While Barack Obama's choice of Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago-born son of Israeli Jews, as the White House Chief of Staff has made news in the United States, the bigger news of the growing Jewish strength in US Congress has not received much attention.
Jews make up only about 2% of the US population. However their representation in the US executive, legislatures, the Supreme Court is at least five times at about 10 percent plus. The exclusive club of Nobel laureates is dominated by its Jewish members, a testament to Jewish culture of hard work, commitment and achievement. Their numbers and power in the world of business, finance, media and entertainment, Washington think tanks, academia and top professions of accounting, law and medicine are even greater.
Jerusalem Post reports that the next session of Congress will include 45 Jewish lawmakers, a new record, after Democrats Alan Grayson of Florida and John Adler of New Jersey took two House seats from the Republican column.
Jared Polis, also a Democrat, was widely expected to win his Colorado House seat to match the previous record, set in the 2006 elections.
The House will have 32 Jewish members. Only the class of 1990 had more Jewish members - 34 - but there were fewer Jewish senators at the time.
The next Senate will have 13 Jewish members, the same as the previous session, despite a toss-up race in Minnesota, where both Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and his Democratic challenger, comedian Al Franken, are Jewish.
I admire the Jewish people for their culture of hard work and achievement. We should all emulate that. I also make a distinction between Israel lobby that pushed for Iraq war and the Jewish citizens in America, most of whom opposed the Iraq war. Vast majority of Jewish Congressmen and Senators are elected with AIPAC money and support, making them beholden to the Israel lobby.
I see this excessive power of Israel lobby or any other pressure group whether Muslim, Jewish, Christian, NRA or corporations as a threat to US democracy. The corrosive effect of money and influence peddling in politics is adversely affecting our executive, legislature, even judiciary. The powerful have gotten away with a lot lately, on both Wall Street and Main street. Iraq war was ignited by the neo-conservatives, most of whom were supported by the Likud-leaning Israel lobby, people such as Wolfowitz and other PNAC (Project for the New American Century) proponents. The Iraq war, described as the three-trillion dollar war by Nobel laureate economist Joe Stiglitz, has now radicalized the Muslim world, reduced US influence in the world, sunk the Republican party and almost bankrupted the US.
Obama's mandate to negotiate with Iran in the face of the Israeli opposition is likely to be the tested soon. Given the past experience of other US presidents' inability to stand up to the growing power of the Israeli supporters in the US, I am not too sanguine that Obama will succeed.
The recent election results, including Obama's historic win, will probably not change much as far the US Middle East policy is concerned. If anything, these results will likely make it extremely difficult for the US to act independently and play the role of an honest broker in any international issues involving Israeli interests. As the Iraq war has shown, the outcome of potentially aggressive and unilateral US foreign policy dictated by the Israel lobby will not be in the best interest of Israel, Arabs and the rest of the world. Those of us who care for Israel must understand this fact, if they share the goal of moving toward a more peaceful and prosperous world.
Here is a video clip of Obama addressing AIPAC, the powerful Israel lobby in US:
Related Links:
The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy
The Rise of Jewish Power-Nothing Short of Astounding
Jewish Tribal review
Jewish Domination of Mass Media
Photo Quiz: What is this guy doing?
9 hours ago
8 comments:
Riaz, you see the same data as I do. You react with trepidation. Mine is wonder. Don't know if the word "prejudice" is too strong here.
Why not focus on their culture of excellence and try and replicate that? Why not analyze how they do what they do and imitate? This obsession with Palestine in the Muslim world clouds clear-thinking. That the Arabs make noises of solidarity (and they are just noises) is one thing. But subcontinental hearts bleeding for Palestinians just boggle this mind. Besides that tenuous religious link, there is absolutely nothing in common. And we have no shortage of "internally displaced persons" of our own.
I admire the Jewish people for their culture of hard work and achievement. We should all emulate that. I also make a distinction between Israel lobby that pushed for Iraq war and the Jewish citizens in America, most of whom opposed the Iraq war.
I see this excessive power of Israel lobby or any other pressure group whether Muslim or Jewish or NRA or corporate as a threat to US democracy. The corrosive effect of money and influence peddling is adversely affecting our executive, legislature, even judiciary. The powerful have gotten away with a lot lately, on both Wall Street and Main street. Iraq war was ignited by the necons, most of whom were supported by Israel lobby, people such as Wolfowitz and other PNAC proponents. The Iraq war has now radicalized the Muslim world, sunk the Republican party and bankrupted the US.
