Ronald Lauder Cuts Ties With Israel and Criticizes Netanyahu

But one of the biggest, most powerful, most visible Zionists on the planet is walking away from Israel.

His name is Ronald Lauder. He's a billionaire.

He's poured money into Israel for decades.

He's helped put Benjamin Netanyahu in power, and he's the president of the World Jewish Congress. And now he says he's done.

So last week, Lauder sat down with Haaretz.

Lauder says this: "I basically cut my ties there because it has become so..."

And then he doesn't finish the sentence.

Haaretz says that he grimaced and he made a gesture of vomiting.

He says, "What you have is a dictator, a one-person show.

Israel is a democracy, but Netanyahu is not playing by the rules of democracy, and what we're seeing now feels more like a banana republic." He said, "I realized at the end of the day that Israel really didn't want peace.

They wanted dominance, and I walked away from it."

And then he turned to the Israeli people and he says, "I want to tell Israelis, shame on you." So why is this guy so important?

Well, there's three reasons. He has been one of the biggest investors in Israel.

Ron Lauder is also one of its loudest supporters, and he's also the president of the World Jewish Congress.

Forbes put his net worth at five and a half billion dollars, and look at who this man knows. For decades, he was one of Benjamin Netanyahu's closest confidants.

The Emir of Qatar is his next-door neighbor in New York.

When he visits the King of Jordan, he says he stays at his home and is treated like part of the family.

Ronald Reagan announced his run for president from his house. He once called Bill Clinton to ask for CIA protection so he could go meet the leader of Hezbollah. George W. Bush sent him to Israel as part of an official US delegation, and Donald Trump, apparently his friend since Wharton,

reportedly got the idea to buy Greenland from Ron Lauder.

So today, the chairman also of the Federal Reserve is actually Ron Lauder's son-in-law.

And also, there's one more name. Oh, we can't forget this one.

There's one more name that's not on the board right here that you're seeing, and that is Jeffrey Epstein. Of course, Ron Lauder's name shows up more than 900 times in the Epstein files.

So that's who this guy is, a man who spent decades pouring money into Israel.

He helped make Netanyahu prime minister.

He went after teachers, threatened political candidates, and he runs the organization that spent years getting governments to adopt a definition that labels pretty much any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism.

And now he's sold all of his properties in Israel and says he's not going back ever, that he can't stomach the place.