A ledger, not a theory. Each entry below is one of five things and is labelled as such: the owner’s own words, money that changed hands, a written company policy, an action documented by named reporting, or a report we could not take back to a primary source. The reader can weigh each kind differently. None of it is inferred from anybody’s name.
The Ellisons
The IDF charity gifts and the Lanai holiday are above. Add Oracle’s underground cloud region in Jerusalem, opened in 2021 after Oracle lost the Israeli government’s cloud tender to Google and Amazon (Data Center Dynamics, October 2021), and the Haaretz report, denied by Netanyahu, that Ellison offered him a seat on Oracle’s board worth about $450,000 a year (Haaretz, 16 September 2021).
David Ellison said in October, at the conference where he announced the Weiss deal, that he would never make political statements, and in the same conversation called Trump’s Gaza plan “a historic accomplishment” (+972 Magazine, October 2025). His editor-in-chief is on the record.
Called an “unhinged Zionist”, she wrote that she “happily plead[ed] guilty as charged.”
Bari Weiss, replying to Andrew Sullivan, New York Times, 10 October 2018
The Times of Israel, on the day of her appointment, called her “proudly pro-Israel” and noted she had visited the country more than fifteen times (Times of Israel, 6 October 2025). The same article names the investors who backed The Free Press before Paramount bought it: Marc Andreessen, David Sacks, Howard Schultz and the British hedge fund owner Paul Marshall, of whom more below (Times of Israel, 6 October 2025).
The woman who sold CBS to the Ellisons is on the record too. In October 2024, when CBS News rebuked its anchor Tony Dokoupil for interrogating Ta-Nehisi Coates about Israel on air, Shari Redstone said the network had “made a bad mistake” (CNN, 9 October 2024). In January 2025, after a 60 Minutes report on Gaza drew accusations of anti-Israel bias, CBS installed an interim executive editor and Redstone said she was “pleased that CBS News recognized the need to take action to deliver consistently balanced and fair coverage” (Jewish Insider, 14 January 2025). In an interview with the New York Times this August, as carried by secondary outlets, she said of 7 October 2023: “Once that happened, I wanted out. I wanted to support Israel” (VIN News, 19 August 2025).
Bezos
Jeff Bezos at the opening of the Amazon Spheres in Seattle, January 2018. He owns the Washington Post outright; the company he chairs runs, with Google, the Israeli state’s cloud. Photo: Seattle City Council, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Jeff Bezos has said nothing on the record about Israel. His link is a contract. In April 2021 Amazon and Google won Project Nimbus, Israel’s $1.2bn cloud contract for the government and the defence establishment, on terms that bar the companies from withdrawing under boycott pressure or refusing service to any state body, the military included (Times of Israel, April 2021). Amazon has since committed about $7.2bn to its Israel data centres through 2037 (Business Wire, 31 July 2023).
The man who owns the Washington Post is, through the company he chairs, one of the two Western firms whose servers the Israeli state and its military run on, under a contract that forbids him to switch them off.
Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch in New York, April 2011, six months after he told the Anti-Defamation League that there was an ongoing war against the Jews and that the media was one of its battlegrounds. Photo: David Shankbone, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Rupert Murdoch’s position is in his own words. Accepting the Anti-Defamation League’s International Leadership Award in October 2010 he told the room what he believed, and what he believed about Washington.
“We live in a world where there is an ongoing war against the Jews.” Its third front was “the soft war that seeks to isolate Israel by delegitimizing it. The battleground is everywhere: the media, multinational organizations, NGOs.” On putting distance between Washington and Israel: “My view is the opposite.”
Rupert Murdoch, ADL award dinner, New York, full text, 13 October 2010
The ADL gave him the award, in its words, “for his stalwart support of Israel” (ADL, 13 October 2010). A month later he bought a stake in Genie Oil and Gas and joined its parent’s Strategic Advisory Board beside Dick Cheney and Jacob Rothschild; the parent company’s own SEC filing records the purchase, 0.5 per cent for $1m, paid with a promissory note (SEC filing, 15 November 2010). In February 2013 Israel gave Genie’s subsidiary an exclusive licence to explore for oil across 153 square miles of the occupied Golan Heights, which the United Nations recognises as Syrian territory (Business Insider, 22 February 2013).
Murdoch also once reached, in public, for the antisemitic version of this story. In November 2012 he tweeted: “Why is Jewish owned press so consistently anti-Israel in every crisis?” He apologised the next day and wrote to the ADL that he “should have stuck to the substance of the issue and not bring in irrelevant and incorrect ethnic matters” (France 24, 17 November 2012). Keep that phrase, irrelevant and incorrect ethnic matters. It is the right description, and it comes from the man who owns Fox News.
