A group of prominent American Jewish billionaires and business leaders have been privately pressuring New York City Mayor, Eric Adams, to deploy the police against pro-Palestinian student protesters at Columbia University, and even offered to pay for private investigators to assist the New York Police Department in handling the protests, according to a report by The Washington Post.

The revelations, based on a WhatsApp chat log obtained by the newspaper, shed light on the group’s efforts to shape public opinion and influence government actions in favour of Israel, while simultaneously, those involved have claimed that exposing the influence campaign of American Zionists is racist because it repeats a common anti-Sematic trope about Jewish power.

The WhatsApp group, titled “Israel Current Events”, was initiated shortly after the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel and eventually grew to include around 100 members, many of whom are featured on Forbes’s annual list of billionaires.

The chat’s participants include Kind snack company founder Daniel Lubetzky, hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, billionaire Len Blavatnik, real estate investor Joseph Sitt, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman and Joshua Kushner, founder of Thrive Capital and brother to Jared Kushner, former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law.