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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

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You do not need to blackmail rich Jewish-American billionaires to support Israel

Well-connected Jews have attempted to blackmail Jewish billionaires before. Rabbi Balkany tried to blackmail Steve Cohen into funding yeshivas. Balkany was famous for being a DC “fixer”, so this may have been par for the course for Balkany. There are some billionaire Jews who are unaligned with Zionism. I recall reading the Wikipedia of a Hollywood talent management owner who had no confirmed philanthropy whatsoever, but for the life of me I can’t remember his name, and there’s also Zuckerberg whose donations to Jewish causes are a pittance relative to his philanthropy.

The substantial majority of those alleged to have been victims of Epstein's supposed blackmail scheme were Zionist Jews

Source? If Epstein is meeting with Zionist Jews in private, this is not evidence that he is blackmailing them. Do you think he used a separate private jet to do this or a separate island? Even if they were raping the girls, do you think Mossad would prefer this to happen under the auspices of a Mossad handler, or do you think they’d prefer that they try it elsewhere? You have no evidence that the majority of blackmail victims were Zionists. The only confirmed blackmail case is Bill Gates.

He’s a liar

This is like saying James Bond is a liar. Epstein lying to his clients about why he’s loaded and what connections he has is exactly what he would do if he were Mossad. This cannot be used as evidence that he was unprofessional or untrustworthy, or that he wasn’t Mossad.

You are also ignoring very important evidence:

  1. Despite having connections to Israel, none of Epstein’s victims were Jewish. Even Jerry Seinfeld was dating a 17yo Jewish girl at this time. I imagine this will be excused away on account of Jewish girls not being as drawn to wealthy men, but Instagram attests to this not being the case.

  2. According to Maria Farmer, a victim, there was a theme of Jewish supremacism that pervaded Epstein’s circle, among Epstein / Ghislaine Maxwell / Eileen Guggenheim. “You’re nothing because you’re not Jewish”, “useless white girl”, “anyone who was not Jewish, the way they spoke about them was really horrifying”, “it was every one of them, the way they spoke”. If Epstein’s circle was Jewish supremacist, this would explain his link to Mossad.

  3. You are forgetting that Wexner was linked to Mossad by way of the Mega Group, and Epstein’s connections were throughout the Mega Group.

The spy said he was tasked by the Israeli ambassador to get a copy of a secret letter given to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat by then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher for a source identified only as “MEGA.” “The ambassador wants me to go to MEGA to get a copy of this letter,” the Israeli spy said, to which the superior replied, “This is not something we use MEGA for.”

The counterintelligence report was an embarrassment for the NSA and Israel sought to deflect the identification of MEGA by claiming it referred not to an individual but to the CIA. The leak set off a major hunt for MEGA, believed to be an Israeli mole in the State Department and other agencies.

Then, in 1998, The Wall Street Journal solved the mystery. The newspaper published a story on U.S. titans of industry working for Jewish philanthropy that called themselves the “Mega Group.” It included 20 of America’s wealthiest and most influential Jewish businessmen who met twice a year.

Among the members of the group were Hollywood director Steven Spielberg, Seagram Chairman Edgar Bronfman Sr. and former hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt. The group was founded in 1991 by two billionaires: Charles Bronfman, Edgar’s brother and Seagram co-chairman, and Mr. Wexner.

Also, 4. the attorney handling Epstein’s 2008 case was told that Epstein belonged to intelligence: In 2017, "a former senior White House official" reported that Alexander Acosta, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida who had handled Epstein's criminal case in 2008, had stated to interviewers of President Donald Trump's first transition team: "I was told Epstein 'belonged to intelligence' and to 'leave it alone'", and that Epstein was "above his pay grade".

There are some billionaire Jews who are unaligned with Zionism. I recall reading the Wikipedia of a Hollywood talent management owner who had no confirmed philanthropy whatsoever, but for the life of me I can’t remember his name, and there’s also Zuckerberg whose donations to Jewish causes are a pittance relative to his philanthropy.

