Today's (June 24) editorial on Sheldon Adelson in the New York Times at last gets down to some home truths about Adelson's gazillion dollar contributions first to Newt Gingrich and now to Mitt Romney. Yes, he's a Republican; yes, he's rich, really rich; yes, he's to the right of..... Yes, he expects a Romney campaign to call off federal investigations of his gambling interests.What the Times has finally alluded to is that Mr. Adelson's primary interest is not his own country, but Israel which, he has made clear, is his real country.Gist: "[W]hy is Mr. Adelson writing these huge checks? The first answer is clearly his disgust for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, supported by President Obama and most Israelis. He considers a Palestinian state 'a steppingstone for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people,' and has called the Palestinian prime minister a terrorist. He is even further to the right than the main pro-Israeli lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which he broke with in 2007 when it supported economic aid to the Palestinians."

Margaret O’Brien Steinfels is a former editor of Commonweal. 

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