Haaretz reports:

U.S. President Joe Biden’s reelection bid has some tough sledding ahead if the majority of polls that have emerged in recent months are to be believed. His fundraising efforts tell another story, though, with his reelection campaign already raking in significant donations – many coming from longtime Jewish Democratic megadonors.

An analysis of campaign finance disclosures showing contributions to Biden’s campaign and pro-Biden PACs and super PACs for 2023 illustrates a deep groundswell of support from Jewish-Democratic benefactors. They make up a significant portion of the president’s fundraising as he begins his reelection bid in earnest.

The donors in question – many of whom are in the finance industry, with others connected to Hollywood and Silicon Valley – vary in their prioritization of Israel as a campaign issue, as well as their respective involvements in local Jewish communities and philanthropies.

Their steadfast and deep-pocketed support for Biden, however, indicate how the Democratic Party has generations-deep support within the American-Jewish community.

Polls have continuously shown that Jewish voters vastly prefer Biden over Donald Trump, with Israel rarely being among voters’ top priorities. Despite this, American Jews are among the few groups who have stuck with Biden amid plummeting poll numbers (many of which stem from his approach to Israel, which centrist Democrats deem a threshold issue).

Haim Saban is perhaps the key pro-Israel megadonor for Biden, significantly overlapping between both the president’s reelection bid and AIPAC’s United Democracy Project super PAC. He has given over $936,000 to Biden, after donating $1 million to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s super PAC. (While federal political action committees have strict limits on the amounts they can contribute, a super PAC is allowed to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to campaign independently for candidates for federal office.)

Saban has long been one of the most important donors and fundraisers for the Democrats, generating millions of dollars for the party over the years. He has also made significant financial investments in pro-Israel organizations such as AIPAC and Friends of the Israel Defense Forces.

He also collaborated with late Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson on the Israeli American Council, which was founded to organize Israeli expats living in the United States. He told The New Yorker in 2010 that he was “a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel.”

Joining Saban as an overlapping megadonor is casino magnate Neil Bluhm. He has already given more than $1.4 million this cycle to the Biden super PAC, on top of $200,000 to United Democracy Project. His daughter Leslie, a social entrepreneur who sits on the AmeriCorps board of directors following an appointment from Biden in 2021, has given over $554,000.

On the other end of the Democratic Party’s pro-Israel political spectrum, J Street’s political action committee has already contributed more than $1.4 million. J Street PAC’s donations, made over the course of 40 separate contributions in 2023, were largely buoyed by $500,000 contributions from career diplomat Jon Greenwald and radiation oncologist Patricia Gordon (both J Street board members).

Billionaire philanthropist George Soros – one of J Street’s previous key political contributors and longtime Democratic megadonor, who has steadily become synonymous with Republican attacks that have too often masqueraded as antisemitic dog whistles – has given Biden $758,000.

Left-wing pro-Israel donations go beyond J Street, though. Michael Sonnenfeldt – co-founder of the Israel Policy Forum, and a massive donor to Israel-related causes like Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Institute for National Security Studies – has given more than $200,000.

Many of Biden’s key Jewish donors are based in California, both in the Los Angeles entertainment and business sector, and Silicon Valley. [Continue reading…]