Certainly, but Wexner’s social circle that Epstein adopted and embraced was comprised primarily of Zionists, not apolitical tech billionaires or those Hollywood types (obviously not all) who didn’t really care about the whole Israel thing.

The only confirmed blackmail case is Bill Gates.

I’m not sure that Gates is the only ‘confirmed’ victim, given that unlike the Dubins or Leon Black (the latter being what I would consider the only truly likely implicit victim of a blackmail scheme given that he directly paid Epstein a huge amount of money for nothing, something even Les Wexner didn’t knowingly do) he didn’t give him a fortune.

This is actually further evidence against the agent theory, since in this one case (where I think blackmail was quite probably involved), the money all went to Epstein directly, not to his supposed paymasters.

Despite having connections to Israel, none of Epstein’s victims were Jewish.

There’s no evidence of this. Only a handful of victims have come forward publicly out of high hundreds or thousands of teenagers. Epstein didn’t spend much time in Israel, he mainly procured girls where he lived most of the time (NYC and Palm Beach).

If Epstein’s circle was Jewish supremacist, this would explain his link to Mossad.

Ghislaine Maxwell isn’t Jewish by the standards of any hardcore Jewish chauvinist, her mother is a French Christian and she never converted. Farmer bought into a lot of dumb things - and was pursued by a lot of open WNs online, over Facebook etc - and unfortunately in grief over a lost life has made numerous flawed claims (most unrelating to Judaism, to be clear) that rendered her a notoriously unreliable witness.

You are forgetting that Wexner was linked to Mossad by way of the Mega Group, and Epstein’s connections were throughout the Mega Group.

On the contrary, I discuss this in my comment when I make direct reference to Lauder etc. Israel’s billionaire supporters supporting Israel is a completely opposite direction of travel to Israel funding Epstein‘s activities in the United States (which mainly included spending huge amounts of money). In addition, the presence of ‘they do it for free’ groups like Mega further casts doubts on the Mossad agent theory. Consider that if Israeli intelligence wants access to the elite of American politics, Hollywood, finance and so on, they don’t and didn’t need Jeffrey Epstein to facilitate it, blackmail or not.

We don’t know all the clients of Epstein because the client list wasn’t released. You’re confusing his social circle with the client list. His social circle was filled with Wexner’s influential Jewish friends — Wexner ran the Mega Group, a consortium of Jewish billionaires who pooled their money toward Jewish / Israeli influence.

Wexner led the group with Bronfman, and it inspired several philanthropic initiatives such as the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education, Birthright Israel, and support for the renewal of Hillel International

Epstein’s friends and funders being the most influential group of Jews in the world, organized in secrecy to promote Jewish interests and Israel, is very strong evidence that Epstein was tied to Israeli interests. Certainly, those who flew on the Lolita Express were not all Jews: Jean Luc Brunel, a top modeling scout; Bill Clinton, whose wife of course was highly influential in politics, and who Mossad had previously soft-blackmailed with the Monica Lewinsky tapes they had wiretapped; Prince Andrew; Bill Gates. But I don’t think we know what percent of blackmail was done on the plane vs in the wiretapped properties.

not to his supposed paymasters.

The billionaire Jews who got together in secret to allocate their funds toward the influence of Jews did not employ Epstein to make money. So the paymaster, if anything, would be the abstract concept of “Jewish influence”, or “Israel influence”.

Ghislaine Maxwell isn’t Jewish by the standards of any hardcore Jewish chauvinist

Her father was an important Mossad asset, which makes her the exception. .

and unfortunately in grief over a lost life has made numerous flawed claims

She was considered reliable by the media and investigators. I think you and the lawyers of Eileen Guggenheim are the only ones saying she is unreliable. It’s convenient to pretend that she is lying here.

notoriously unreliable witness.

I can’t understand your motivations here. The testimony of Maria Farmer was published without any doubtfulness by every major news organization who wrote long pieces on Epstein. Her testimony appears in documentaries and books, without skepticism. She was the first to report Epstein for crimes and the first to go to journalists. In no stretch of the imagination is she a “notoriously unreliable witness”. She is maybe the most reliable witness we have about Epstein.

