The wife of Sheldon Adelson, Miriam Adelson one of the Republican Party’s main donors, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Here’s his CV.
5 things to know about Miriam Adelson
WASHINGTON, JTA – Miriam Adelson, best known for being the wife of one of the world’s richest men, and perhaps the Republican Party’s largest donor, Sheldon Adelson, is the winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The White House announcement sparked Democrats’ outrage: Miriam Adelson “has done nothing for his country except to be the wife of a Trump-friendly super-donor,”fulminé tweeted Paul Krugman, aNew York Timesjournalist and Nobel Prize laureate economist. “Of course it is ridiculous, and an insult to the people who have earned the medal for their loyal services. ”
In fact, the Adelsons have given a boost to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in his last few months with a muchneeded 30-million-dollar injection. They also spent 100 million dollars on Republicans in the midterm elections – the couple spent the night in the White House election the results with Trump.
It is also true that Trump paid his toll on Sheldon Adelson’s pro-Israel far-right ideology by moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, and perhaps for his business: Trump would have lobbied Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to allow him to open an Adelson casino in Japan.
But using the Medal of Freedom to reward political support is not really new. Oprah Winfrey, who helped turn Barack Obama into a star in 2008 and was deeply involved in her campaign, was selected in 2013. George Tenet, the director of the CIA who was given President George W to the Iraq war. Bush a very necessary seal of approval was a recipient in 2004.
Like Winfrey, the Adelson have a record of independent philanthropic donations of any political agenda: in the case of the Adelson, they fund medical research. This is the main mention of the announcement of the White House.
“Miriam Adelson is a committed doctor, philanthropist and humanitarian,” he said. “It has practiced internal and emergency medicine, studied and specialized in drug-related diseases, and founded two research centres involved in the fight against narcotic addictions. Together with her husband, Sheldon, she also created the Adelson Medical Research Foundation, which supports research to prevent, reduce, or eliminate disabling and potentially fatal diseases. ”
Devex, a monitoring body for aid and development funds, claims that Sheldon G. Adelson Medical Research Foundation has distributed. 67 million dollars.
The couple are also well known – perhaps better known – for their Jewish and pro-Israel funding. Sheldon Adelson is the main funder of Birthright Israel, the Taglit program that takes young Jews to Israel free of charge. He also supported the memory of the Shoah and the Israeli American Council.
Here are five things to know about Miriam Adelson:
She is involved in her methadone clinics.
Miriam Adelson, 73, who grew up in the Israeli city of Haifa, graduated with a medical degree from the Sackler Medical School at Tel Aviv University. She then Accest an exchange program at Rockefeller University in New York City, where she specialized in treating drug dependence.
Ms. Adelson regularly visits her treatment clinic near a Las Vegas shopping mall. Shean the clinic in 2000, seven years after opening one in Tel Aviv – which she herself also visited when the couple is in Israel. She put in a white coat and treats patients personally.
She associated research treatment at Rockefeller University, where she worked in the late 1980s and served on the board. His mentor was Mary Jane Kreek, who developed methadone as a treatment for heroin.
“From the beginning, the clinic focused on treatment and research,” Adelson said in an interview with JTA at its Las Vegas clinic in 2016. “I can improve knowledge of addiction and we can save lives. ”
Adelson’s research looks at there is a genetic component of, dependence not only on drugs, but also on behavior, as a gambling and the Internet.
She loved Ted Cruz
There is general agreement that the Adelson are true philanthropic and political partners (they married in 1991 after his divorce from his fellow doctor Ariel Ochshorn).
However, the couple had a friendly and sometimes public disagreement over the choice of Republican presidential candidates that they preferred among those who were most prominent during the 2016 campaign. Sheldon Adelson was in favour of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, while Miriam Adelson preferred Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Before chose Trump, however, Miriam seemed to win the battle – they gave the maximum individual donations to Cruz’s campaign.
The Adelson did not really induct the Trump candidate. Trump actually clashed with Sheldon Adelson for a while. But Sheldon Adelson consolidated Trump’s favorite status with a May 2016 appeal to his fellow Jewish Republicans to support the contending candidate and help defeat Trump, the Democratic presidential candidate.
She established a Jewish school in Las Vegas on the model of her Israeli high school.
In describing the Adelson Educational Campus, a Jewish school in Las Vegas, Adelson explains how his studies at the famous Hebrew Reali School in Haifa helped shape his vision of education.
There are no morning prayers on campus, just as there are no prayers in Israel’s secular school system.
“We don’t force children to pray, we don’t force them to wear a kippa,” she says. On the other hand, the students sing the Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem. “Being proud of who we are” was her philosophy in school, she told JTA.
In higher classes, students are supposed to have a specialization, just as Adelson specialized in biology when she was a student at Reali decades ago.
She also insisted that drug testing should be compulsory for all – students and staff.
“I don’t want a situation where one of the students on our campus sells drugs,” Adelson told JTA. “I want to show that we are all being screened in order to find one or two that will never go beyond the original stage. We want to find them, to help them. Addiction is like cancer. It is much easier to treat in the early stages. ”
She wants American Jews to look more like Israelis
Insured Israeli Jewish sensitivities in the American Jewish political body is what motivates most of the Adelson’s funding, including Birthright-Taglit, the Las Vegas School, and the Israeli American Council.
Much of the IAC’s media coverage focus on how Sheldon Adelson wants it to complete or even replace the US Committee for Public Affairs on Israel (AIPAC) as the leading pro-Israel spokesperson in the US. Sheldon Adelson’s policy fits well with that of AIPAC’s right, as well as that of IAC.
Goal waits an IAC Conference, and the biggest lesson you can learn from it is that its agenda is essentially to make Israelis feel more comfortable in an American Jewish community that does not always share Israeli sensibility. Israelis prefer to gather around food and culture, American Jews around the synagogue.
These parallel sessions, entitled “How to fit” bear the imprint of Miriam Adelson. She often participates in Hebrew and English.
Ms. Miriam Adelson told JTA that American Jews could learn a lot from Israelis, especially about how to be pro-Israel.
“American Israelis can help Israel,” she said. “Jews, as we know from our history, have many enemies, they suffer a lot of hatred, sometimes within their own people. I believe that the Americans of Israeli origin, the majority of them, love Israel, respect their homeland, many of them have served in the Israeli army. Together, if we are united, we can be a major force in Israel. ”
She loves scouting
Adelson, who was a member of the Tzofim, the Israeli Scouts organization in its youth, sits on the board of its American branch, and has devoted ways to its extended activities only to the children of Israeli Americans, but also to American Jewish children.
“If you talk about the Israeli community, you should talk about Israeli scouts,” she told JTA. “That’s really creates what creates an attachment between Israelis” in America and Israel.
Just read this: Chris martin dakota johnson