| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 6:02 am Post subject: Israel Buys Another Piece of Washington |
| Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 17:26:46 -0800
From: "Jeffrey Blankfort" <jblankfort@earthlink.net> View Contact Details
Subject: Israel Buys Another Piece of Washington
For those who believe the lobby is only a secondary matter when it
comes
to US Middle East policy, this item might nudge them a little closer to
reality. Long-time readers on my list should already be aware of Saban.
When Barak was PM, he was a good friend of his, too.
Jeff
<http://www.MiddleEast.Org>
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
Washington Scene: MIDDLEEAST.ORG <http://www.middleeast.org/>
ISRAELI Influence-Peddling
ON TOP OF ALL THE SPYING AND LOBBYING
SHARON'S "DEAR PERSONAL FRIEND" BUYS THE DEMOCRATS BROOKINGS
INSTITUTION
MER - Mid-East Realities - MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 20 November:
Now he, Haim Saban, didn't quite literally buy it, The Brookings
Institution, all. He just kicked in some super-big bucks and got
himself a new Institute dealing with the Middle East in Washington with
both his own name and that of Brookings on the door. And then to head
it up he installed the guy the Israelis had brought over to the U.S. in
the 1980s to head up their then new Near East Institute think-tank, the
guy whose citizenship was rushed through when Bill Clinton got elected
so he could become a top Middle East official working on behalf of the
Israelis from inside the U.S. government.
Yes we know, to those not in the know about such Washington
affairs
things like this sometimes sound more like fiction than reality. But
we assure you...this is all very much part of the factual realities
behind-the-scenes in Washington these days, no matter how much it is
socially and politically incorrect to spill the beans so openly.
This little feature story from the New York Times Magazine a few
months ago is full of interesting facts about Haim Saban -- but lacks
both the crucial Washington context and the overall Israeli conspiracy
aspects. Yes, we used the word 'conspiracy' on purpose. For the
Israelis and the many organizations that make up the extended
Israeli-Jewish lobby headquartered in Washington very purposefully use
a
few crucial think-tanks and institutes to constantly manipulate and
control the media. And in doing so they also considerably influence
policies while at the same time positioning those in their pay for key
government positions no matter whether it's Democrats or Republicans in
charge.
In the case of Haim Saban, Martin Indyk, and Brookings this little
deal was done shortly after Bush defeated Gore four years ago now.
Walla - The Saban Institute at The Brookings Institution headed by
Indyk
and of course fronting for the Israelis no matter how much they pretend
otherwise.
Back in 1983, after the bad press from the invasion of Lebanon,
Israel's American Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC, spun off a
think-tank since known as the Near East Institute. It was to head up
this Institute that Indyk was first brought to the U.S., an Australian
citizen with extensive Israeli intelligence connections.
During the Clinton years it was Martin Indyk and the infamous
Dennis Ross, also formerly connected with AIPAC, who ran the 'Peace
Process'. Cut to the chase...Clinton had had to pay off his big
campaign debt to crucial Jewish advisers and money-men but putting
these
operatives in charge in both the National Security Council and the
State
Department.
With Gore's unexpected defeat in 2000 Ross went back to head up
AIPAC's Near East Institute as well as a new division in Israel's
Jewish
Agency working to push Jews worldwide to emigrate to the Jewish State.
That's when Saban stepped in, and Brookings sold out, with Indyk put in
charge of this largely Democratic Party think-tank's Middle East
affairs.
Now had John Kerry won the Presidency earlier this month he was
heavily mortaged and deeply indebted to Haim Saban, one of the very top
multi-million dollar campaign contributors and Democratic Party
moneymen, as well as a close circle of Israeli-lobby connected Jewish
Zionist advisers and financiers. Had that been the case both Indyk
and Ross were already prepared to go back into key U.S. government
policy-making positions.
Now read the details about Haim Saban keeping all this crucial
perspective and context in mind which the nation's 'newspaper of
record'
largely ommitted.
<http://www.middleeast.org>
Haim Saban, who turned cartoons into a multibillion-dollar fortune,
has an
office overlooking Los Angeles, but his world view centers on Israel -
NYTimes.
"To me he will always be a dear personal friend." - Ariel Sharon
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Schlepping to Moguldom
By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
<>LOS ANGELES - HAIM SABAN, one of the nation's richest and most
improbable media magnates, was slouched in a leather seat aboard his
Gulfstream jet during a trip from Los Angeles to New York this spring,
rattling on about his support for Israel. After devouring a bagel
covered in lox, he leaned forward and launched into his favorite story
from the Democratic presidential primaries.
