| Author | Message | | Alpha | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat May 09, 2009 9:41 am Post subject: Survey: Jews are Blamed for Economic Crisis |
| Survey: Jews are Blamed for Economic Crisis
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/131238
Survey: Jews are Blamed for Economic Crisis
Iyar 13, 5769, 07 May 09 12:11by Hillel Fendel (IsraelNN.com) A survey conducted by the Boston Review in its May/June issue shows that nearly 25% of American non-Jews blame the Jews a moderate amount or more for the financial crisis.
Furthermore, a total of 38.4% of the non-Jews in the U.S. attribute at least some level of blame to the group.
Possibly most significant of all were the subconscious anti-Semitic tendencies revealed based on the way the questions were phrased to different groups.
Neil Malhotra, Assistant Professor of Political Economy in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, and Dr. Yotam Margalit of Stanford University, conducted the study. It was part of a survey of 2,768 American adults exploring responses and anti-Semitic sentiments vis--vis the economic collapse.
They found that Democrats were significantly more prone to blaming Jews than Republicans: while 32% of Democrats accorded at least moderate blame, compared to only 18.4% of Republicans.
The researchers carried out a fascinating experiment in the course of the study. The goal was to see what happens when Wall Street corruption is explicitly associated with Jewish financiers such as Bernard Madoff; would that affect peoples views on bailing out big business?
To address this question, they randomly assigned national survey participants to one of three groups. All three were prompted with a one-paragraph news report that briefly described the Madoff scandal, and were then asked their views about providing government tax breaks to big business in order to spur job creation.
The text of the paragraph about Madoff had slight differences for the three groups: The first group was told that Madoff is an American investor who contributed to educational charities, the second group was told that he is a Jewish-American investor who contributed to educational charities, and the third group was told that Madoff is an American investor who contributed to Jewish educational charities.
The findings were revealing and disturbing, the researchers wrote. Those people who were told explicitly that Madoff is Jewish were almost twice as likely to oppose the tax cuts to big business. While only 10% those who were given no information about his Jewishness said they opposed tax cuts for big business, over 17% of those who were told that Madoff is Jewish opposed the gestures to big business. This difference is highly significant in statistical terms, the researchers conclude.
To complete the picture, the middle group those who were told that Madoff was an American who gave to Jewish charities produced a 14% opposition rate.
When Jewish respondents were assigned to the three groups, they had the exact same policy preferences in all three groups, wrote Margalit and Malhotra. Nor were there any differences between the groups on other proposals that did not deal with the business sector, but rather with federal support for state governments or with tax breaks for the middle class.
The researchers noted that the greater tendency among Democrats than Republicans to blame Jews is somewhat surprising, given the presumed higher degree of racial tolerance among liberals, and the fact that Jews are a central part of the Democratic Partys electoral coalition.%ad%
Sorting the results according to level of education provided another interesting finding: 18.3% of those with at least a bachelors degree blamed the Jews a moderate amount or more, while 27.3% of those lacking a 4-year degree did so. Yet, these numbers were basically reversed as they were in the case of the Democrats and Republicans - when asked about the culpability of individuals who took out loans they could not afford.
Crises often have the potential to stoke fears and resentment, the researchers conclude, and the current economic collapse is likely no exception. Therefore, we must take heed of prejudice and bigotry that have already started to sink roots in the United States The media ought to bear these findings in mind in their coverage of financial scandals such as the Madoff scam. In most cases, religious and ethnic affiliations have nothing to do with the subject at hand, and such references, explicit or implied, ought, then, to be avoided.
See the article in Boston Review
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Jews to blame for US recession: poll
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=94044§ionid=3510203 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed May 13, 2009 11:47 pm Post subject: DE BORCHGRAVE: Jordan 's king warns of war |
| http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/13/jordans-king-warns-of-war/
DE BORCHGRAVE: Jordan 's king warns of war
Conflict seen in 2010 if Palestinian state isn't created this year
By Arnaud de Borchgrave | Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Jordan 's King Abdullah II, in his 10th year on the Hashemite throne, warns that either a Palestinian state is created this year - or there will be another war in the Middle East in 2010.
