The truth about Davos

Monday January 20 sees the start of the World Economic Forum’s 2025 meeting at Davos, Switzerland.

This year’s title is “Collaboration for the Intelligent Age” and the WEF says the event “convenes global leaders to address key global and regional challenges” such as “responding to geopolitical shocks, stimulating growth to improve living standards, and stewarding a just and inclusive energy transition”.

There will no doubt be much media hype about the fine words of various high-profile speakers, but little or no mention, I suspect, of an exclusive gathering of some 175 very special attendees held on the Friday of each year to round off the week on an appropriate note.

This is the WEF’s Shabbat dinner, celebrating the Jewish sabbath.

Writes blogger Robert Scoble: “Klaus Schwab, the Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, told me that it is his favorite event of the whole week.

“You can’t get in without a private invite and it was one of those things that you just can’t believe you’re part of. I was pinching myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming”.

Jewish Insider executive editor Melissa Weiss, who lives in Tel Aviv, explains: “The annual Shabbat dinner held at the conclusion of the weeklong confab for the last 25 years is sponsored by the World Economic Forum and hosted by WEF founder Klaus Schwab and his wife, Hilde”.

She quotes Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz, who, she reveals, has travelled to Davos annually for two decades and is involved in the planning for the annual dinner.

He says: “When it comes to Shabbos, it’s at the end of a week of intense meetings and networking and business.

“So then people come to the last important meal: It’s spiritual, it’s purposeful, it’s Yiddishkeit.”

Israeli businessman Yossi Vardi is a driving force behind the event, Berkowitz told Weiss, and it seems that the late Israeli president Shimon Peres was “an annual staple at the dinner”.

The 2023 article adds that “former Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat gives the d’var Torah, a role he took on following the death of Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel”.

Enthuses Berkowitz: “From heads of state to leaders of industry, emerging technology companies, Nobel laureates, academics, it’s an amazing amalgam of the amazing diversity of the Jewish people and friends of the Jewish people”.

Weiss reports: “While the guest list for the invite-only Shabbat dinner remains under wraps, Berkowitz noted that this year’s WEF boasts a host of high-profile Jewish figures, including Andy Jassy, Eduardo Elsztain, Orit Gadiesh, David Rubinstein, Steve Schwartzman, Jared Kushner, Marc Benioff, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Alex Soros, Rebecca Blumenstein, Adam Grant, Gary Cohn, Wired’s Gideon Lichfield, Israeli Chief Economist Shira Greenberg, Rabbi Yonatan Neril, Google’s Ruth Porat, OurCrowd’s Jonathan Medved, Edward Felsenthal and Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron”.

And she records that the town of Davos itself has notable Jewish connections: “The town boasts a long Jewish history, and has become a summer hotspot for Orthodox Jews looking for a getaway, with at least one fully kosher hotel, and a yeshiva that functions year-round for some 200 young men”.

In his post, Scoble is full of praise for key man Vardi, who he says had made his time at Davos “simply incredible”.

He writes: “I am deeply in his debt for what he’s personally done for me. The Shabbat dinner he took me to last night was simply incredible.

“I filmed an intimate traditional ceremony there. It is the one video I’m keeping for myself and I will treasure those moments more than my walk with Mark Zuckerberg.

“Who is Yossi? He has the ear of the Israeli president and is very influential in Davos”.

Plenty of food for thought there already, but let’s take a look at some of the dodgy characters involved in all this.

Avraham Berkowitz is an emissary for Chabad Lubavitch, “the largest Jewish religious organization in the world”, which maintains a network of over 3,600 institutions in over 1,000 cities, spanning 70 countries.

Chabad has been identified by Politico magazine as being close to incoming US president and WEF attendee Donald Trump.

Berkowitz himself is described by the Jewish Herald Voice as a “globe-trotting rabbi” who has “led the annual Shabbat dinner at the World Economic Forum in Davos for the last 20 years”.

