Revealed: US Oligarchs Demanded Police Crackdown on Pro-Palestine Protests
The news has led some to question the influence of pro-Israel interests over local leaders as municipalities throughout the country have employed police departments to repress pro-Palestine demonstrators. | Reporting in the Washington Post this week revealed that a private group of billionaires and wealthy executives pressured New York City Mayor Eric Adams to use police force to dismantle pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University earlier this month. ● The article revealed the existence of a secret WhatsApp chat group where pro-Israel business leaders discussed efforts to manipulate US public opinion on the ongoing Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip. The influential oligarchs managed to obtain a private Zoom meeting with the NYC mayor in late April, where they urged Adams to dissolve the pro-Palestine encampment at Columbia’s Manhattan campus. ● Some of the participants in the discussion appeared to use previous and future financial donations to the mayor as leverage to ensure the crackdown.
💬 “What this article is uncovering is that a number of these individuals, such as the former CEO of Starbucks Howard Schultz [and] Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell… were all using the WhatsApp application to pressure the mayor of New York to go in and remove these encampments, because they felt they had to control the narrative,” noted host Wilmer Leon.“What this article is uncovering is that a number of these individuals, such as the former CEO of Starbucks Howard Schultz [and] Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell… were all using the WhatsApp application to pressure the mayor of New York to go in and remove these encampments, because they felt they had to control the narrative,” noted host Wilmer Leon.
Also among the participants of the private chat group were Joshua Kushner, the founder of Thrive Capital and brother of former Donald Trump advisor Jared Kushner, and influential activist investor Bill Ackman. Ackman has become a highly controversial figure in recent months for his attacks on pro-Palestine campus activists; the hedge fund manager pressured Harvard University to publicly release the names of students who had signed an open letter criticizing Israel’s military operation in Gaza, which has killed more than 35,000.
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