Security

Abstract

Chapter 5 analyzes two billionaires within transnational diaspora politics, whose ethnonational identity generates security concerns for communities abroad. The Jewish-American casino mogul Sheldon Adelson has been financing a free newspaper, Israel Hayom, which has become the most widely read daily in Israel, staunchly supporting Benjamin Netanyahu and the “entrenchment–expansionism” position vis-à-vis Palestine. His interventions in the Israel–Palestine conflict ran counter to the majority views of American Jewry and undermined President Obama’s foreign policy. The second case examines whether the hedge fund billionaire Raj Rajaratnam helped to fund the insurgency of the LTTE (“Tamil Tigers”) in his former home state Sri Lanka. While the case once produced spectacular headlines, upon closer inspection the political agency of Rajaratnam appears as very limited. He seems to have largely conformed to the demands put on the Tamil diaspora by the LTTE, and the U.S. government’s anti-terrorism policies restricted his options severely.