"Did I tell you what Howard Dean told me?" he asked, knowing full well
that he had not, at least not yet today. "Do you know how he tells me
that he is going to support Israel?" he recounted, with a look of
incredulity. "He tells me, 'Don't you know my wife is Jewish?' "
Mr. Saban, 59, let out a sharp laugh, pausing for effect, before
delivering his punch line. "Do you know what I told him? I said,
'Governor, the fact that your wife is Jewish is your problem.' "
A self-described "cartoon schlepper," Mr. Saban became a billionaire by
turning the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers into a global franchise that
he
merged with Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation
<http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=NWS>
and, in 2001, sold to the Walt Disney Company
<http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=DIS>
for $5.3 billion. He has since emerged as perhaps the most politically
connected mogul in Hollywood, throwing his weight and money around
Washington and, increasingly, the world, trying to influence all things
Israeli.
"I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel," he said in his first
extensive interview in years.
To that end, he has become one of the largest individual donors in the
country to the Democratic Party and its candidates, giving millions
over
the past decade - $7 million in just one donation to the Democratic
National Committee in 2002. He recently had Senator John Kerry over to
his chateau-style home in Beverly Hills. ("We played guitar and
kibitzed," he said.) He regularly spends hours at a time on the phone
with Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister. He vacations with Bill
Clinton.
At the same time, Mr. Saban has been bidding - or at least kicking the
tires - on media properties around the world as he looks to expand his
empire and, by extension, his political reach.
But what really has people talking in Hollywood and Washington is his
most ambitious project yet: he is the proud owner of the largest
television broadcaster in Germany. "I know, I know. I get the irony,"
he
said with a smile.
A year ago, Mr. Saban beat out his one-time partner, Mr. Murdoch, and
many other media titans to buy the broadcaster, ProSiebenSat.1 Media,
putting him in control of a company that owns the rough equivalent of
CBS, ABC, TBS and Nickelodeon.
"That level of ownership would never be allowed in the U.S.," he
acknowledged. "It would be too much concentration."
Since taking over the broadcaster, he has turned it around - cutting
costs and sending it American hits like "The OC," a Fox Network series
about teenage tribulations, and "Nip/Tuck," a drama centered in a
plastic surgery clinic. Not only is the company making money, but Mr.
Saban may finally be shaking a reputation that has long dogged him:
that
he has gone further on luck than talent.
"It's easy to be jealous of someone like Haim," said Peter Chernin,
president and chief executive of the News Corporation. "But I think the
Germany situation has the potential to be not just a financial score
but
serve as the cornerstone of something bigger."
That, Mr. Saban readily acknowledged, is the plan. As one of the
richest
people in Hollywood, he hears about possible deals constantly. He is
toying with the idea of buying The Jerusalem Post from Hollinger
International
<http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=HLR>,
which has been canvassing for buyers. "If they ever come to earth with
the price, I would be interested in it," he said.
He has also stirred controversy in Britain, where he publicly expressed
interest in buying ITV, the country's biggest commercial network, while
accusing its competitors, BBC News and Sky News, the news arm of the
pay-TV provider British Sky Broadcasting
<http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=BSY>,
of pro-Arab coverage.
Of course, not every deal has panned out. Last year, he joined a
consortium led by Edgar Bronfman Jr. that was bidding on Warner Music,
only to drop out at the 11th hour, worried that the group was
overpaying. Now that Warner Music is on an upswing, it looks as if he
may have missed an opportunity. But Mr. Saban says he has moved on.
"I don't even think about it," he said.
Mr. Saban said he had other deals up his sleeve, but he refused to tip
his hand. You can count on him to pursue them tirelessly. "I don't play
golf and I don't collect stamps,'' he said. "I don't ride horses. I
don't go mountain hiking, I don't go star gazing. I don't do any of
that."
Don't bother asking him what his hobby is. "I have none. Zero. It's my
family and work."
Mr. Saban's path to moguldom has certainly been unusual. He was born in
Egypt but fled to Tel Aviv with his parents, his brother and his
grandmother after the 1956 Suez War. Struggling to get by, the family
lived in a one-room apartment and shared a bathroom, he recalled, "with
a hooker and a pimp."
As a teenager, he took up the bass guitar and began managing bands and
promoting concerts. But his business was wiped out by the 1973 Yom
Kippur War and he decided to move to Paris with his business partner,
Shuki Levy.
HIS big break came soon after that. While vacationing in Tel Aviv, he
got a call from a producer in Paris who wanted one of Mr. Saban's
clients, Noam Kaniel, a child singer, to record the theme song for a
cartoon called "Goldorak," which was wildly popular in France in the
70's. So he flew back to France and headed to the studio.
"It was just one of the worst songs I ever heard in my life," he
recalled. "But we schlepped all the way there so I said, 'Let's do it
so
we can get out of here and get back to the pool at the Sheraton in Tel
Aviv.' " About a month later, Mr. Saban got a copy of the master and a
bill for $2,000 from the producer.