If the king's either/or prognostication proves accurate, war will come again next year. There isn't a snowball's chance in the Negev Desert of a Palestinian state in the West Bank in 2009 - or 2010.
Creation of such an entity would cost tens of billions of dollars that the United States would be expected to pay. The repatriation of about 300,000 Jewish settlers, now in 160 settlements, would entail billions more. And after what happened in 2005 in Gaza, where about 8,000 settlers who had occupied 40 percent of the 130-mile strip for 38 years were forcibly evicted by about 50,000 Israel Defense Force troops and Israeli police, few, if any, are willing to be uprooted again.
The Arab peace plan - pre-1967 war frontiers in exchange for normal diplomatic and economic relations between Israel and 21 Arab nations - also would have the endorsement of the world's 57 Muslim nations, according to the Jordanian monarch. Seldom prone to hyperbole, the Western-trained Abdullah said Israel is being offered "one-third of the world waiting to meet Israelis with open arms. ... The future is not the Jordan River or the Golan Heights or the Sinai, the future is Morocco in the Atlantic and Indonesia in the Pacific. That is the prize [for Israel ]."
For Israel , a Palestinian state would bring Ben Gurion International Airport within Palestinian rocket range. Such a state also would have to be governed by a coalition team that would include Hamas, seen by Israel as a revanchist organization whose objective is a Palestinian state with the Mediterranean Sea as its Western frontier - sans Israel . And Hamas' loyalties are to Iran 's Revolutionary Guards. Their common objective is Israel 's destruction.
Even with territorial adjustments to the 1967 border in Israel's favor, which the Arab peace plan allows, Israelis would begin to feel that the concept of a purely Jewish state is condemned by history to a short shelf life.
Underlying the current geopolitical equation is the growing belief among Palestinian intellectuals that a one-state solution is preferable to two states. This school argues it would be wiser in the long run to become an underprivileged, downtrodden minority within the state of Israel and the occupied territories, whence the Palestinians could campaign with Israel 's 1.2 million-strong Arab minority for equal rights. The overwhelming majority of these Israeli Arabs say they want to remain part of Israel . Demography, many believe, will eventually deliver a Lebanon-style hybrid state.
While running for the presidency, Mr. Obama argued it was unrealistic for a U.S. president to "suddenly snap his fingers and bring about peace in the region." That was - and still is - a correct assessment. Nevertheless, National Security Adviser James L. Jones, heartened by his own achievement last year when he got Israeli and Jordan-trained Palestinian security personnel to work together in the West Bank city of Jenin , is convinced his boss can still make things happen in the Middle East .
Gen. Jones, a four-star former Marine commandant and NATO supreme commander, senses "an expectation around the world that we are in a moment when we can make progress" in the Middle East, provided America offers "leadership," he told ABC.
Next week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will have Mr. Obama's ear, followed by Egypt 's Hosni Mubarak and Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas before the president heads to Egypt on June 4 to address the Muslim world and its 1.4 billion people.
There is little doubt Mr. Obama will be tougher on Israel than his predecessors. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. told the annual convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee what it didn't like hearing - don't build more settlements, dismantle "existing outposts" and let the Palestinians move freely. The "outposts" referred only to recent clandestine expansion, not to the 160 Jewish enclaves in the West Bank .
Words alone will not change Israeli policy. Mr. Netanyahu has stated flatly that Israel is not bound by any previous commitment to a two-state solution for the Palestinians. For the Palestinians, the capital of a sovereign state has to be Arab East Jerusalem, where the Israelis already have settled 200,000 Jews.
Making aid to Israel conditional on the creation of a Palestinian state in 2009 would be a thunderclap heard around the world - but a sense-of-Congress resolution would quickly drain such a warning of substance.
