Israel's Historic Rothschild Dynasty Connection Revisited: Part 8

The headquarters of the Rothschild & Co Bank in UK (photo by Adrian Welch)

Neither the mainstream corporate mass media conglomerates nor the U.S. imperialist power elite foundation-subsidized alternative left media groups were generally interested in examining the role that the super-rich Rothschild Dynasty members were still playing in world history during the last two decades of the 20th-century—even after the military of the historically Rothschild Dynasty-funded Zionist movement invaded Lebanon in 1982. And just as some journalists who examined whether lobbying groups in the USA like AIPAC were still exercising a special influence over U.S. government foreign policy decisions in the Middle East after 1982 were often falsely accused of being “anti-Semitic” by Zionist movement supporters, some writers who examine  the role that Rothschild Dynasty member have played in post-1982 economic life around the globe are sometimes falsely accused of “promoting anti-Semitism, like Adolf Hitler did” by Zionist movement supporters.

But in his 1999 book, The House of Rothschild: The World’s Bankers 1849-1999, Niall Ferguson indicated how members of the Rothschild dynasty that were the initial funders of the Zionist movement’s settler-colonialist projects in Palestine over 100 years before, were apparently continuing to make a lot of money during the last two decades of the 20th-century:

“The N.M. Rothschild group is thus a multinational entity (more than 50 percent of its assets are now held outside the UK) with a wide geographical reach—again reminiscent of the system of houses which had been developed by Mayer Amshel [Rothschild]’s sons after 1815. But it is also controlled by the family through another Swiss company—Rothschild Concordia AG—which has a majority (52.4 percent) stake in Rothschilds Cotinuation Holdings AG. Closely linked to this structure is the Paris-Orleans holding company which controls 37 percent of Rothschild & Cie Banque in Paris, around 40 percent of Rothschild Wort America, 20 percent of Rothschild Canada and 40 percent of Rothschild Europe…

“…The subsidiaries in Europe, the Americas and Asia perform functions similar to those performed by the Rothschild agents a century and a half ago, often in the same places…Both ownership and leadership of the group are shared between the key family members…Today [in 1999] 6 members of the family have between them a total of 37 board seats (including chairmanships and vice-chairmanships) on 15 of the principal companies of the N.M. Rothschild group…”

According to Niall Ferguson’s book, “the structure of the” Rothschild “group” in 1999 could then be described in the following “simplified” way:

“At the top of the `pyramid’ is Rothschilds Continuation Holdings AG, a Zurich-based holding company, the principal investments of which are the following 19 firms, here grouped geographically:

“N.M. Rothschild & Sons Ltd., Rothschild Continuation Ltd., N.M. Rothschild Corporate Finance Ltd. and Rothschild Asset Management Ltd. (UK);

“N.M. Rothschild & Sons (CI) Ltd. and Rothschild Asset Management CI Ltd. (Channel Islands);

“Rothschild & Cie Banque and Rothschild & Cie (France);

“Rothschild Bank AG (Switzerland);

“Rothschild Europe BV and Rothschild Asset Management International Holdings BV (Netherlands);

“Rothschild North America Inc. and Rothschild Asset Management Inc. (USA);

“N.M. Rothschild & Sons (Australia) Ltd., N.M. Rothschild Australia Holdings Pty Ltd. andRothschild Australian Asset Management Ltd.;

“N.M. Rothschild & Sons (Hong Kong) Ltd and Rothschild Asset Management (Hong Kong) Ltd.

“N.M. Rothschild & Sons (Singapore) Ltd.”