"I said: 'I do you a favor and you want $2,000. I don't want the
master,' '' he remembered. "So now I'm schlepping around to record
companies looking for someone to give me a licensing deal and pay me an
advance of $2,000. But the song is so awful nobody wants to give it to
me, nobody. So I find this guy at CBS just out of school who is willing
to just ship a few hundred copies."
When "Goldorak" became hugely successful, its theme song started
selling, and those few hundred copies soon turned into 3.5 million.
During that process, he had his eureka moment. Because he owned the
master recording for the TV program, he collected all of the profit. "I
found out on a TV deal all the money came to me, not to the record
company,'' he said. "On a licensing deal you only get 20 percent. I was
swimming in money. I didn't know what to do with myself. Everything
went
whoosh from there."
He and his partner started releasing music soundtracks in France for
television shows like "Dallas" and "Knots Landing." In late 1983, Mr.
Saban moved to Los Angeles and began writing and producing cartoon
soundtracks, though not always with much success.
"When I moved to this country in 1983, you can rest assured that they
weren't waiting in lines to meet me and see me and make deals with me,"
he said. "Did I wait for hours for a cartoon producer to see me so I
could play him some of our music and after hours his assistant would
come out and say, 'Well, he won't be able to see you today'? Yes."
Soon, however, he was on a roll. He wrote the theme song for the
cartoon
series that eventually became the Disney movie "Inspector Gadget," for
example, and then bought the television rights to the Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles from the creators of the comic book characters. The
television program became an overnight sensation.
Then, in 1985, on a business trip to Tokyo, he hit gold in a room at
the
Imperial Hotel. "They have all these crazy game shows on and I didn't
understand anything and then this thing came on," he said, referring to
a children's cartoon show known as "Dinosaur Task Force Zyuranger."
"I said: 'Oh my God. Oh my God.' It was fascinating. I thought it was
magical. It was incredible."
For half a million dollars - "which is not nothing," he noted - he
bought the rights to broadcast the program outside of Asia. After eight
years of begging and pleading, he finally persuaded the News
Corporation's Fox Network to broadcast the show, renamed "The Mighty
Morphin Power Rangers," in the summer of 1993. It was an instant hit.
With the hottest children's show in the world on his hands, Mr. Saban
formed a joint venture with Fox in 1996. It turned out to be a shrewd
move. The next year, the venture acquired the Family Channel from its
founder, Pat Robertson, for $1.9 billion and turned it into the Fox
Family Channel. Four years later, Michael D. Eisner, the Disney chief
executive, negotiated a deal to buy the channel for Disney for $5.3
billion.
THE deal is considered one of Mr. Eisner's worst, one that he has
acknowledged as a drag on his company. But Mr. Saban walked away with
some $2 billion for himself. "People say they overpaid,'' Mr. Saban
said. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I will be very honest with
you and this may sound somewhat arrogant - I will tell you that I ended
up with about a half-billion less than what I thought I could have
gotten for those assets."
In any event, some of the proceeds from that sale helped to underwrite
Mr. Saban's relatively newfound passion: politics.
He said he caught the political bug in the mid-1990's, when he felt
that
support for Israel was slipping in the United States. He and his wife,
Cheryl (who, by the way, is not Jewish), slept in the White House
several times during President Clinton's two terms. And Mr. Saban has
remained close to the former president.
"Haim Saban has been a very good friend, supporter and adviser to me,"
Mr. Clinton said in an e-mail message. "I am grateful for his
commitment
to Israel, to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East and to my
foundation's work, particularly on reconciliation issues."
Mr. Clinton might have added that he is also grateful for Mr. Saban's
commitment to the Democratic Party, including his $7 million donation
two years ago, the largest individual donation in its history.
While Mr. Saban is a vocal opponent of President Bush - "I think Bush
is
just messing it up every day more" - he supports some of Mr. Bush's
policies. "On the issues of security and terrorism I am a total hawk,"
he said. "I'm a Democrat for the reinforcement of the Patriot Act. It's
not strong enough. The A.C.L.U. can eat their heart out, but they are
living in the 1970's. We should all have ID's. You betcha. What do you
have to hide? Some friends of mine on the left side think I'm crazy."
Why is he so supportive of Israel? "I hate quoting Tom DeLay, I really
do," Mr. Saban said. "If you're going to quote me quoting Tom DeLay,
say
I hate quoting him." He continued, apparently quoting Mr. DeLay, the
House Republican leader: "He said: 'It is the right thing for us to do
to be supportive of Israel. The reasons go back to the beginning of
time.' "
Mr. Saban's views on the matter are straightforward. He is a tireless
cheerleader for Israel. But when it comes to conflict there, his views
are hardly sanguine. "I'm going to make a very controversial statement
and I hope to God that I am proven totally wrong: I think that any
resolution will have to go both on the Palestinian side and Israeli
side
to some form of civil war. It's not going to be without spilling
blood."