"In an interview with Ma'ariv, Emanuel's father, Dr. Benjamin Emanuel, said he was convinced that his son's appointment would be good for Israel. "Obviously he will influence the president to be pro-Israel," he was quoted as saying. "Why wouldn't he be? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to clean the floors of the White House." The Ma'ariv article also quoted Dr. Emanuel as saying that his son spends most summers visiting in Tel Aviv, and that he speaks Hebrew, but not fluently."
Libertarian - the above quote will help you distinguish between Jewish thinking and Zionist thinking.
America is a immigration country, so its free for all with equal opportunity. Indians have been fascinated for long by scale achievements of Jewish people and their intelligence, they have a Midas touch in business and engineering genius. Hope we could emulate them in a small way at least. Anyway we cant beat their racial superiority.As for Arabs, they will kill each others unto death if there was no Jewish state in their midst. Palestinian suffering is artificial in the sense that Arab and Muslim states send millions of dollars to them for fighting Israel and but never address their infrastructural and basic problems lest they loose interest in jihad. The reported pathetic conditions in Palestinian refugee camps in neighboring states of Palestine is telling.
Jewish Blogging is reporting as follows:
Yes, Bernard L. Madoff is a Jew.
Bernard Madoff was arrested and charged today with allegedly running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, according to U.S. authorities.
According to Yeshiva University, "Bernard L. Madoff, a member of the University’s Board of Trustees since 1996, was elected chairman of the Board of Directors of Sy Syms School of Business in 2000. Mr. Madoff is chairman of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, one of the nation’s largest third-market dealers in New York Stock Exchange and over-the-counter securities. A Benefactor of the University, Mr. Madoff recently made a major gift to the Sy Syms School."
Forbes reports this 'UNFORTUNATE SET OF EVENTS':
"Bernard Madoff is a longstanding leader in the financial services industry," his lawyer Dan Horwitz told reporters outside a downtown Manhattan courtroom where he was charged. "We will fight to get through this unfortunate set of events."
A shaken Madoff stared at the ground as reporters peppered him with questions. He was released after posting a $10 million bond secured by his Manhattan apartment.
The SEC filed separate civil charges.
"Our complaint alleges a stunning fraud -- both in terms of scope and duration," said Scott Friestad, the SEC's deputy enforcer. "We are moving quickly and decisively to stop the scheme and protect the remaining assets for investors."
The SEC said it appeared that virtually all of the assets of his hedge fund business were missing.
Madoff had long kept the financial statements for his hedge fund business under "lock and key," according to prosecutors, and was "cryptic" about the firm.
http://www.jewishblogging.com/blog.php?bid=171027
From: Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor
To understand reaction in the Jewish community to the growing scandal around investor Bernie Madoff, it helps to know a few words of Yiddish.
Yiddish was the language of Jews in Eastern Europe, with a rich history in literature, theater and music, until that community was decimated in the Holocaust. Today Yiddish is most common in communities of Orthodox Jews.
But for most American Jews it harkens back to previous generations and life in the old country, spoken more by “alta kockers,”
though “bubbie” (grandmother) and “zaide” (grandfather) probably don’t appreciate being referred to as geezers.
Madoff was a “macher” (a big shot, a mover-and-shaker) among machers.
Madoff also is - allegedly - a “gonif” (thief, embezzler). A few folks have used Yiddish words regarding parentage and body parts, but we’ll skip those.
The Jewish community is “farklemt” (depressed, distraught, grieving), but it goes beyond that.
The whole thing is a “shandah” (disgrace). For those concerned with image, it’s a shandah for the “goyim” (non-Jews, in front of whom Jewish community looks bad).
“Catastrophe” and “devastation” are English words being used.
“It’s an atomic bomb in the world of Jewish philanthropy,” Mark Charendoff, president of the Jewish Funders Network, an organization that advises wealthy Jewish donors, told the Forward, a newspaper that reports on Jewish affairs. “There’s going to be fallout from this for years.”
In the United States, at least one charity has closed. “It’s devastating,” Arthur Epstein, a major supporter of local Jewish charities, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, referring to the loss of the Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation near Boston and the programs it supported.
An American university professor e-mailed me from Jerusalem that the Madoff case is all that’s being discussed in the philanthropic world in Israel, where there is fear that more than 50 organizations that Madoff supported or that invested in his firm may shut down before “Shabbat,” the Sabbath that begins at sunset Friday.
That fear in the Jewish community extends from the Los Angeles to Boca Raton and Palm Beach, from New York City to Washington, D.C., to Boston and points elsewhere around the globe.
