Top White House posts go to Jews

[sabra]

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1143498911316&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Top White House posts go to Jews

After appointing Joshua Bolten to be the White House chief of staff, US President George W. Bush nominated another Jewish staffer, Joel Kaplan, to serve as Bolten's deputy, putting him in charge of the daily policy planning.

The fact that White House policy is now in the hands of two Jews is not seen as significant by activists in the American Jewish community.

"He is simply appointing the best people for the job," said Nathan Diament, who heads the Washington office of the Orthodox Union. Another Jewish activist added that he "wouldn't read too much into it."

Bolten, who first served as head of the Office of Management and Budget, was the first Jewish member of Bush's cabinet. Ever since Bush took office, there has been a custom of opening cabinet meetings with a brief prayer and so, before his first cabinet meeting, Bolten's assistant contacted Diament and asked for help in finding a Jewish prayer for the security and well-being of the cabinet members. The Orthodox Union provided him with the text in English and in Hebrew and Bolten read it aloud at the next cabinet meeting.

[seriousstan]

1. wAITING WITH POPCORN.

[SoCalDem]

6. want some fish?

[TomInTib]

2. 1,2,3,....

And then there were Wolfie, Feith, Perle, Abrams, and on and on and on.

Now we have Efraim Halevy (google HIM) all over the teevee.

[struggle4progress]

3. Top WH jobs go to cronies, lackies, bootlickers, and wingnuts

Babbling about religious affiliation is a mystification ...

[Hekate]

7. It's like saying Condi Rice is a black woman. Sure she is -- she's also...

... completely dedicated to the PNAC neo-con theo-con Bush agenda. That puts her at odds with the well-being of most black people -- or people of any color -- in this country.

Same with neo-con Jews in this administration. Insofar as they align themselves with this regime's agenda, they are at odds with the American Jewish community's longstanding tradition of standing on the side of social justice, among other values.

The vast majority of Bush appointees are white and claim to be Christian. People of other ethnicities and religions stand out not for their numbers but for their rarity and the anomaly of their being in the Bush admin at all.

Hekate

[Coastie for Truth]

23. As Everett McKinley Dirksen used to say

"What does it mean to the farmer in dollars and cents" - or, when the Repukes are counting votes--

If Bushie appointed Russ Feingold and Barbara Boxer and Al Franken - I might hesitate for the blink of an eye before pulling that "Straight Democrat" Lever.

Just remember -
with all of Bush's butt licking.

[madrchsod]

4. the aryan nations are going to

love another "jew" in the whitehouse. good thing these guys don`t have guns or bombs cause they`d be dangerous

[KeepItReal]

5. I remember those nuts runnin for cover after 9/11...then Bush & Co said

"We are going after terra-ists OF GLOBAL REACH"

I was like, "WTF!?!?"

Aryans were like, "Whew!"

[Igel]

8. So will the heirs of the Aryans.

To wit, the Iranians.

[dajudem]

21. it doesn't require bombs to be dangerous

...as with Hitler, it can start with simple rhetoric

[IndianaGreen]

9. These are neocon flavored Jews

Why does an American owned rightwing newspaper like The Jerusalem Post make a big deal about the religion of the pukes working for Bush? If this had been published by an Arab newspaper, some people would be screaming anti-Semitism.

How about using the same sauce for the goose as we did for the gander:

Bush appoints another Catholic Opus Dei sectarian to the Supreme Court...

Christian neocons under attack in the Pentagon...

[dajudem]

10. JP article re Jews in the White House

Had you read the article in its entirety, IG, you would have read that the JP actually didn't make a big deal about it. In general the big deal is made by Jew-haters, ie those who refer to our government as ZOG (Zionist Occupied Government), Islamists, and various soft antisemites. There is no reason to pretend that there are not people that knock the government for the Jews in it:

from the article:

Yet the policy of the administration has little to do with the religious beliefs of the staffers. "The president sets the policy goals and it is now the job of Josh and Joel to help achieve these goals," said Noam Neusner, who served as the liaison to the Jewish community in Bush's White House from 2002-2005.