In 2002, he pledged $13 million to start a research organization at the
Brookings Institution called the Saban Center for Middle East Policy.
("I've heard from leaders on both sides of the aisle in the United
States and leaders in Europe about what Sharon shouldn't do," he said.
"I've haven't heard one educated suggestion about what he should do.")
Mr. Saban spends hours every week drumming up support for a variety of
charitable causes and, especially, for Israel, sponsoring lunches and
dinners at his home and around the country to raise money for
candidates
who he believes will support his cause. "He has no hesitation to bang
on
your door for a cause he believes in," said Ron Meyer, president of
Universal Studios, who called Mr. Saban one of the few guys "who puts
his money where his mouth is."
In a faxed letter, Mr. Sharon said of Mr. Saban: "To me he will always
be a dear personal friend. Haim Saban is a great American citizen and a
man who always stood by Israel and the Jewish people in times of need.
His contribution to strengthening ties between Israel and American
political leaders from all parties has been quite remarkable and
outstanding.''
So how did Mr. Saban wind up putting so much of his money in Germany?
In 2002, Leo Kirch's empire, KirchMedia, the largest media company in
Europe, went bankrupt. Flush with cash from the sale of Fox Family to
Disney, Mr. Saban was scouring for deals and sensed an opportunity.
"These kind of assets people don't go around selling," he said. "At a
normal time we wouldn't have had a prayer in hell."
BY his own account, the timing was perfect. "There was a very small
window of opportunity where every single studio had its own issues," he
said, and his rivals, thus distracted, were not in a good position to
bid against him. Mr. Murdoch never had his heart in the auction because
he was working on his deal for DirecTV. Time Warner
<http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=AOL>
was still struggling with its acquisition of AOL. Viacom
<http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=VIA>
could not get enthusiastic about the deal. And Disney was still
struggling with the purchase of Fox Family, renamed ABC Family.
"Our biggest advantage was that we had the cash but no business," Mr.
Saban said. "These assets really should have been bought by one of the
majors as an outlet for their programming in Europe." Indeed, he is now
among the biggest single buyers of Hollywood programming outside of the
United States.
In Germany, foreign entrepreneurs like John C. Malone, chief executive
of the Liberty Media Group, have failed in efforts to buy assets,
perhaps because their cavalier attitude created problems with
regulators. Mr. Saban sweet-talked them. He also used some of his
political influence, asking the American ambassador to put in a good
word for him.
Mr. Saban has not been shy about calling on his political friends to
help sell advertising, too. This year, he invited Germany's most
prominent advertising executives to his home in Los Angeles for dinner
with Mr. Clinton. The executives, he said, were stunned.
"These people never saw Leo Kirch in their life," Mr. Saban said. "They
never saw him. And now the new owner all of a sudden has them in his
home with Bill Clinton speaking to them."
Mr. Saban remembers precisely where he was when he clinched the deal
for
ProSiebenSat.1: on his cellphone, as he was standing in the middle of
the former concentration camp at Dachau, where he and his family had
gone to visit. "I found it kind of interesting, to say the least, that
the timing and the geography all came together the way they did," he
said.
Investing in Germany was an easier decision for him than some people
might imagine, he said. "I'm not suggesting we ignore what happened in
Germany 50 years ago," he said, "but I am suggesting that we don't
allow
it to keep us from going into the future."
He added that the German government had been very supportive of him,
but
not because of his history. "There have been all kinds of theories
because of the fact that I'm an Israeli-American and the like,'' he
said. "I don't think so. I think it's a pure economic issue."
Well, maybe not all economics. Haim Saban "is not like one of the guys
just assembling trophy properties," said Steven Rattner, the managing
director of the Quadrangle Group, an investment firm that backed Mr.
Saban in ProSiebenSat.1. "He'd rather be considered a mogul in Germany
than here,'' Mr. Rattner said. "He thinks Germany is critical to
Israel."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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<http://www.middleeast.org/unsubscribe> | |  | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2004 10:37 pm Post subject: Jewish Dominance Of America - Facts Are Facts |
| http://www.rense.com/general59/sdom.htm
Jewish Dominance Of America - Facts Are Facts
By Jonathan Silverman
11-21-4
(Parts of this article are excerpted from one written by Eric Hume and first posted in 1999 before the Christian/Jewish Zionist Neocons took control of the base direction/decisions of the US government fronted by George W. Bush)
The USA in 1999 is under that same degree of Jewish domination that Weimar Germany was under in 1929.