Israel’s billionaire supporters supporting Israel is a completely opposite direction of travel to Israel funding Epstein‘s activities in the United States

Why would you think that? “Recording high-profile people in kompromat” goes against Israel’s interests? If Hillary had won, they might have had blackmail on her husband!

the presence of ‘they do it for free’ groups like Mega further casts doubts on the Mossad agent theory. Consider that if Israeli intelligence wants access to the elite of American politics, Hollywood, finance and so on, they don’t and didn’t need Jeffrey Epstein to facilitate it, blackmail or not.

Kompromat is always valuable. And having the suave Epstein ingratiate themselves to influential Americans is also valuable. Consider what Mossad is known for:

  • They will “appeal to Jewish racial or religious proclivities” to recruit agents. Note Maria Farmer’s testimony that the Epstein crew had racial supremacist tendencies.

  • “Blackmail is also used”

  • “The Israeli intelligence service depends heavily on the various Jewish communities and organizations abroad for recruiting agents and eliciting general information”

We don’t know all the clients of Epstein because the client list wasn’t released.

Why would there even be a "client list"? Epstein wasn't a straight-up pimp brokering fee-per-throw or fee-per-hour transactions; he would have parties where the guests could make use of underaged prostitutes he provided. If there's a list of exactly which guests used exactly which underaged prostitutes (or video of the same), the FBI probably doesn't have it.

Well-connected Jews have attempted to blackmail Jewish billionaires before. Rabbi Balkany tried to blackmail Steve Cohen into funding yeshivas.

Er, the only blackmail case I see from this link and a cursory google involving both Balkany and Steve Cohen is this, which doesn't involve blackmailing Cohen into supporting Israel more generally, or even specific yeshivot in Israel. Balkany apparently tried to shake down Cohen for donations to Balkany's own girl's school, which Balkany previously admitted to have been misappropriating money from. Doesn't seem to be at all useful as a counterexample to /u/2rafa's assessment.

It is a useful for assessing priors, because it’s an example of a Jewish billionaire being blackmailed by a Jewish fixer for the funding of a Jewish cause. We don’t have the luxury of knowing who Mossad blackmails in America, so it is not in the realm of possibility to provide a one-to-one counterfactual.

No, it's a Jewish billionaire being blackmailed by a Jewish fixer for the fixer's own personal benefit. There's no evidence whatsoever that you've supplied or that I've been able to find that the motive for the blackmail was to "support jewish causes" or ideological in any way shape or form. I don't know how you're overcoming the Occam's Razor presumption that this was bog-standard personal corruption and greed, rather than anything ideological.

Rabbi Balkany, the leading lobbyist for Haredi Jewry in DC, married into one of most important Haredi dynasties, did not blackmail billionaire Steve Cohen in order to reap a meager 180k salary from his school. However, as you note, this is my fault, for not providing the abundant evidence necessary to persuade an unfamiliar and perhaps somewhat naive reader who cannot make the natural extrapolation that a highly influential DC fixer for decades is not blackmailing Steve fucking Cohen just to receive a tiny salary from his Jewish day school.

  • His salary was 180k, while his revenue stream from his small business Rite Care was 450k

  • One of the two requested subjects of donation was a different Haredi school that he was not involved in, which he had no way of financially benefitting from

  • He was involved in “expediting” Jewish school funding through DC connections as early as 1987

  • In 1994, Milton Balkany, a conservative Republican active in political fundraising,[22] tried to have Luchins excommunicated by a Jewish religious court,[13] blaming him for having "caused yeshivas in the land of Israel to lose money",[23] after Luchins had complained about Balkany's efforts to compel Israeli government officials to use U.S. aid money for projects Balkany favored in Israel.[24]”. This is not someone who is in it for greed! He is more like the sacrificing commander of a foreign army. He is in it for his tribe, giving them money and funds. Trying to have another Jew excommunicated because he didn’t want American aid going for Yeshiva funding. This is a very loyal lieutenant of the Jewish cause.

