Papal Visit Purim Millennium Snow in Jer. After all, foreigners aren't allowed to give Israeli candidates a penny, and locals can't give any more than NIS 1,700 per campaign, according to the 1994 law. It should follow, then, that fundraising tours abroad for Israeli politicians have become a thing of the past. Since even the richest Israeli can't give a candidate more than NIS 1,700, any Bat Yam grocery store owner who can afford that sum should be able to lure a political contender to the phone as easily as can the wealthiest Savyon industrialist.
Informed sources say no.
While Ehud Barak was the chief beneficiary of rich people's largesse in last year's campaign, he wasn't the only one. One Israel's failing, according to the State Comptroller's Report, was that it funnelled money from foreign donors into phony organizations that pretended to serve purely social, apolitical causes, but which in fact served the cause of electing Barak. An organization that might seem to fit this model is the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. A conservative think tank, it was founded in 1994 by Ronald Lauder and Yoram Hazony. Until recently, Lauder, heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics fortune, was a very close associate of Netanyahu's.