Sir Arthur Bryant, a respected historian of the 1920s, wrote that although Jews comprised only 1% of the German population, in 1924 in the Reichstag they constituted a 25% of the Social Democrats.
Jews controlled 57% of the metal trade, 22% of grain, and 39% of textiles. More than 50% of the Berlin Chamber of Commerce were Jewish, as were a spectacular 1,200 of the 1,474 members of the German Stock Exchange.
Of the 29 legitimate theaters in Berlin, 23 had Jewish directors. Authorship was almost a Jewish monopoly. In 1931, of 144 film scripts worked, 119 were written by Jews and 77 produced by them.
Look at Hollywood in 1999. Jews totally dominate the film industry. Although most of the films are vulgar, violent trash, the industry falls all over itself giving each other awards for producing such. Propaganda and 'message' films flow out of Hollywood and across TV screens. (Read 'How The Jews Invented Hollywood' by Neal Gabler)
The news and communications industry is a Jewish kingdom. How many Jewish bylines do you come across? From the NY Times to your local paper, from NPR to radio talk show hosts, you are being 'informed' by a specific group of people American society.
The American financial industry is essentially a Jewish franchise. From the Federal Reserve to banks and mortgage and other financing industries, the ownership is most often Jewish.
And the professions are so dominated by Jews, it is shocking. Open the phone book Yellow Pages and read through the Physicians and Attorneys sections...and prepare to be stunned.
Did you know an Israeli company does the entire billing for most of America's cell and regular phone systems? The company has total knowledge of who you talk to and for how long - at least.
Did you know an Israeli company created and installed and maintains the absolutely HIGHEST level of secure communications in the Pentagon and White House? Do you think someone might have built in a monitoring system?
Also, do a Google search and try to find and read the Fox News 3-part series by Carl Cameron on Israeli spying in America.
Look around. The USA of today very closely mirrors the Germany of 1929.
Is there anything 'wrong' with this? Not in principle, no. All people are deserving of the rewards of the energy they invest in achievement. The problem is one of monopoly and the exclusion of non-Jews via the self-promotion which predominates in most of today's Jewish-controlled America. If a Jew is up for a job against a non-Jew, and the one doing the hiring is Jewish, gets who gets the job.
Since Jews stick together as a group, they pull and shove each other up the ranks of corporations and pull strings ensuring members of their race are given first shot at student openings in the major universities and top jobs throughout the areas of their dominance in every type of business imaginable.
Bryant also wrote that in 1929 Germany, in law and medicine, Jews were vastly over represented. In Berlin in 1931, 42% of the city's doctors and 48% of its lawyers were Jews.
The Jews in Weimar Germany used their propaganda levers to ridicule German ideals and culture. They even slandered the memory of the fallen German soldiers of that terrible war, World War One.
During the horror days of the great inflation, Jews by and large remained wealthy people and prospered at the losses of the masses. They took expensive vacations while ordinary Germans starved.
Today, Jews control 70% of the wealth in America.
Today, in 1999, the U.S.A. is totally dominated by Jews. Virtually every newspaper or magazine is owned by Jews. Their self-serving propaganda constantly fills the TV screen. The Federal government is totally under Jewish control. US military forces are the pawn of Israel. The banks, the markets are theirs. They systematically denigrate our Founding Fathers and our heritage and our Constitution.
Certainly, many non-Zionist Jews of America are waking up to the political and other manipulations they and most Jews are being controlled and influenced by. There are many, many wonderful Jews in American society but the facts are the facts...and monopolies of any sort aren't healthy in any society. Such monopolies led to the terrible years just before and during during WWII. Let's pray that never, ever happens again. Let's also pray that non-Jews learn from their fellow citizens about how to achieve and to prosper in our waning American culture. Alas, most gentiles are content with their lower rungs on the ladder and that 'content' will forever doom them to second class status in today's Jewish America. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Nov 23, 2004 4:32 pm Post subject: Israel is everything for Haim Saban and his friends |
| Date: Sun, 05 Sep 2004 09:25:59 -0700
From: "Jeffrey Blankfort" <jblankfort@earthlink.net> View Contact Details
Subject: Israel is everything for Haim Saban and his friends
What the story doesn't mention is that the total amount that Saban gave to the Democrats in 2002, was $12.3 million and that, thanks to his gifts to former governor Gray Davis and the California Democratic Party, he was made a member of the Board of Regents of the University of California, a fact that students organizing there for divestments from Israel were unaware and perhaps still are. A year ago Saban funded an AIPAC conference for pro-Israel Jewish college students to assist them in confronting the divestment campaigns on the various university campuses. This article might also help to explain why I have insisted that the Democratic Party is little more than a subsidiary of the pro--Israel lobby.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/05/business/yourmoney/05sab.html?ex=1095392648&ei=1&en=b2a70fda698a5e0c
Schlepping to Moguldom
September 5, 2004
By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
LOS ANGELES
HAIM SABAN, one of the nation's richest and most improbable
media magnates, was slouched in a leather seat aboard his
Gulfstream jet during a trip from Los Angeles to New York
this spring, rattling on about his support for Israel.