  • He helped Jewish funding as far away as Russia

  • He worked to ensure orthodox Jews got half of NYC’s school vouchers

This is not a guy who does things for personal benefit. In typical fashion, I imagine he would have pocketed some of Cohen’s money, or sent some of it to another Jewish endeavor. But the overarching real reason behind doing this was to fund the Jewish schools. Haredi corruption is like this. The Cars4Kids, the 1bil in nyc public funds, etc.

I don’t think my claim was that Jews don’t blackmail Jews (which would be rather disproven by the Israeli criminal underworld and countless other examples), but that specifically blackmailing Zionist Jews who contribute large amounts of money to that cause into supporting Israel would be pointless at best and counterintuitive at worst.

Balkany was just trying to extort Steve Cohen for money (funneled via his school, as he noted), the most mundane and commonplace motive for blackmail.

But Epstein didn’t target Zionist Jews who contributed large sums of money, right? Leon Black isn’t really a big Zionist contributor, and his moderate donations to Jewish causes occur post-Epstein. Large Zionist donors do not appear to be targeted by Epstein. They were among his social network because Wexner was Epstein’s patron.

Balkany using blackmail to fund Yeshivas isn’t commonplace or mundane. Yeshivas are the heart of Jewish identity and an essential way that Orthodox Jews buffer against the prospect of assimilation. Chabad was very upset when Sweden forbid homeschooling, because in the absence of indoctrination the kids will have a less extreme Jewish identity. This falls under “blackmail for increased jewish power”, not “blackmail for personal gain” (his salary is not a proportion of the total yeshiva endowment).

none of Epstein’s victims were Jewish

Didn't he target fatherless white girls living in poor, hispanic-majority neighborhoods? This is not a very Jewish demographic. It's also exactly the demographic you'd expect 'just wants to sleep with teens' types to target.

Maria Farmer was a graduate art student who was pressured to sell her work to Epstein at a discount by her school's dean, Eileen Guggenheim. Giuffre was a spa attendant at the Mar-a-Lago. Jennifer Araoz was recruited outside of her high school.

If you read the original documents and reporting from the Palm Beach case it was almost all poor, often Hispanic girls from deprived areas of West Palm Beach.

The only confirmed blackmail case is Bill Gates.

O rly? Confirmed you say?

This is like saying James Bond is a liar. Epstein lying to his clients about why he’s loaded and what connections he has is exactly what he would do if he were Mossad.

He was bragging about being a Mossad agent, though, is the thing. Very bad OPSEC. Kinda the opposite of what you want to do.

You are also ignoring very important evidence

I don't see any "very important evidence" about whether there was a black intel op involved here, no.

In 2017, "a former senior White House official" reported that Alexander Acosta, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida who had handled Epstein's criminal case in 2008, had stated to interviewers of President Donald Trump's first transition team: "I was told Epstein 'belonged to intelligence' and to 'leave it alone'", and that Epstein was "above his pay grade".

So, if true, why did it end up this way? (And if were true, why is this Acosta guy blabbering about that in public? Who is "intelligence"? There are protocols for handling sensitive asset issues and this ain't it.)

Jane Doe #200 was told (or given hints) that Epstein was Mossad, but she was dating him. This was not something casually mentioned to a victim.

Hoffenberger was told that Epstein was in “intelligence” and engaged in “blackmail”, but this is when Hoffenberger was a fellow Jew engaged in Epstein-level fraud. He went to jail and converted to Christianity and I suppose had a road to Damascus moment and told the truth:

Hoffenberg told me that Epstein had said he’d worked on several projects with Robert Maxwell, including solving Maxwell’s “debt” issues. (Maxwell died in 1991, under vey strange circumstances, apparently having fallen off his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, in the middle of the night and it was discovered in the aftermath that he’d stolen 100s of millions of dollars from the pensions of his employees.) Epstein had also told Hoffenberg that via Maxwell and Leese he was involved in something that Hoffenberg described as “national security issues,” which he says involved “blackmail, influence trading, trading information at a level that is very serious and dangerous.”