Axel Springer
Mathias Döpfner, chief executive and part-owner of Axel Springer, in June 2023. His company owns Politico, Business Insider and, since June 2026, the Daily Telegraph, and its written values require staff to support Israel. Photo: Kasa Fue, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
This is the one owner whose commitment is written into the terms of employment. Axel Springer’s corporate “Essentials”, which German staff commit to in writing, include support for Israel’s right to exist. When the company bought Politico in 2021 Döpfner said that anyone who disagreed “should not work for Axel Springer, very clearly” (Haaretz, 17 October 2021).
In April this year Politico’s journalists wrote to their incoming editor that Döpfner’s “repeated use of POLITICO to promote his political agenda”, in pieces arguing that Europe was “failing Israel” and backing American and Israeli strikes on Iran, was damaging the outlet (Semafor, 27 April 2026). He answered them on a staff call.
“Nobody should work for Axel Springer despite the essentials or in disagreement with one of the essentials.” For those who found them unattractive: “I can only recommend working for other companies.”
Mathias Döpfner to Axel Springer staff, Jewish News, 29 April 2026
He describes himself as a “non-Jewish Zionist”, and Israel’s president gave him the Presidential Medal of Honor in October 2025 (record, October 2025). On 30 June 2026 Axel Springer completed its purchase of the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph for £575m, after the Culture Secretary said she was not minded to intervene on either public interest or foreign state grounds (RTE, 30 June 2026). One of the two British papers that produced the largest number of severely biased articles about Muslims last year now belongs to a company that makes support for Israel a condition of working there. We come back to that.
Adelson, and the rest
Miriam Adelson at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s leadership summit in Las Vegas, October 2023. She owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal and publishes Israel Hayom, and was the third largest donor of the 2024 election. Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Miriam Adelson gave $100m to the pro-Trump Preserve America PAC in four instalments in 2024 and about $106m across the cycle, the third largest donor in the country (Times of Israel, 15 October 2024). She gave $25m to a medical school at Ariel University, in a West Bank settlement, and said the gift would help “to strengthen the settlers in Judea and Samaria” (New York Magazine, May 2024).
Disney and Comcast each gave $2m to humanitarian charities after 7 October 2023, Magen David Adom among them, with statements from Bob Iger and Brian Roberts condemning the attack; those are relief donations and the ledger labels them as such. Michael Bloomberg was the first laureate of the Genesis Prize, handed to him in Jerusalem by Netanyahu. Patrick Soon-Shiong, who owns the Los Angeles Times, is the exception that proves the ledger is a ledger: his one documented intervention on Gaza was an email to his editor asking how the paper could endorse a candidate while the country supplied the arms “to kill children, women, innocent people”. He is not in the table because the record does not put him there.
WhoWhatKindSourceLarry Ellison$10m to Friends of the Israel Defense Forces at its Beverly Hills galaMoneysource, November 2014Larry Ellison$16.6m to Friends of the IDF, the largest single gift in its history, for a training campus for infantry units. His words at the gala: “Since Israel’s founding, we have called on the brave men and women of the IDF to defend our home”Moneysource, 5 November 2017Larry EllisonBenjamin Netanyahu and his family holidayed on Lanai, the Hawaiian island Ellison owns, while Ellison sat on the prosecution witness list in Netanyahu’s corruption trialDocumented actionsource, 21 August 2021Larry EllisonHaaretz reported that Ellison offered Netanyahu a seat on Oracle’s board worth about $450,000 a year; Netanyahu denied itReported, not primary-sourcedsource, 16 September 2021Larry EllisonOracle opened an underground cloud region in Jerusalem, about $319m, and bid for the Israeli government’s Nimbus tender, which Google and Amazon wonMoneysource, October 2021Larry Ellison$45.7bn equity commitment from his revocable trust, personally guaranteed, to fund Paramount’s purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery and CNNMoneysource, 27 February 2026David EllisonBought The Free Press for about $150m and made Bari Weiss editor-in-chief of CBS News, reporting to him directlyMoneysource, 6 October 2025David Ellison”I’m not going to be in the position of ever making political statements. We’re an entertainment company first.” In the same conversation he called Trump’s Gaza plan “a historic accomplishment and one that we should all be happy” aboutOwn wordssource, October 2025Bari WeissCalled an “unhinged Zionist” by Andrew Sullivan, she wrote that she “happily plead[ed] guilty as charged”Own wordssource, 10 October 2018Bari Weiss”Proudly pro-Israel”, in the Times