After devouring a bagel covered in lox, he leaned forward
and launched into his favorite story from the Democratic
presidential primaries.
"Did I tell you what Howard Dean told me?" he asked,
knowing full well that he had not, at least not yet today.
"Do you know how he tells me that he is going to support
Israel?" he recounted, with a look of incredulity. "He
tells me, 'Don't you know my wife is Jewish?' "
Mr. Saban, 59, let out a sharp laugh, pausing for effect,
before delivering his punch line. "Do you know what I told
him? I said, 'Governor, the fact that your wife is Jewish
is your problem.' "
A self-described "cartoon schlepper," Mr. Saban became a
billionaire by turning the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
into a global franchise that he merged with Rupert
Murdoch's News Corporation and, in 2001, sold to the Walt
Disney Company for $5.3 billion. He has since emerged as
perhaps the most politically connected mogul in Hollywood,
throwing his weight and money around Washington and,
increasingly, the world, trying to influence all things
Israeli.
"I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel," he said in
his first extensive interview in years.
To that end, he has become one of the largest individual
donors in the country to the Democratic Party and its
candidates, giving millions over the past decade - $7
million in just one donation to the Democratic National
Committee in 2002. He recently had Senator John Kerry over
to his chateau-style home in Beverly Hills. ("We played
guitar and kibitzed," he said.) He regularly spends hours
at a time on the phone with Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime
minister. He vacations with Bill Clinton.
At the same time, Mr. Saban has been bidding - or at least
kicking the tires - on media properties around the world as
he looks to expand his empire and, by extension, his
political reach.
But what really has people talking in Hollywood and
Washington is his most ambitious project yet: he is the
proud owner of the largest television broadcaster in
Germany. "I know, I know. I get the irony," he said with a
smile.
A year ago, Mr. Saban beat out his one-time partner, Mr.
Murdoch, and many other media titans to buy the
broadcaster, ProSiebenSat.1 Media, putting him in control
of a company that owns the rough equivalent of CBS, ABC,
TBS and Nickelodeon.
"That level of ownership would never be allowed in the
U.S.," he acknowledged. "It would be too much
concentration."
Since taking over the broadcaster, he has turned it around
- cutting costs and sending it American hits like "The OC,"
a Fox Network series about teenage tribulations, and
"Nip/Tuck," a drama centered in a plastic surgery clinic.
Not only is the company making money, but Mr. Saban may
finally be shaking a reputation that has long dogged him:
that he has gone further on luck than talent.
"It's easy to be jealous of someone like Haim," said Peter
Chernin, president and chief executive of the News
Corporation. "But I think the Germany situation has the
potential to be not just a financial score but serve as the
cornerstone of something bigger."
That, Mr. Saban readily acknowledged, is the plan. As one
of the richest people in Hollywood, he hears about possible
deals constantly. He is toying with the idea of buying The
Jerusalem Post from Hollinger International, which has been
canvassing for buyers. "If they ever come to earth with the
price, I would be interested in it," he said.
He has also stirred controversy in Britain, where he
publicly expressed interest in buying ITV, the country's
biggest commercial network, while accusing its competitors,
BBC News and Sky News, the news arm of the pay-TV provider
British Sky Broadcasting, of pro-Arab coverage.
Of course, not every deal has panned out. Last year, he
joined a consortium led by Edgar Bronfman Jr. that was
bidding on Warner Music, only to drop out at the 11th hour,
worried that the group was overpaying. Now that Warner
Music is on an upswing, it looks as if he may have missed
an opportunity. But Mr. Saban says he has moved on.
"I don't even think about it," he said.
Mr. Saban said he
had other deals up his sleeve, but he refused to tip his
hand. You can count on him to pursue them tirelessly. "I
don't play golf and I don't collect stamps,'' he said. "I
don't ride horses. I don't go mountain hiking, I don't go
star gazing. I don't do any of that."
Don't bother asking him what his hobby is. "I have none.
Zero. It's my family and work."
Mr. Saban's path to moguldom has certainly been unusual. He
was born in Egypt but fled to Tel Aviv with his parents,
his brother and his grandmother after the 1956 Suez War.
Struggling to get by, the family lived in a one-room
apartment and shared a bathroom, he recalled, "with a
hooker and a pimp."
As a teenager, he took up the bass guitar and began
managing bands and promoting concerts. But his business was
wiped out by the 1973 Yom Kippur War and he decided to move
to Paris with his business partner, Shuki Levy.
