Marc Rowan has
a vision for Gaza. “The potential here is tremendous,” he said at a February gathering of President Donald Trump’s so-called Board of Peace, where Rowan described land devastated by Israeli bombing with a developer’s zeal. “This is not a problem of money or collateral. This is a problem with peace.”
In the U.S., Rowan is simultaneously helping ensure a pro-Israel political project has no problem with money. Since the start of this year, according to Federal Election Commission filings, the billionaire CEO of Apollo Global Management has donated $1.5 million to the United Democracy Project, a super PAC for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, spending a fraction of his vast wealth to preserve a foreign policy defined by support for Israel’s genocide and the flow of U.S. weapons to Israel.
“Palestinians did not choose him, and neither did American voters.”
Rowan — who is worth more than $8 billion and reportedly
consulted
on his business with convicted sex offender and disgraced financier
Jeffrey Epstein
— is an executive member of
Trump’s “Board of Peace,”
a United Nations-approved body tasked with carrying out Trump’s stalled plan for Gaza.
He
made his first donation to UDP of the year in early March, giving $1 million, filings show, just as the group began spending aggressively against the
now-ousted
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., a
loud critic of U.S. support for Israel
.
A second donation for $500,000 arrived on July 23. The same day, the AIPAC super PAC shelled out nearly $50,000 in campaign mailers in Michigan to
attack the progressive pro-Palestine candidate
for U.S. Senate, Abdul El-Sayed. In Missouri, it dropped another $100,000 for phone banking services against former Democratic Rep. Cori Bush in her race against
pro-Israel incumbent
Rep. Wesley Bell.
AIPAC, AI, Crypto, and Gambling Are Hiding Their Big Election Spends
It’s not clear which specific UDP efforts have been backed by Rowan’s
… [more]