(end of part 8)

Israel's Historic Rothschild Dynasty Connection Revisited: Part 4

Ex-Prez Clinton/2016 Dem Prez Nominee Clinton & Sir Evelyn de  Rothschild & wife 

Following James Rothschild’s death in 1957, his Rothschild Dynasty money was also given to the Zionist movement’s State of Israel to finance “the Weizmann Scientific Institute in Tel Aviv, while his widow Dorothy [Rothschild] set up the Yad Hanadu education foundation,” which Jacob Rothschild continued to support during the rest of the 20th century, according to Niall Ferguson’s 1999 book, The House of Rothschild: The World’s Bankers 1849-1999. In addition, according to the same book:

“One Rothschild—Gay [Rothschild]’s sister Betsabee—actually settled in Israel. Like that of his grandfather and namesake, Edmond [Rothschild II]’s commitment to the new state was especially strong. He visited Israel in 1958 to discuss the financing of an oil pipeline from the Red Sea and even flew to Jerusalem during the 1967 Six Day War to make public his support of the Israeli government…The London Rothschilds…were reported to have donated to the Jewish Palestine Appeal in 1967…”

According to the 2007 edition of the Encyclopedia Judaica, another member of the Rothschild Dynasty, who lived between 1910 and 1990 and “in 1965 became research coordinator of the Royal Dutch Shell Group,” named Lord Nathaniel Meyer Victor Rothschild, was also “keenly interested” in the Zionist movement’s State of Israel; and, during his lifetime, “he was appointed a governor of the Weizmann Institute of Science and of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.”

The 2007 edition of the Encyclopedia Judaica also described how a member of the Rothschild Dynasty who was born in 1936, named “Nathaniel Charles Jacob Rothschild, Fourth Baron Rothschild,” came to be historically honored by the Zionist movement in Palestine/Israel:

“…He joined the family bank, N.M. Rothschild, in 1964 and…revived its fortunes. He left…in 1980, after conflict with its head, his cousin Evelyn de Rothschild, over Jacob’s conduct of Rothschild Investment Trust. A series of mergers which he subsequently masterminded led to the creation of the influential financial institution Charterhouse J. Rothschild. From 1971 he was chairman of St. James’s Place Capital (formerly J. Rothschild Holdings plc) and from 1980, chairman of Five Arrows Ltd…

“…In 1992, the year of the opening of the Israeli Supreme Court Building, a gift of Yad Hanadis, the Rothschild family foundation, he was awarded an honorary Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1992) and he was made an Honorary Fellow of the City of Jerusalem. In the same year he became president of the Institute of Jewish Affairs.

“He succeeded his father as fourth Baron Rothschild in 1990…”

The Fourth Baron Rothschild, Jacob Rothschild, and his son, financier Nat Rothschild, were, coincidentally, accused of allowing 2008 GOP presidential candidate John McCain to hold a campaign fund-raising event at “the family home in Spencer House, St James's, the only privately owned 17th-century palace in central London,” in violation of U.S. federal election campaign laws that prohibit political donations or benefits in kind from overseas by U.S. candidates for federal office, according to an October 23, 2008 London Independent article by Andy McSmith, titled “The Rothschilds and their 200 years of political influence.” The same article noticed that “Serena Rothschild, Nat Rothschild's mother, was one of the largest individual donors” to the UK’s Conservative Party in 2007, a year in which Serene Rothschild gave that  right-wing political party 190,000 pounds. In addition, according to the 2008 London Independent article:

“When another member of the clan, Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, married the New York businesswoman Lynn Forester, they spent the night of their wedding dinner in the White House as guests of Bill Clinton. Lady Rothschild was a fund-raiser for the Democrats, but defected to the McCain camp after her friend Hillary Clinton was beaten to the nomination by Barack Obama.” 

Rothschilds Mansion in UK (photo by Pam Brophy)

(end of part 4)

Israel's Historic Rothschild Dynasty Connection Revisited: Part 3

James Armand Rothschild: Was president of Palestine colonization association [PICA]

Despite the evidence after November 1917 that the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs did not want Palestinian society to be transformed in the way that the Zionist movement wanted it to be, members of the Western European-based Rothschild dynasty continued to back the Zionist movement’s settler-colonialist project, during the end of World War I and after World War I. As the 2007 edition of Encyclopedia Judaica recalled, James Armand de Rothschild, Edmond Rothschild’s son, during World War I, “was sent to Palestine to recruit volunteers for the Palestinian battalion of the Jewish Legion” of UK imperialist troops; and “when the Zionist Commission arrived in Palestine” in 1918, James Armand Rothschild “was seconded to it as liaison officer and from that time on his interest in Palestine never flagged.”