HIS big break came soon after that. While vacationing in
Tel Aviv, he got a call from a producer in Paris who wanted
one of Mr. Saban's clients, Noam Kaniel, a child singer, to
record the theme song for a cartoon called "Goldorak,"
which was wildly popular in France in the 70's. So he flew
back to France and headed to the studio.
"It was just one of the worst songs I ever heard in my
life," he recalled. "But we schlepped all the way there so
I said, 'Let's do it so we can get out of here and get back
to the pool at the Sheraton in Tel Aviv.' " About a month
later, Mr. Saban got a copy of the master and a bill for
$2,000 from the producer.
"I said: 'I do you a favor and you want $2,000. I don't
want the master,' '' he remembered. "So now I'm schlepping
around to record companies looking for someone to give me a
licensing deal and pay me an advance of $2,000. But the
song is so awful nobody wants to give it to me, nobody. So
I find this guy at CBS just out of school who is willing to
just ship a few hundred copies."
When "Goldorak" became hugely successful, its theme song
started selling, and those few hundred copies soon turned
into 3.5 million.
During that process, he had his eureka moment. Because he
owned the master recording for the TV program, he collected
all of the profit. "I found out on a TV deal all the money
came to me, not to the record company,'' he said. "On a
licensing deal you only get 20 percent. I was swimming in
money. I didn't know what to do with myself. Everything
went whoosh from there."
He and his partner started releasing music soundtracks in
France for television shows like "Dallas" and "Knots
Landing." In late 1983, Mr. Saban moved to Los Angeles and
began writing and producing cartoon soundtracks, though not
always with much success.
"When I moved to this country in 1983, you can rest assured
that they weren't waiting in lines to meet me and see me
and make deals with me," he said. "Did I wait for hours for
a cartoon producer to see me so I could play him some of
our music and after hours his assistant would come out and
say, 'Well, he won't be able to see you today'? Yes."
Soon, however, he was on a roll. He wrote the theme song
for the cartoon series that eventually became the Disney
movie "Inspector Gadget," for example, and then bought the
television rights to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from
the creators of the comic book characters. The television
program became an overnight sensation.
Then, in 1985, on a business trip to Tokyo, he hit gold in
a room at the Imperial Hotel. "They have all these crazy
game shows on and I didn't understand anything and then
this thing came on," he said, referring to a children's
cartoon show known as "Dinosaur Task Force Zyuranger."
"I said: 'Oh my God. Oh my God.' It was fascinating. I
thought it was magical. It was incredible."
For half a million dollars - "which is not nothing," he
noted - he bought the rights to broadcast the program
outside of Asia. After eight years of begging and pleading,
he finally persuaded the News Corporation's Fox Network to
broadcast the show, renamed "The Mighty Morphin Power
Rangers," in the summer of 1993. It was an instant hit.
With the hottest children's show in the world on his hands,
Mr. Saban formed a joint venture with Fox in 1996. It
turned out to be a shrewd move. The next year, the venture
acquired the Family Channel from its founder, Pat
Robertson, for $1.9 billion and turned it into the Fox
Family Channel. Four years later, Michael D. Eisner, the
Disney chief executive, negotiated a deal to buy the
channel for Disney for $5.3 billion.
THE deal is considered one of Mr. Eisner's worst, one that
he has acknowledged as a drag on his company. But Mr. Saban
walked away with some $2 billion for himself. "People say
they overpaid,'' Mr. Saban said. "Beauty is in the eye of
the beholder. I will be very honest with you and this may
sound somewhat arrogant - I will tell you that I ended up
with about a half-billion less than what I thought I could
have gotten for those assets."
In any event, some of the proceeds from that sale helped to
underwrite Mr. Saban's relatively newfound passion:
politics.
He said he caught the political bug in the mid-1990's, when
he felt that support for Israel was slipping in the United
States. He and his wife, Cheryl (who, by the way, is not
Jewish), slept in the White House several times during
President Clinton's two terms. And Mr. Saban has remained
close to the former president.
"Haim Saban has been a very good friend, supporter and
adviser to me," Mr. Clinton said in an e-mail message. "I
am grateful for his commitment to Israel, to a just and
lasting peace in the Middle East and to my foundation's
work, particularly on reconciliation issues."
Mr. Clinton might have added that he is also grateful for
Mr. Saban's commitment to the Democratic Party, including
his $7 million donation two years ago, the largest
individual donation in its history.
While Mr. Saban is a vocal opponent of President Bush - "I
think Bush is just messing it up every day more" - he
supports some of Mr. Bush's policies. "On the issues of
security and terrorism I am a total hawk," he said. "I'm a
Democrat for the reinforcement of the Patriot Act. It's not
strong enough. The A.C.L.U. can eat their heart out, but
they are living in the 1970's. We should all have ID's. You
betcha. What do you have to hide? Some friends of mine on
the left side think I'm crazy."