Other Jewish activists, both Republican and Democrat, agree that the nomination of Bolten and Kaplan have no affect on policy.

For Republicans, there is still a feeling that Bush does not receive the credit he deserves from the Jewish community. "We have Israel's best friend and it still hasn't changed the way the Jewish community sees him," said Fred Zeidman, a close friend of Bush and chairman of the National Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. "I keep hoping that one day our community will see the light and support President Bush."

my bolds.

[JPZenger]

11. Motivation for Iraq Invasion

I hesitate to comment on this thread. However, there is one angle that is important. Many of the neocons (such as Wolfie) who pushed for the invasion of Iraq were Jewish. At the time, Iraq was a much bigger threat to Israel than to the US. Iraq was funding the horrible terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians.

[dajudem]

13. frankly that is just not so

Israel was not anxious to have the US invade Iraq. That is an urban legend. They have always been much more concerned about Iran, because Iran is a loose canon. Not that Israel didn't want the attacks on Israelis to stop or that she didn't want Saddam paying the families and making it profitable.

As you are doubtless aware most Jews are Democrats. The idea that Jews got into the White House to empower the US to follow Israel's agenda is very biased in my view. That would be like saying that the Attrny General is there to advance the Mexican agenda.. It suggests that American Jews are disloyal to America, and Republican American Jews or neocons are essentially labeled as traitors, being in government with the intention of carrying forward another country's agenda. No, your sugggestion is wrong.

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[dajudem]

17. Certain people's sensitivities....

And I am saying that 'certain people', and we were talking about Jews in and around the White House, are not working for the interests of Israel but what they perceive as the interests of the United States. Now one may not agree that their beliefs were in actuality in the best interests of the United States, and you may even believe that they were in the best interests of Israel; but the implication that the Jews in and around the White House are working for Israel's best interests and not the United States' is what I am strongly objecting to. The implication would be that there is that no Jew (or at least no Republican Jew) can be an honest citizen of the United States... I don't think we want to go there.

[Coastie for Truth]

24. But as Israeli leftie Peace activist Uri Avnery wrote

Really? What about the American aim of getting their hands on the main oil reserves of the world, in order to dominate the world economy? What about the aim of placing an American garrison in the center of the main oil-producing area, on top of the Iraqi oil, between the oil of Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Caspian Sea? What about the immense influence of the big oil companies on the Bush family? What about the big multinational corporations, whose outstanding representative is Dick Cheney, that hoped to make hundreds of billions from the "reconstruction of Iraq"?
(Emphasis added by "Coastie")

I guess to some, Israel can do no right, and the Bushco, Oil Industry can do no wrong.

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. The Jerusalem Post makes a big deal of it, no-one else does

All the quotes say "it doesn't signify anything" - but the reporter and the paper still wrote the article and published it. You might have thought that if everyone told a reporter "this isn't important", he might have thought it wasn't worth his time writing it up.

[dajudem]

14. as long as the charges are made

against the so-called Jews in the WhiteHouse -- the neo-con Jews etc who 'pushed for the war' for Israel, the JP is quite right to bring it up so that it can be seen for what it really is, as opposed to the sly suggesting that American Jews are in the White House looking to push the Israeli agenda rather than what they and others believe is best for the US. IF one doesn't like the US policy, blame the US, not Israel.

[IndianaGreen]

18. I am bothered that every time one mentions neocons, it is always the Jewish

ones that are named and not the larger group of goyim.

How come I get the impression that eventually all Jews will get blamed for Bush's criminal wars, torture, and gulag, while the WASPS walk home free. Isn't that what the fascists did during the Wiemar Republic, blame the Jews for the calamities that their war brought to the German people?

History does repeat itself!

[dajudem]

19. I agree IG

It is sad seeing so much of this blame of the neocon/Jew in the democratic party. It is hard to understand how so much of the Democratic party which was once the champion of the underdog, now sees the Palestinian/Muslim terrorist as the underdog, and equates the Israelis/Jews with the Nazis. The Palestinians attack Israeli civilians in buses and marketplaces with rat-poison-laced shrapnel-filled bombs, and the Israelis build a fence to try to keep them out. The Democrats blame the Israelis and the Palestinians get a free pass. Go figure!

