Sam Altman, founder and CEO of OpenAI, tops the list of this year’s “50 Most Influential Jews,” published yearly by The Jerusalem Post. Altman is followed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. At number 3 is U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. Since September, and after the attack by Hamas and the subsequent revenge bombardment of Gaza, Netanyahu and Blinken may well have changed places in terms of true influence.
I talked to a man wearing a sweatsuit with the Palestinian flag on it. He told me that his father came here in 1976. It’s ethnic cleansing, it’s an illegal occupation of Palestinian land, and what you’re seeing is people fighting after they’ve been backed into a corner, he said. He likened the struggle to South Africa and Algeria. It’s the same old imperialism and colonialism, he said.