With losses ranging from tens of thousands to tens of millions of dollars, the casualties include national Jewish organizations; local Jewish federations, which support programs throughout their communities; charities and foundations supporting a range of causes; hospitals and schools, from elementary through university. Published reports say that one school, Yeshiva Univ., may have lost as much as $100 million.
Untold numbers of children, students, teachers and researchers, the needy and the disabled, retirees of modest means and some of wealth will suffer anonymously.
Some victims of the alleged swindle have well-known names: Spielberg, Wiesel, Lautenberg, Zuckerman.
Gary Tobin, president of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, which studies Jewish philanthropy, told the Forward, “The Jewish philanthropic world depends on personal relationships and personal solicitations. Many Jewish philanthropies are dependent on high-end donors in very close social and economic networks, and this guy is right in middle of them.”
Writing in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, Bradley Burston recognized that at least one segment of society would find advantage in the situation.
“For the true anti-Semite, Christmas came early this year,” Burston wrote. “Rich beyond human comprehension, he handles fortunes for others, buying and selling in a trading empire that skirts investment banks and other possible sources of regulation. He redefines avarice, knowingly and personally bilking charities and retirees in the most classic of con games. Even better, for those obsessed with the idea that Jews control finance, entertainment and the media, is the idea that Madoff’s greed was uncontrollable enough that he targeted fellow Jews, even Holocaust survivors, some of them his own friends, as well as Israeli companies who insured Jews, including Holocaust survivors. The beauty part, for the anti-Semite: Madoff’s machinations, which could have been put to use for the sake of humanity, have directly harmed Jewish welfare and charity institutions.”
Now that is a shandah.
http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/12/17/deep-embarassment-over-madoff-and-pain-too/
Here's an AP report on Madoff scandal:
Some Jews fear Madoff case stokes anti-Semitism
Thursday December 25, 12:54 pm ET
By Jennifer Peltz, Associated Press Writer
Madoff scandal fits profile of `affinity fraud,' proves particularly wrenching for Jews
NEW YORK (AP) -- Of all the words that have been used to describe the Bernard L. Madoff scandal, the most emotionally charged may be "Jewish."
The disgraced investment guru is accused of orchestrating a $50 billion Ponzi scheme that preyed heavily on fellow Jews and ultimately drained the fortunes of numerous Jewish charities and institutions.
There's nothing new about con artists targeting their own kind. There's even a word for it -- affinity fraud -- and it has struck numerous religious, ethnic and professional groups.
But the allegations against Madoff are particularly wrenching for some in the Jewish community, who fear that the sensational case is fanning vicious stereotypes about Jews that go back to the Middle Ages.
The Anti-Defamation League cites a spike in anti-Semitic comments online after Madoff's Dec. 11 arrest. A columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz lamented the case as "the answer to every Jew-hater's wish list."
And the American Jewish Committee's executive director, David A. Harris, wrote a letter to The New York Times criticizing what he saw as "a striking emphasis" on Madoff's faith in one of the paper's many stories about the scandal.
The case is "fodder for the bigots," Abraham H. Foxman, the ADL's national director, said in an interview this week with The Associated Press. "It's both embarrassing and it's painful."
It's difficult to describe the case in any detail without mentioning Madoff's religion. The 70-year-old money manager and former Nasdaq stock market chairman donated hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, much of it to Jewish causes. And many of the known victims of his business, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, are big names in Jewish life.
Yeshiva University, one of the nation's foremost Jewish institutions of higher education, lost $110 million; Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, lost $90 million; director Steven Spielberg's Wunderkinder Foundation acknowledged unspecified losses; and a $15 million foundation established by Holocaust survivor and writer Elie Wiesel was wiped out. Jewish federations and hospitals have lost millions and some foundations have had to close.
Madoff is charged with securities fraud and is under house arrest in his Manhattan apartment with round-the-clock security. His lawyer has said he intends to fight the charge.
The damage to the Jewish community is psychological as well as financial, said Kenneth Bandler, a spokesman for the AJC. He said his organization declined to invest with Madoff earlier this year because it was unable to decipher how Madoff was producing his renowned returns.
At Jewish organizations and synagogues, Bandler said, people ask themselves: "How could someone who is held in such high esteem in the Jewish community knowingly rip off what were supposed to be his friends, the organizations he admired and supported?"