[barb162]

22. Ditto, and I am also wondering if people know the Cheney or

the Bush family ethnic or religious backgrounds and if it matters. Frankly I have no idea where/what either family's "roots" are and I don't care. I never understand this stuff about a person's "Jewish" background being mentioned. What was Reagan? What is Gerald Ford? Clinton? What is Frist's background? Does anyone know what religion they practice(d) or from which countries their family emigrated. So what if they are Norwegian? English? Who cares? Maybe the JP wrote this story because they are proud, just like Austrian papers wrote about Arnie the guv and Polish papers wrote about the last Pope. But when people start counting the number of one group/ethnic background but don't count the people of other ethnc backgrounds, I always wonder why that is being done. hmmmmmmmm, rant over

[Coastie for Truth]

25. The REAL Neocons

are the plutocrats like retired ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond (the guy with the "fat beard" hanging down from his chinny chin chin and the bad dental work, the one who got a $400 Million retirement bonus.

These are the plutocrats who wine and dine in the (not like us proles)

Heck I'm a PhD Chemical Engineer like Lee - and nobody gives me a $400 Million retirement bonus.

[DUHandle]

16. A Jew and Texan Bush should have as an adviser

is Kinky Freedman.

[dajudem]

20. kinky is running for gov...

see:

http://www.kinkyfriedman.com/

[Coastie for Truth]

26. If I lived in Texas (God Forbid)

I would vote for Kinky.

[winston61]

31. for a while, the Texas Tourism folks were using the phrase

'Texas, A whole other country', and brother it is. Just not a country you want to visit. Well, that's not completely true. The Texas hill country is truly worth a visit. And they do raise inordinate numbers of beautiful and charming women (I married a Texas girl). Texas is without a doubt the United States Laboratory for Bad Government. Big money rides roughshod over the legislature and makes no bones about it. There is good and bad everywhere and Texas in no exception.

[HamdenRice]

27. Originally the neo-con movement was indeed Jewish

There are a couple of posts here that question why so many people seem to link the neo-con movement with "the Jews". The answer is not that critics of the neo-con movement are anti-semitic or believe in a Jewish conspiracy. It is because the neo-con movement started out self-consciously, as a primarily New York Jewish movement.

As one poster pointed out, it is also correct that the majority of Jewish voters, and especially New York Jewish voters, are Democrats and liberals, so obviously, the early neo-cons were actually trying to create a movement that was in opposition to the political positions of the majority of the Jewish community.

To condense a huge history, neo-conservatism began as a conservative Jewish backlash against Jewish liberalism, especially in New York. Many of the first neo-cons were orginally Jewish liberal or even Marxist intellectuals, many were graduates of City University of New York, and were centered around Commentary Magazine, the publication of the American Jewish Committee.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/masthead.asp

In the 1960s, this group turned against liberalism for several reasons: disillusionment about the civic disorder in the 1960s that seemed to grow out of progressive movements; a perception that the African American civil rights movement's shift to "Black Power" was "anti-white"; accelerated criticism of Israel after the 1967 war; a renewed emphasis on discrimination against Jews in the Soviet Union; and a perceived need to take a tougher line against the Soviets in the cold war.

Early on, however, the neo-conservative movement became something of an alliance of "white ethnic" intellectuals, including Jews, Irish Americans, Eastern European Americans, Italian Americans, especially Catholics. For example, Daniel Patrick Mohnihan and Jeane J. Kirpatrick were prominent first generation neo-cons and were Catholics and Zbigniew Bryzinski was a Pole.

The neo-con movement has, however, mutated to something entirely different. But all this is to say that the identification of neo-cons with a small part of the Jewish community and Israeli, especially Likud, politics, is not based solely on anti-semitism or some kind of "Jewish conspiracy" theory. It is based on their early self-identity.

