The Sassoon Family Continuation Trust will create three different funds to secure the economic growth of Israel and fight anti-semitism.
By James Spiro, CTech
The Sassoon Family Continuation Trust, established in 1485 during the Spanish Inquisition, has recently announced that it will commit $50 billion across three funds to “fulfill a mandate to ensure the economic growth and market impact for Israel.”
$100 billion of financial assets are currently being relocated to the U.S from Switzerland, half of which will end up in Israel.
“There’s a vacuum here, and someone needs to fill it,” David Sassoon told CTech. As a direct descendant of Sassoon trust and its sole beneficiary, he is now the executive chairman of J. Sassoon Group, a Washington, DC-based private equity and investment banking firm and oversees its ventures across the world.
Ahead of making ‘Aliyah’ (moving to Israel) later this year, he shared the plans for the trust and its hopes for investment that can help support the longevity of the country.
Over the next 15 years, the Trust will invest $50 billion dollars into three funds.
The first, The Israel Hellenic Fund, will focus on the relationship between Israel and Greece, ensuring it goes beyond a military and security collaboration to an economic, tech, life science, and real estate partnership between the nations.
The second fund, called The Patriot Fund, will be joint between the U.S and Israel and concentrate on technology pertaining to the national security sector.
The final fund is called the Zion Fund and will focus on Israel’s startup scene, with an emphasis on renewable energy, telecommunication, transportation, and infrastructure.
The Sassoon family has seen its share of injustice which explains some of its concerns about the safety and security of Jews and Jewish-friendly nations. Extraordinarily, the family has records going back to the 1400s that can demonstrate the family’s journey following expulsions from Spain and Portugal and can point to milestones over 500 years.
And yet, the family has seen overwhelming success against adversity through its work in trade and geopolitical partnerships. Following expulsions in Europe, the family settled in Greece and then moved to the U.S, where Sassoon was born.
“We’re a patriotic family, we owe a lot of the achievements that we were able to achieve at least in the last 200 years or so to the U.S, as most Jews who are Jewish Americans have benefitted from that,” he told CTech. “And so moving the financial assets to the U.S is also helping Israel. The U.S still remains, thank God, a free market to a large extent.”
Today, as threats of anti-Semitism and political extremism on both sides bubble to a boil, Sassoon is dedicated to helping fix the local security levels of both countries, but especially the U.S which he described as being in “peril.”
Sassoon isn’t shy about why he thinks this. He believes that the Far Left has “confiscated the truth and kidnapped the narrative”, particularly among university campuses that are currently experiencing a spike in anti-Israel sentiments. He also cited President Joe Biden’s recent handling of Afghanistan as an example of his administration’s “inefficiency and ineptness.”
To help achieve some of its ambitious economic, security, and cultural goals, the fund has employed Bruce Fein as its CEO. Fein was a former associate deputy attorney general in the U.S. He served in the White House during President Nixon and served as general counsel for the FCC through President Regan, as well as the advisor and senior investigator for the Senate during the Iran-Contra scandal.
One of its board members, Paul Becker, is a retired U.S navy admiral and former director of Intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
“We’re very conservative in our thinking, however, we’re not exclusive,” he said. “We are inclusive. We want to work with everyone to maintain the Jewish values that maintain their identity as Jews and the Jewish state.”
Between ensuring Israel’s longevity through technology and economic security, fighting against anti-Israel bias in U.S institutions, and tackling antisemitism around the world, the Trust will have its hands full. With the three funds launching by 2022, the money and investment pumping in hopes to counter some of the threats posing Jews today.
“We have to remember the phrase our grandparents use: Never Again,” Sassoon concluded. “It’s Never Again for antisemitism around the world, period.”