It says he is a “senior coordinator of Special Missions” for Chabad Headquarters, which has involved him representing Chabad at the United Nations and being executive director of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia.

In 2022, Chabad detailed Berkowitz’s work with Ukrainian refugees in neighbouring Moldova.

“Pointing to Ukraine’s unique position as the cradle of the Chassidic movement, he told how Ukraine’s Jews are drawing strength from the Chassidic masters who hailed from the region, notably the Rebbe – Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory – who was born in Nikolaev, Ukraine, nearly 120 years ago”.

Berkowitz has also been a director of the Global Chabad Development Fund.

Another Chabad representative at the annual WEF gatherings is Berel Lazar, chief rabbi of Russia and a confidant of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

He seems to be very well connected. Financier Nathaniel Rothschild has said: “I am very good friends with Rabbi Lazar… I met Rabbi Lazar in Switzerland at the World Economic Forum in Davos and I was struck by watching this figure and we eventually connected and started talking, and from there began a friendship and I started visiting his centre in Russia, many times a year”.

A third important WEF-Chabad connection comes in the form of Arthur Schneier (pictured centre).

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency discloses: “The founder and president of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, was having breakfast with Rabbi Arthur Schneier at his Park East Synagogue in New York when the two jets struck the World Trade Center.

“With Schneier´s assistance, Schwab decided to commemorate the world disaster by moving his forum — traditionally held in the Swiss ski resort of Davos — to New York City”.

Robert Scoble began his career as a pro-technology propagandist for Microsoft and has carried on doing much the same thing ever since.

In 2022 he was very much echoing Klaus Schwab’s chilling Great Reset agenda when he wrote on his blog: “When you add autonomous vehicles, humanoid robots, and other major technology shifts like Augmented Reality and virtual beings, that will arrive in 2023, you see not just an economic upheaval but an almost complete change to what it means to be human”.

Yossi Vardi, to whom Scoble is so deeply in “debt”, is described by Wikipedia as “an Israeli entrepreneur and investor, known for his involvement in the early development of Israel’s high-tech sector and the Israeli internet industry.

“He has been involved in the founding and development of over 85 high-tech companies across various fields, including software, energy, internet, mobile, electro-optics, and water technology, over a span of more than 47 years.

“He was appointed as the Director of the Investment Authority in North America and Consul for Economic Affairs at the Israeli Consulate in New York. In this role, he contributed to the establishment of the Israel-US Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation (BIRD-F) and served as an advisor to the Israeli mission to the UN.

“Upon returning to Israel, he served as the first Director General of the Ministry of Energy. Vardi also chaired the Israel National Oil Company, and was a member of the board of Oil Refineries Ltd”.

We further learn that Vardi is co-chair of the European Union – Israel Strategic Business Dialogue, was on the board of directors of the Development Corporation for Israel (State of Israel Bonds) and was on the advisory council of the Bank of Israel.

As well as being a member of the WEF, Vardi has acted as an advisor to Amazon, to the World Bank and to the UN Development Program “on issues of energy policy and strategy in the developing world”.

He was the chairman of the Jerusalem Foundation, a highly sinister Zionist organisation, whose website declared two decades ago that the idea of a Palestinian state must be “removed from the international agenda” and that “the de-legitimization of the Palestinian narrative becomes a vital prerequisite to any comprehensive resolution of the Palestinian issue”.

Vardi is also listed as an attendee of the GoforIsrael Investment Conference, “bringing together leading global investors and Israel’s best opportunities”.

Since its launch in 1997, the conference’s corporate sponsors and participants have included Veolia, Sanofi, France Telecom, Deloitte, Novartis, HSBC, China Equity and the London Stock Exchange.

Individuals taking part have included former Israeli president Isaac Herzog, former Israeli prime minister and ultra-Zionist Naftali Bennett, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu – currently the subject of an international arrest warrant for war crimes – and global financier David de Rothschild.

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