Recent newspaper articles report that American tycoons
associated with the Reform and Conservative movements, as
well as wealthy yordim who side with the political
left in Israel, are working feverishly to influence the
current Israeli election campaign.
At the onset of the election campaign, Yediot
Acharonot reporter in the U.S., Tzadok Yechezkeli
published a wide-ranging article on the the campaign to raise
money to fund the elections among "American Zionists."
He writes that scores of American Jews and Israelis with whom
he spoke estimate that by the end of May, approximately $15
million-25 million will have been injected into the Israeli
election. Most of the fund were channeled in ways that
"elegantly" skirted the Israeli Party Funding Law, Yechezkeli
points out.
The candidates and the parties are not in a rush to admit
this. Roni Milo, of the Centrist Party for example,
unassumingly claimed that he has not "done much work on the
issue." But an investigation revealed that this past year,
it was Milo who was in fact one of the most successful
schnorers in the American Jewish community. He was
especially effective among wealthy Reform Jews, who from the
safety of America, are still somehow "terrified of the ever-
growing chareidi influence in Israel."
The most modest estimate is that in the Jewish community of
Los Angeles, where Milo made his biggest dent, he collected
at least $5 million.
