NYU Trustee Steinhardt’s
Murdoch-Genie Energy-IEI-Golan Heights Connection
In 2010, NYU Trustee
Steinhardt also joined the billionaire Australian global media baron whose News
Corp. media conglomerate owns the right-wing Fox News network, the New
York Post, The Wall Street Journal and
many other mass media properties—Rupert Murdoch—as an investor and chairman of
Israeli Data Technologies [IDT]/Genie Energy’s Israel Energy Initiatives [IEI[:
a U.S.-based oil corporation that’s been seeking in recent years to profit from
drilling for oil in Israel/Palestine and the Golan Heights region of Syria,
that the Israeli military still illegally occupies. As Sarah Pavlus noted in a
May 11, 2011 post on her “Conflict of Interest” Media Matters blog:
“Fox Business Network
repeatedly promoted a controversial oil shale venture in Israel without
disclosing that Rupert Murdoch -- the head of Fox's parent company -- is one of
the project's most prominent investors.
“Last year, News Corp.
chairman Rupert Murdoch joined the `Strategic Advisory Board’ of Genie Energy,
and purchased an equity stake in Genie Oil and Gas, which consists of Genie
Energy's interests in oil shale initiatives on federal land in Western Colorado
and in Israel's Elah Valley. Genie Energy -- which is a division of IDT Corporation,
a global telecommunications company -- has attracted several other high-profile
advisers and investors, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, Lord Jacob
Rothschild, and Michael Steinhardt, a prominent hedge fund investor…On three
consecutive days last month, Fox Business promoted Genie Energy's project in
Israel -- known as Israel Energy Initiatives (IEI) -- yet never disclosed
Murdoch's financial stake in it….”
Not surprisingly,
however, opposition to Steinhardt and Murdoch’s Genie Energy/IEI planned oil
shale drilling project in the Elah Valley of Israel/Palestine by environmental
groups soon developed; and the Israeli Union for Environmental Defense was
successful in getting the Jerusalem Regional Planning and Building Committee to
block the Elah Valley oil shale drilling project in a Sept. 2, 2014 legal
ruling. But ten days later the Northern Regional Planning and Building
Committee of Israeli/Palestine authorized Steinhardt and Murdoch’s Genie
Energy/IEI/Afek Oil Gas division to start drilling for oil in the Golan Heights
region of Syria. As an Oct. 22, 2014 article in The Times
of Israel noted:
“…On September 11, the
Northern Regional Planning and Building Committee approved a project for
exploratory drilling in the Golan Heights. The area approved is 396 square
kilometers [33% of the 1,200 sq. km that make up the Golan Heights], starting
in Katzrin and extending southward…The exploration program allows Afek to drill
10 wells in order to search for oil, which its experts believe exists in a
conventional liquid form…Genie [the parent company of Afek] is also the parent
company of Israel Energy Initiatives [IEI]…Genie Energy…has some heavyweight
investors. Former US vice president Dick Cheney, Michael Steinhardt, Jacob
Rothschild, and Rupert Murdoch are all reportedly connected to the company. It
also has connections within the Israeli political establishment: The chairman
of Genie Israel is Effie Eitam…who…served as the minister of national
infrastructures in 2002-2003….”
Yet according to the
same article, environmental activists in Israel/Palestine “contend that even a
small amount of oil seeping into the underground water table” from Steinhardt
and Murdoch’s Genie Energy/IEI/Afek Oil Gas division project in the illegally
occupied Golan Heights region of Syria “could eventually reach the Sea of
Galilee—actually a lake—and make” Israel/Palestine’s “largest freshwater
reservoir undrinkable…”
(end of part 10)
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