Israel 's main concern at this geopolitical crossroads is Iran 's nuclear ambitions and the existential threat those ambitions pose to the Jewish body politic. Diplomatic scuttlebutt had White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel dropping hints to major donors behind AIPAC's closed doors last week that "thwarting Iran 's nuclear program is conditional on progress in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians."
As part of a humongous peace plan that would cover all Middle Eastern bases, the Obama foreign policy team also has been trying to detach Syria from its principal benefactor, Iran . Syria 's government dailies riposted with targeted anti-Semitic articles. Columnist Jallal Kheir Bek said the Jews sucked the blood from Jesus' wounds during His crucifixion and called for the Arabs, Muslims and Christians to unite to defeat them. Hard to break bad habits in the Middle East.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.
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Cheney in Manhattan: 'A giant conspiracy' on Iran:
http://tinyurl.com/pwblh6
Additional at: http://NEOCONZIONISTTHREAT.COM | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 2:44 pm Post subject: Congressional leaders inadvertently expose Israeli lobbyists |
| Congressional leaders inadvertently expose Israeli lobbyists behind letter to Obama
Update: In response to an email query, Katie Grant, a spokeswoman for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, “The letter was discussed with AIPAC, and a staffer named it that.”
Josh Block, a spokesman for AIPAC, said he wasn’t familiar with the particular letter but that he could “only guess that whoever wrote the [letter] used it that title as shorthand, since it’s well know that we support the Hoyer/Cantor letter it is attached to.”
GOP House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) circulated a letter to colleagues this week urging President Obama to support Israel when moving forward with any Israeli peace process.
Trouble is, they forgot to delete the name of the lobbying group involved in the letter from the document.
Attached to the email message they circulated when seeking signatures from other members of Congress was the document, titled, “AIPAC Letter Hoyer Cantor May 2009.pdf.”
AIPAC stands for the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, a powerful bipartisan pro-Israel lobbying group. Recently, the group found itself in the news over allegations that two former staff members were involved in espionage — though the Justice Department recently dropped the case against them and no wrongdoing was alleged against the group itself.
The file name flub was discovered by The Washington Post’s Al Kamen in his “In the Loop” Column Friday.
The email to congressmembers seeking their support said they hoped they’d sign onto “the attached letter to President Obama regarding the Middle East peace process,” which argued that the US “must be both a trusted mediator and a devoted friend to Israel” and added, “Israel will be taking the greatest risks in any peace agreement.”
“Seems as though someone forgot to change the name or something,” Kamen quipped. “AIPAC? The American Israel Public Affairs Committee? Is that how this stuff works?”
The practice of lobbyists writing letters for congressmembers — to which they affix their names — is not uncommon. The custom was prominently in view during the scandal involving fallen power-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose staff were sometimes responsible for drafting letters that found themselves on congressional letterhead. Abramoff pled guilty to fraud and corruption charges in 2006.
An email to Hoyer’s press secretary was not immediately returned. The spokesperson for Cantor could not immediately be reached for comment, nor could a spokesperson for AIPAC.
The letter follows as a GIF. The PDF version can be downloaded here.
President Barack Obama spoke to the AIPAC Policy Conference in June 2008.
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/05/15/gop-democratic-leader-inadvertently-expose-israeli-lobbyists-behind-their-letter-to-obama/
NOW, THAT'S LOBBYING
Speaking of Iran and that region, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) sent out a "Dear Colleague" e-mail Tuesday asking for signatures "to the attached letter to President Obama regarding the Middle East peace process."
The letter says the usual stuff, emphasizing that Washington "must be both a trusted mediator and a devoted friend to Israel" and noting: "Israel will be taking the greatest risks in any peace agreement."
Curiously, when we opened the attachment, we noticed it was named "AIPAC Letter Hoyer Cantor May 2009.pdf."
Seems as though someone forgot to change the name or something. AIPAC? The American Israel Public Affairs Committee? Is that how this stuff works?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/14/AR2009051404242.html
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