Members of churches, minority groups and various occupations have wondered the same thing after falling victim to similarly targeted frauds. Religious-based schemes alone swept up more than 80,000 people and nearly $2 billion nationwide from 1998 to 2001, according to the most recent figures available from the North American Securities Administrators Association, an investor-protection group.
The Baptist Foundation of Arizona told investors their money would build churches while paying returns. In fact, their savings were sucked into what authorities called a $550 million Ponzi scheme in the 1980s and 1990s. Several foundation officials were sentenced to prison in 2006 and 2007.
Chicago real estate investment firm Sunrise Equities Inc. had the blessing of Muslim clerics, who said its dividends conformed with Islamic laws against earning interest. Its owner disappeared this past August, leaving 200 of his fellow Muslim immigrants with losses that could total $50 million.
Whatever the circle, affinity frauds exploit trust. Victims are approached by one of their own and "therefore there's less suspicion, there's less concern," said Joseph P. Borg, the Alabama Securities Commission's director and a former NASAA president.
Adding to the sense of betrayal in the allegations against Madoff are worries about whether they feed into centuries-old, ugly caricatures of Jews.
Since Jews served as lenders in medieval Europe, where they were barred from many other occupations, they have sometimes been portrayed as miserly, greedy and obsessed with money. In just one example, Shakespeare's Shylock, the Jewish character who demands a pound of flesh in payment for a loan in "The Merchant of Venice," has become synonymous with usury.
In his letter to the Times about a Madoff article, the AJC's Harris wrote: "Yes, he is Jewish. We get it. But was this relevant to his being arrested for cheating investors, or so key to his evolution as a businessman that it needed to be hammered home again and again?"
(Comment inserted : Yes, some criminals are muslims too. Why are they referred to as "Islamic" militants/terrorists ? Why is this relevant ? The shoe hurths when it is on the other foot.)
The Rabbinical Council of America issued a statement Wednesday underscoring that "there is no reason to believe such terrible behavior is more common among Jews" than anyone else.
Still, anti-Semitic broadsides have peppered the Internet in the wake of Madoff's arrest, some in highly visible public-comment sections of popular news sites, Foxman noted.
Some get removed by the sites' administrators or draw replies noting there are bad apples of all creeds and in all walks of life. Victims also extend to all creeds and walks of life -- banks, insurers, pension funds and even the International Olympic Committee are among those who say they've been taken by Madoff.
Still, the scandal has reverberated throughout the Jewish community. This week, representatives of about three dozen Jewish foundations met in New York City to come up with a plan to help Jewish nonprofits that lost money with Madoff, said Jeffrey Solomon, president of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies. Solomon said the foundations agreed to contribute to a pool of money that will be distributed to hard-hit organizations.
"This is a tragedy by any stretch of the imagination but within the context of $300 billion worth of donations to American charities, we shouldn't lose sight of the larger picture -- both the generosity of Americans and the effectiveness of the nonprofit system," he said.
http://www.ajc.org/
http://www.hadassah.org/
http://www.acbp.net/
http://www.eliewieselfoundation.org/
In a recent book titled "Capitalism and the Jews", author Muller argues that it was Chrisitians' distaste and dis like of usury that left wide open the business of lending and capitalism to Jews in Europe:
"The unique historical relationship between capitalism and the Jews is crucial to understanding modern European and Jewish history. But the subject has been addressed less often by mainstream historians than by anti-Semites or apologists. In this book Jerry Muller, a leading historian of capitalism, separates myth from reality to explain why the Jewish experience with capitalism has been so important and complex--and so ambivalent.
Drawing on economic, social, political, and intellectual history from medieval Europe through contemporary America and Israel, Capitalism and the Jews examines the ways in which thinking about capitalism and thinking about the Jews have gone hand in hand in European thought, and why anticapitalism and anti-Semitism have frequently been linked. The book explains why Jews have tended to be disproportionately successful in capitalist societies, but also why Jews have numbered among the fiercest anticapitalists and Communists. The book shows how the ancient idea that money was unproductive led from the stigmatization of usury and the Jews to the stigmatization of finance and, ultimately, in Marxism, the stigmatization of capitalism itself. Finally, the book traces how the traditional status of the Jews as a diasporic merchant minority both encouraged their economic success and made them particularly vulnerable to the ethnic nationalism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Providing a fresh look at an important but frequently misunderstood subject, Capitalism and the Jews will interest anyone who wants to understand the Jewish role in the development of capitalism, the role of capitalism in the modern fate of the Jews, or the ways in which the story of capitalism and the Jews has affected the history of Europe and beyond, from the medieval period to our own."
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