According to the same book, in 1924, for example, James Armand Rothschild “was appointed president for life of the newly-founded Palestine Jewish Colonization Association [PICA], which was largely financed by his father;” and “he also took an active interest in other enterprises in Palestine, including the Palestine Electric Corporation, the Hebrew University, and excavations at `Hazor,’ which “he sponsored.” In addition, following James Armand Rothschild’s death in 1957, his wife transferred Rothschild Dynasty money to the Israeli government to help finance “the construction of a new Knesset building in Jerusalem.”

As the 1994 book, The Rothschilds: A European Family, which Greg Heuberger edited, observed, “as the largest” Zionist “landowner in Palestine, the PICA made land and money available for the” Zionist settlers, “who were again arriving in large numbers above all from Russia” after World War I; and “without the land that Edmond” Rothschild (who died in 1934), “made available from 1918 onwards through the PICA, and without the technicians and engineers, whom he had employed and paid, without the reports that he commissioned and the machinery he had bought, Palestine would not during the years,” when under UK imperialist rule, “have developed into a `national homeland’ that could serve as the basis for the foundation” of the Zionist movement’s “State of Israel.”

According to a March 1997 Jewish News of Northern California article, for example, “it is estimated that” Edmond Rothschild’s total “expenditure in Palestine between 1884 and 1934 was about $6 million, an enormous sum at the time;" and “on his death in 1934, almost 125,000 acres of land and more than 40 settlements testified to his contribution and support.”

According to Simon Schama’s 1978 book Two Rothschilds and the Land of Israel, “PICA found itself in the 1930s” at “the crossroads of its history;” and “at Edmond Rothschild’s death in 1934” it “could still lay claim to an immense estate: some 440,000 dunams (including 80,000 acres across the Jordan), 30 settlements owned, founded or assisted by the Association, 23 of which, Petah Tikva, Roshan Le Zion…and Hadim…were all small townships rather than overgrown villages,” in part, because “immediately after” World War I, Edmond Rothschild “had clinched some important deals with Elias Sursuq and a number of other Beirut absentee landowners, mostly for properties in Lower Galilee and the Upper Jordan basin.”

The same book also noted that James Armand Rothschild “himself had on many occasions gone on record as being against the restraint of new settlement” in Palestine “and was a prime mover in the establishment, not only of Ashdot Ya’aqov in 1933 but the `Massada’ group near Yavnie, which became the kibbutz Mishmar Hashlosha,” so that “of the 65,000 cultivable dunams acquired by PICA” after 1914, “45,000 had been leased by 1940” to Zionist movement settler-colonialists. In addition, according to the 1978 Two Rothschilds and the Land of Israel book:

“…The PICA settlements and industries had depended exclusively on finance originating with the single source of Edmond de Rothschild…In the last 6 years of its career, PICA…entered into a comprehensive and ambitious programme of development. The last land reserves were duly colonized. Ma’agan Michael (1950), Beeit Hanania (1951) and Talmey Elazar (1954) being established on the Sharon coastal plain and Sde Eliezer (1952) in the Huleh Valley north-west of Ayelet Hashahar…The development of Caesarea as a future tourist resort combining the cultural interest of the excavation with a recreation dear to James [Rothschild]’s heart: golf…”

In a 1957 letter that James Rothschild wrote, shortly before his death in 1957,  to the then-prime minister of the Zionist Movement’s State of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, James Rothschild summarized the Rothschild Dynasty’s historic connection to the Zionist movement’s settler-colony and State of Israel, in the following way:

“My father began his colonization work…75 years ago…When in 1924 my father set up the Palestine Jewish Colonication Association—PICA—he assigned it the task of colonizing all his landholdings. It fell to me to preside over PICA since its inception.

“…All these lands were then colonized by PICA. Today there is no cultivable land left to PICA for further colonization…I propose to transfer now all remaining PICA lands (leased and not leased) to National Institutions…We intend to provide the sum…for the construction of the new Knesseth building in Jerusalem. Let the new Knesseth building become a symbol…”

(end of part 3)