Why is he so supportive of Israel? "I hate quoting Tom
DeLay, I really do," Mr. Saban said. "If you're going to
quote me quoting Tom DeLay, say I hate quoting him." He
continued, apparently quoting Mr. DeLay, the House
Republican leader: "He said: 'It is the right thing for us
to do to be supportive of Israel. The reasons go back to
the beginning of time.' "
Mr. Saban's views on the matter are straightforward. He is
a tireless cheerleader for Israel. But when it comes to
conflict there, his views are hardly sanguine. "I'm going
to make a very controversial statement and I hope to God
that I am proven totally wrong: I think that any resolution
will have to go both on the Palestinian side and Israeli
side to some form of civil war. It's not going to be
without spilling blood."
In 2002, he pledged $13 million to start a research
organization at the Brookings Institution called the Saban
Center for Middle East Policy. ("I've heard from leaders on
both sides of the aisle in the United States and leaders in
Europe about what Sharon shouldn't do," he said. "I've
haven't heard one educated suggestion about what he should
do.") Mr. Saban spends hours every week drumming up support
for a variety of charitable causes and, especially, for
Israel, sponsoring lunches and dinners at his home and
around the country to raise money for candidates who he
believes will support his cause. "He has no hesitation to
bang on your door for a cause he believes in," said Ron
Meyer, president of Universal Studios, who called Mr. Saban
one of the few guys "who puts his money where his mouth
is."
In a faxed letter, Mr. Sharon said of Mr. Saban: "To me he
will always be a dear personal friend. Haim Saban is a
great American citizen and a man who always stood by Israel
and the Jewish people in times of need. His contribution to
strengthening ties between Israel and American political
leaders from all parties has been quite remarkable and
outstanding.''
So how did Mr. Saban wind up putting so much of his money
in Germany?
In 2002, Leo Kirch's empire, KirchMedia, the largest media
company in Europe, went bankrupt. Flush with cash from the
sale of Fox Family to Disney, Mr. Saban was scouring for
deals and sensed an opportunity. "These kind of assets
people don't go around selling," he said. "At a normal time
we wouldn't have had a prayer in hell."
BY his own account, the timing was perfect. "There was a
very small window of opportunity where every single studio
had its own issues," he said, and his rivals, thus
distracted, were not in a good position to bid against him.
Mr. Murdoch never had his heart in the auction because he
was working on his deal for DirecTV. Time Warner was still
struggling with its acquisition of AOL. Viacom could not
get enthusiastic about the deal. And Disney was still
struggling with the purchase of Fox Family, renamed ABC
Family.
"Our biggest advantage was that we had the cash but no
business," Mr. Saban said. "These assets really should have
been bought by one of the majors as an outlet for their
programming in Europe." Indeed, he is now among the biggest
single buyers of Hollywood programming outside of the
United States.
In Germany, foreign entrepreneurs like John C. Malone,
chief executive of the Liberty Media Group, have failed in
efforts to buy assets, perhaps because their cavalier
attitude created problems with regulators. Mr. Saban
sweet-talked them. He also used some of his political
influence, asking the American ambassador to put in a good
word for him.
Mr. Saban has not been shy about calling on his political
friends to help sell advertising, too. This year, he
invited Germany's most prominent advertising executives to
his home in Los Angeles for dinner with Mr. Clinton. The
executives, he said, were stunned.
"These people never saw Leo Kirch in their life," Mr. Saban
said. "They never saw him. And now the new owner all of a
sudden has them in his home with Bill Clinton speaking to
them."
Mr. Saban remembers precisely where he was when he clinched
the deal for ProSiebenSat.1: on his cellphone, as he was
standing in the middle of the former concentration camp at
Dachau, where he and his family had gone to visit. "I found
it kind of interesting, to say the least, that the timing
and the geography all came together the way they did," he
said.
Investing in Germany was an easier decision for him than
some people might imagine, he said. "I'm not suggesting we
ignore what happened in Germany 50 years ago," he said,
"but I am suggesting that we don't allow it to keep us from
going into the future."
He added that the German government had been very
supportive of him, but not because of his history. "There
have been all kinds of theories because of the fact that
I'm an Israeli-American and the like,'' he said. "I don't
think so. I think it's a pure economic issue."
Well, maybe not all economics. Haim Saban "is not like one
of the guys just assembling trophy properties," said Steven
Rattner, the managing director of the Quadrangle Group, an
investment firm that backed Mr. Saban in ProSiebenSat.1.
"He'd rather be considered a mogul in Germany than here,''
Mr. Rattner said. "He thinks Germany is critical to
Israel." | | | | Alpha | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