Four separate sources told me — on the record — that Epstein’s dealings in the arms world in the 1980s had led him to work for multiple governments, including the Israelis. Some of these sources are more reliable than others. But the gist of the claims that you will be able to hear, and ultimately watch in a three-hour documentary series, is that Maxwell, who was himself a conduit between the Israelis and other governments during his life time, introduced Epstein to Israeli leaders, who then allegedly used Epstein as the equivalent of an old-fashioned Russian “sleeper,” someone who could be useful in an “influence campaign.” The sources, who range from former arms dealers to former spies — and also Hoffenberg — suggest that Epstein, who lacked any sort of moral compass, decided to go one step further and compromise influential people by recording them doing things they wouldn’t want made public.

Ari Ben Menashe, himself a former Mossad spy, recounts that he was told directly by Maxwell that Epstein was Mossad (or military intelligence): [2]

What happened was Maxwell introduced [Epstein] to us, and he wanted us to accept him as part of our group. [He said] ‘and your Israeli bosses have already approved.’

I’m not sure of anyone else that Epstein told was Mossad. In fact, this itself is telling if true. If he is hanging around a Jewish network, he’s involved in Mega even, and he’s going around telling everyone that he’s X and Y, but he selectively omits the very lie that he would naturally tell, which is that he’s Mossad…. If he’s just lying all the time, surely he would tell the victims and the gentiles that he is Mossad. Why only tell the well-connected Jews? Would he really risk lying to two Mossad agents about being Mossad (Maxwell and Menashe)? If I’m Epstein and I’m a random American guy who loves to lie, and I love my Jewish identity, I would be telling everyone that I have deals with Israel — I wouldn’t tell them every lie but this one.

As I already said, Hoffenberg was a gullible fool who believed every word that Epstein said and later got got for astounding idiocy in his Ponzi scheme.

Four separate sources told me — on the record — that Epstein’s dealings in the arms world in the 1980s

Yes, exactly. Epstein’s dealings in the arms world of the 1980s, in which nobody in the booming arms industry of the age ever remembered him, no record of him exists, and during which he was living in a 1-bed in Manhattan begging people to give him money to invest after being fired from Bear Stearns. Those dealings.

It is astounding the extent to which claims of Epstein’s work ‘in intelligence’ ultimately trace back to Epstein himself and his own bullshit to make himself seem more interesting, influential and important than he was at that time.

Frankly I hold Mossad in too high of regard to believe any of this shit on incompetence grounds.

The Israelis are less risk-averse than their US counterparts as a general rule, but they aren't bumbling fools orchestrating haphazard sex-based coercion like this.

Also, to correct the record on Acosta claiming Epstein was told to go easy because Epstein "belongs to intelligence":

The OPR report also looked into allegations that have surfaced in press reports over the years that Epstein may have gotten special treatment because he was some sort of “asset” to U.S. intelligence agencies.

“Acosta stated to OPR that ‘the answer is no,’” the report said.

Rich Jewish guy hanging out with rich Jewish guys, some of whom have ties with the Israeli government, is not exactly enough evidence to show anything. Is anything about Epstein's alleged ties to the "arms world" actually proven?

If any of this was true one would think Ari Ben-Menashe would be dead already for spilling state secrets.

That’s not correcting the record. Acosta, a career politician in office, is going to tell one thing to a confidant and another thing to the OPE.

Wow, who can we really trust here?

Certainly not, as you say "career politicians" or "confirmed criminals."

And there's just not really any hard evidence.

So why believe any of the rumors if you won't believe people trying to deny the rumors?

Frankly I hold Mossad in too high of regard

I don't, using children as sexual blackmail to squeeze the balls of the west is exactly what I expect them to do. The mfs even managed to get English royalty by the balls. And the media tried its hardest to keep Prince Andrew's involvement out of the news cycle.

You're confusing "moral regard" and "competency regard."

Even if I accept Mossad is totally evil, I expect them to be good at it. Unlike this.

There are protocols for handling sensitive asset issues and this ain't it.)

I suspect there are also protocols for disposing of one. Telling him that he's run out of luck and no one will come to save him and hence he ought to kill himself with some dignity instead of facing even worse seems within that protocol.

Doing it anyway like what has happened seems like a pretty bad idea, no?

Whole point is to keep things quiet.