Dr. Miriam and Mr. Sheldon Adelson at the 2011 AIPAC Conference. Photo: Maxine Dovere.

JNS.org – U.S. businessman and philanthropist Sheldon Adelson, along with his wife Miriam, will donate $25 million to Israel’s Ariel University located in Judea and Samaria.

The donation is for the university’s School of Health Sciences department, which enrolls nearly 1,200 students of the school’s nearly 14,000 students.  The school is embarking on a ambitious expansion plan that includes the establishment a regional medical center that will service the area’s Jewish and Arab populations.

“All my years in business have taught me that when a crack opens up in one place you don’t just need to seal it, you need to strengthen the entire wall, and sometimes the entire building,” Sheldon Adelson said in a statement issued by the university.

Adelson said that the donation will serve to help strengthen the foundations of Zionism in the region.

“The many attacks on settlement in Judea and Samaria are connected to the long struggle against the State of Israel since its founding, and even before that,” he said. “The donation to Ariel University is about building a Zionist wall in place of the crack.”

Dr. Miriam and Sheldon Adelson are the world’s leading private donors to Jewish education, the Taglit-Birthright Israel program (to which they have contributed $180 million), and Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.