 2016 presidential election.” Indeed, Adelson said in the interview that Trump kept his promise to move the embassy because “he promised everyone he would do it” and that he expected the move to take place over the next year.” When asked whether Trump’s decision was historic, Adelson said: “Sure. No other president in 70 years has done it.”

President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and decision to move the American embassy have drawn praise from both sides of the aisle. New York Rep. Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, told the Washington Examiner recently that “This decision is long overdue and helps correct a decades-long indignity. I support the decision to recognize Jerusalem as the eternal capital of Israel and to move the U.S. embassy there. It recognizes where Israel’s government — the parliament and the prime minister — is based, as well as the ancient and unbreakable connection between the Jewish people and Jerusalem.”

Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) also praised the President, telling the Jewish Telegraph Agency that “As someone who strongly believes that Jerusalem is the undivided capital of Israel, I am calling for the U.S. Embassy in Israel to be relocated to Jerusalem. Moving the embassy as soon as possible would appropriately commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Jerusalem’s reunification and show the world that the U.S. definitively acknowledges Jerusalem as Israel’s capitol.”

Morton A. Klein, who runs the Zionist Organization of America, a nonprofit group that is funded partly by Adelson, told the New York Times recently that he was “concerned that people will think that this is being done because of a group of people — evangelicals and Jews — who care about it and not because it’s the U.S. government that cares about it. It should be crystal-clear that this is the U.S. government making the decision to move it.”

By: Howard Riell

 

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