Who is Miriam Adelson, the pro-Israel donor Trump lauded at the Knesset?

As United States President Donald Trump addressed the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, to celebrate the Gaza ceasefire deal, he saluted American diplomats, generals and regional states involved in the agreement.

Miriam Adelson, a pro-Israel mega-donor, also received a shout-out from the US president on Monday. Trump noted that she has “$60bn in her account” and that “she loves Israel”.

“Look at her sitting there so innocently,” he said.

“I’m going to get her in trouble with this — but I actually asked her once, ‘So Miriam: I know you love Israel. What do you love more, the United States or Israel?’ She refused to answer. That means that might be an issue, I must say,” he added, to dimmed laughter in the chamber.

Adelson, a Las Vegas casino magnate, poured $106m into Preserve America, her pro-Trump super PAC, an election group that helped elect Trump last year.

On Monday, she sat in the gallery at the Knesset and received a standing ovation as Trump praised her support for Israel, noting she had taken “more trips to the White House than anybody else”.

From doctor to kingmaker

Born in Tel Aviv in 1945 after her parents immigrated from Poland, Adelson trained as a physician specialising in addiction treatment.

In 1991, she married Sheldon Adelson, a self-made casino billionaire who had built the Las Vegas Sands into a gambling empire with resorts across Asia and the US.

When they married, Miriam already controlled the larger share of the casino company’s stock, but after Sheldon’s death in 2021, she took majority control of Las Vegas Sands, which operates major casinos in Singapore and Macao.

Sheldon Adelson was one of the top Republican Party donors, giving millions to pro-Israel candidates.

The family sold their iconic Las Vegas Strip properties, including the Venetian resort, for $6.25bn in 2022.

In 2023, Miriam Adelson also acquired majority ownership in the Dallas Mavericks basketball team.

Shaping Trump’s Israel policy

Trump often describes how the Adelsons would visit him at the White House during his first term, demanding pro-Israel policies.

He repeated that assertion on Monday. “Miriam and Sheldon would come into the [Oval] Office. They’d call me. I think they had more trips to the White House than anybody else,” Trump said.

The Adelsons have long had significant influence among US conservatives.

As committed Zionists and with links to right-wing figures and issues in the US, the Adelsons became Republican mega-donors in the 2010s, giving more than $600m to support Trump’s three presidential campaigns and to back other Republican candidates since 2015.

Miriam’s position hardened after the October 7 attacks. She wrote a column in Israel Hayom – one of Israel’s most widely read newspapers, which she owns – calling for dismissing Israel’s critics across the world.

“Foreign fans of Hamas are our enemies, the ideological enablers in the West of those who would go to any length to eradicate us from the Middle East. And, as such, they should be dead to us,” she said.

Her backing for Trump and the GOP has won her strong connections with the White House.

The couple pushed Trump to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2016 and to recognise Israeli control over Syria’s occupied Golan Heights during his first term. Trump awarded Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018.

At a September campaign event, Adelson told Jewish voters they have a “sacred duty” to support Trump, “in gratitude for everything he has done and trust in everything he will yet do”.

She also backed last year’s harsh crackdown on pro-Palestine student demonstrators, dismissing the protests in Forbes Israel as “ghastly gatherings of radical Muslim and Black Lives Matter activists, ultra-progressives, and career agitators — nothing short of street parties”.