[dajudem]

28. Granted, But since the neo-con movement is no longer

a 'conservative Jewish backlash against liberalism' and is now a mainstream movement of, as you say, "Jews, Irish Americans, Eastern European Americans, Italian Americans" not to mention some well-known Black Americans as well as 'full-blooded whites',etc. ie it is a club based on philosophy and not race, isn't it long past time to quit equating it with Jews?

Your last statement "But all this is to say that the identification of neo-cons with a small part of the Jewish community and Israeli, especially Likud, politics, is not based solely on anti-semitism or some kind of "Jewish conspiracy" theory.

I think this is a mistaken concept as well. Most neocons are strong supporters of Israel and her right to defend itself against the Palestinian attacks against it, not 'identification with a small part of the Jewish community' ie Likud. The "neocons" see an analogy here in the broader sense with US politics. For example, if the Mexicans were doing to the US (Arizona, California, Texas, New Mexico) what the Palestinians are doing to the Israelis; ie bombing in malls and marketplaces, I am positive the neo-cons would be extremely hawkish on Mexico as well.

Most American Jews read "neo-con" as code for "nasty Jews in and around government." Just like in the olden days in US the word "exclusive" when applied to a club or hotel meant "no Jews allowed." Originally there may have been a reason for the use of it. It is time for the Democratic Party and real progressives to stop using that term, just as they long ago stopped using the 'n-word'. If you are serious that you mean a particular philosphical concept by the term, then define the term rather than throwing it around loosely, IMHO

[HamdenRice]

29. You are confusing the Bush administration with neo-cons

especially second generation neo-cons. I think there is an erroneous tendency on these boards to assume that the entire Bush administration is neo-con. It isn't, not even most of it. I'm not sure what to call it, but it isn't neo-con.

For example, I don't think there are any "well-known Black Americans" who are neo cons. Condi Rice and Colin Powell are not neo-cons, either by their ideology or their institutional affilations. So, there are black American members or supporters of the Bush administration, but there is nothing about them that is really neo-con.

By and large, second generation neo-con ideology is confined to foreign, and especially middle east policy. Generally, the neo-cons of today are centered around PNAC and the Weekly Standard, and are the children of the first generation neo-cons who were centered around Commentary -- William Kristol, the son of Irving Kristol; Eliot Abrahms, the son in law of Norman Podhoretz, and so on -- or they are people who have been adopted into that somewhat small and close knit group either by family ties or institutional affiliations, such as Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz.

It isn't anti-Semitic to notice that because of family and institutional connections with the original neo-cons, they are majority Jewish, any more than it is racist to notice that the majority of people interested in Africa policy are African American.

It would be anti-Semitic to assume that that neo-cons speak for all Jews or for some Jewish conspiracy. But that is not usually what is going on.

[dajudem]

30. "Neo-con" means "new-conservative"

like "neo-nazi" means "new Nazi." We do not attack the neo-nazis for their religion or their race, but for their philosophy. To be 'neo-con" would be to say that one was once a liberal and is now a newly-minted conservative. The conservatives believe in a 'muscular' American foreign policy, and generally believe in supporting our democratic allies against those who would destroy them.

Perhaps considering we are talking 2nd generation 'neo-cons' maybe it is time we dropped the "neo" part and just called them conservatives. Every Jew I know feels that 'neo-con' especially coming from the liberal mouth, is meant as a particularly insulting term, (even more so than mere 'conservative') because it suggests a Jewish 'power' cabal along the lines of the forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and plays into the hands of the Arabs and Jihadists, in whose countries that book (and the movie) is a best-seller, along with Mein Kampf. It supports that world view, and frankly, leads to terror and murder at the hands of the Jihadist.

I remember the old ditty, "Eennie, meenie, minie, mo, Catch a nigger by the toe..." which all kids said in the 50's. We were told it was offensive, and that black Americans did not like being called that, and now nobody says it anymore. And that word doesn't even have any negative connotations, it is merely a particular sound identifying a particular group. I think it is high time to retire the word 'neo-con.'

[bobbieinok]

32. reasonable comment except for what you say about the word 'nigger'

"And that word doesn't even have any negative connotations, it is merely a particular sound identifying a particular group. "

that just isn't so