Donations: The Revelations of Revelations

As an American living abroad, one thing that never ceases to amaze me are the all too commonplace, self-assured anti-Semitic cries about the Jewish black hand controlling American economic and foreign policy and thus dominating the world. Yes, the U.S. is unwilling to even second-guess Israeli actions and is all too often blindly and unreasonably pro-Israel even against its own interests (ironically Israeli citizens are more openly critical of Israel than Americans are).

Nevertheless, after a cursory review of the list of donors – finally made transparent – to the William J. Clinton Foundation, it is interesting to see that some of the heftiest donors populating the list were Arab state actors and individuals from Muslim countries, with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia topping the list. Of course, a little further down there were also Jewish and Israeli donors, as well as plenty of people from other nationalities, religions and ethnicities.

In today’s Washington Post, Eugene Robinson comments that despite the transparency, there will be those who use the list to draw up new conspiracy theories about the new Hillary State Department. But what is most revealing about the donations may not be how much certain individuals gave, but how little. As Robinson writes, “times are tough”.