of Israel’s account of her on the day of her appointment; she had visited Israel more than 15 times by 2024Own wordssource, 6 October 2025Paul MarshallNamed by the Times of Israel, with Marc Andreessen, David Sacks and Howard Schultz, as an investor in The Free Press, the outlet it describes as proudly pro-Israel and which Paramount bought for $150mMoneysource, 6 October 2025Shari Redstone”I think we made a bad mistake this week”, on CBS News rebuking Tony Dokoupil for his interrogation of Ta-Nehisi Coates about IsraelOwn wordssource, 9 October 2024Shari Redstone”I am pleased that CBS News recognized the need to take action to deliver consistently balanced and fair coverage”, after CBS installed an interim executive editor when a 60 Minutes segment on Gaza drew accusations of anti-Israel biasOwn wordssource, 14 January 2025Shari RedstoneQuoted from a New York Times interview on 7 October 2023 and her decision to sell: “Once that happened, I wanted out. I wanted to support Israel”Reported, not primary-sourcedsource, 19 August 2025Jeff BezosAmazon, with Google, won Israel’s $1.2bn Project Nimbus contract to supply cloud and AI services to the government and the defence establishment, on terms that bar the companies from withdrawing under boycott pressureMoneysource, April 2021Jeff BezosAmazon Web Services committed about $7.2bn to its Israel region through 2037Moneysource, 31 July 2023Rupert MurdochAccepting the Anti-Defamation League’s award: “We live in a world where there is an ongoing war against the Jews”; the third front is “the soft war that seeks to isolate Israel by delegitimizing it. The battleground is everywhere: the media, multinational organizations, NGOs”; and on Washington keeping its distance from Israel, “My view is the opposite”Own wordssource, 13 October 2010Rupert MurdochThe ADL’s International Leadership Award, in its words “for his stalwart support of Israel”. In 2021 the ADL wrote to Lachlan Murdoch that it would no longer give the award, citing Tucker Carlson’s replacement rhetoricDocumented actionsource, 13 October 2010Rupert MurdochBought 0.5% of Genie Oil and Gas for $1m and joined Genie Energy’s Strategic Advisory Board with Dick Cheney and Jacob Rothschild, as recorded in the parent company’s own SEC filingMoneysource, 15 November 2010Rupert MurdochIsrael granted Genie’s subsidiary Afek an exclusive 36-month licence to explore for oil across 153 square miles of the occupied Golan Heights, which the UN recognises as Syrian territoryDocumented actionsource, 22 February 2013Rupert MurdochTweeted “Why is Jewish owned press so consistently anti-Israel in every crisis?”, then apologised “unreservedly” and wrote to the ADL that he “should have stuck to the substance of the issue and not bring in irrelevant and incorrect ethnic matters”Own wordssource, 17 November 2012Axel SpringerThe company’s written “Essentials” include support for Israel’s right to exist. German staff commit to them in writing; on buying Politico, Mathias Döpfner said those who disagree “should not work for Axel Springer, very clearly”Written policysource, 17 October 2021Axel SpringerDöpfner on a staff call, after Politico journalists wrote to their editor about his use of the outlet for his own political pieces: “Nobody should work for Axel Springer despite the essentials or in disagreement with one of the essentials”; “If the essentials are not attractive, I can only recommend working for other companies”Own wordssource, 29 April 2026Axel SpringerDöpfner has described himself as a “non-Jewish Zionist”; Israel’s president gave him the Presidential Medal of Honor in October 2025Own wordssource, October 2025Axel SpringerCompleted the £575m purchase of the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph after the Culture Secretary said she was not minded to intervene on public interest or foreign state groundsMoneysource, 30 June 2026Miriam Adelson$100m to the pro-Trump Preserve America PAC in four instalments, disclosed in FEC filings; about $106m across the 2024 cycle, the third largest donorMoneysource, 15 October 2024Miriam Adelson$25m to a medical school at Ariel University in a West Bank settlement, a gift she said would help “to strengthen the settlers in Judea and Samaria”Own wordssource, May 2024Miriam AdelsonPublisher of Israel Hayom, the free daily her late husband financed, which lost about 730 million shekels between 2007 and 2014 and is Israel’s most read paperMoneysource, May 2018Disney$2m for humanitarian relief after 7 October 2023, $1m of it to Magen David Adom; Bob Iger: “We condemn these attacks”Moneysource, 12 October 2023Comcast$2m after 7 October 2023, to Save the Children, Doctors Without Borders, Direct Relief and American Friends of Magen David Adom; Brian Roberts: “We are horrified and deeply saddened by the brutal attack on Israel”Moneysource, 13 October 2023Michael BloombergFirst laureate of the $1m Genesis Prize, presented in Jerusalem by NetanyahuDocumented actionsource, 22 May 2014
The Israel ledger: 31 entries, 14 of them money, 10 the owner’s own words, 1 a written policy, 4 a documented action and 2 reported but not taken to a primary source.