I was looking through my notes the other day to do some last minute fact-checking Pistachio Wars, when I was reminded of something: Lynda and Stewart Resnick — the Beverly Hills billionaire climate criminals ravaging California so they can build wealth and power off their pistachio and almond monopoly — are big fans of the occupation. They’ve been funneling millions to various charities connected with Israel’s occupation apparatus, including specifically the Israeli Defense Forces.

Based on tax records from their foundation, they’ve given anywhere from $500,000 to $200,000 to the Israeli military every year, with most of it funneled through an outfit called the American Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces.1 Adding it all up comes to millions of dollars — $2.4 million just between 2015 and 2022.

But this support for the military doesn’t include the many more millions the Resnicks have given to “education” focused outfits — ones that are closely tied to Israel’s military and occupation establishment, nor does it include their involvement with an influential neoconservative thinktank spun off from AIPAC, the biggest Israel lobby in the United States.2 If support for these other more soft power occupation initiatives is tallied, the Resnick family’s backing of Israel’s increasingly genocidal regime adds up to the many millions, although the exact number is impossible to pin down.

I’m sure their support for Israel, like with most American Jews, is tied to their personal political beliefs in the necessity of a Jewish Nation, a nation controlled and run for and by Jews. But for the Resnicks there is a deeper level to this support. As Rowan and I explore in our documentary and as I’ve written before in my reporting, the Resnick’s pistachio monopoly has a very specific geopolitical dimension: It’s based off of U.S. meddling in the Middle East. Specifically it’s based off of America’s overthrow of democracy in Iran and the backing of the Shah — meddling that spectacularly blewback in the form of Iran taking 52 American hostages from the U.S. Embassy in 1979. The result of this blowback was more aggression against Iran: the imposition of crippling sanctions. It is these sanctions that for the first time in history began to cut Iran’s pistachio industry off from global trade and allowed the Resnicks to get into the pistachio business in California.

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