White House scrubs National Security Adviser’s ‘Greedy Jew’ Joke From Transcript

[tekisui]

Source: The Raw Story

President Obama's National Security Adviser James Jones told a joke stereotyping Jews as greedy merchants to a Washington policy forum Friday night.

The remark -- little-noticed except in the New York-based Jewish newspaper The Forward -- drew laughter and applause but raised more than a few eyebrows among those in attendance.

In fact, the White House left the joke out of Jones' official speech transcript, "which conveniently began a couple of minutes into the speech."

Jones was speaking to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel thinktank. According to the Forward, the Institute was founded by Jewish donors.

The joke, according to video of it posted on YouTube, was:

GENERAL JAMES JONES: In order to set the stage for my remarks, I'd just like to tell you a story that I think is true. It happened recently in southern Afghanistan.

A member of the Taliban was separated from his fighting party and wandered around for a few days in the desert -- lost, out of food, no water. And he looked on the horizon and he saw what looked like a little shack, and he walked towards that shack. And as he got to it, it turned out that it was a shack, a store, a little store owned by a Jewish merchant.

And the Taliban warrior went up to him and said, 'I need water. Give me some water.'

And the merchant said, 'I'm sorry. I don't have any water, but would you like to buy a tie. We have a nice sale of ties today.'

Whereupon the Taliban erupted into a stream of language that I can't repeat, but about Israel, about Jewish people, about the man himself, about his family. 'I've just said I need water. You try to sell me ties. You people don't get it.'

And passively the merchant stood there until this Taliban was through with his diatribe and said, 'Well, I'm sorry that I don't have water for you. And I forgive you for all of the insults that you've levied against me, my family, my country. But I will help you out. If you go over that hill and walk about two miles there's a restaurant there and they have all the water you'll need.'

The Taliban, instead of saying thanks, still muttering under his breath, disappears over the hill, only to come back about an hour later. And walking up to the merchant, he says, 'Your brother tells me I need a tie to get in the restaurant.'

More, with video: http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0426/national-security-adviser-tells-greedy-jewish-joke-jewish-crowd/

[Jamastiene]

1. That's disgusting.

:puke:

[sui generis]

2. yeah well, that joke is like a mad lib.

replace it with any "greedy" iconoclastic culture and it will make sense in that context.

Unfortunately, this guy chose to fill in the mad lib with jewish merchants as the iconoclastic culture - it just makes you shake your head. Some people look like, walk and talk like us, but upstairs, they are nothing AT ALL like us.

[BeyondGeography]

3. W.T.F.

:dunce:

[leftynyc]

4. What an asshole

And nobody is threatening riots or death because of this stupidity - imagine that.

[Nancy Waterman]

5. What is with all the hypersensitivity?

I don't see anything about "greedy Jew" in there at all. If anything, it is about a clever Jew
outsmarting the angry, not so clever Taliban. There is nothing in that joke derogatory about Jews.
Don't buy into the anti-Obama administration propaganda and the attempt to cripple them by hurting Jones.

[NoNothing]

7. It's not the crime, it's the cover-up

If what you say is true, why is it not part of the transcript?

In fact, even if what you say is not true, and it *is* objectively offensive, why is is not part of the transcript?

If we cannot trust the transcripts to accurately transcribe what was said, then what use are they?

[tekisui]

9. Apparently the White House was sufficiently "hypersensitive"

to delete it from the transcript.

[ieoeja]

6. I take that as a "smart Jew, stupid Talib" joke.

:shrug:

[tekisui]

8. It's a two-fer.

Stupid-Talib, Greedy Jew.

[onenote]

10. +1

[yellowcanine]

16. Whatever, it is innapropriate in a speech by a general, imo.

[onenote]

11. my guess is that it was scrubbed because it made fun of Arabs not of Jews

Basically, it was scrubbed because it suggests that Jews are smarter than Arabs. The joke has been around for awhile and I sent it along to about 40 Jewish friends some time ago and didn't get a single negative response.

[Scarsdale Vibe]

12. Your Jewish friends would all be considered anti-Semitic at DU apparently

[tekisui]

21. I haven't seen one post suggest that the General is an anti-Semite.

Or a single post suggesting that defenders of this 'joke' are anti-Semite.

[tekisui]

18. How many Jews are in Afghanistan?

Why use a Jew when there are no Jews in Afghanistan.

Today, it is believed that there is only one Jew, Zablon Simintov, who resides in Afghanistan. He cares for a dilapidated synagogue in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, and receives aid from sympathetic Muslims and Jews around the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Afghanistan

[Enrique]

13. stop it, General Jones

you're killing me. :eyes:

[secondwind]

14. My ex, a Jewish man, told me a variation of that joke several years ago. I found

nothing wrong with it. :shrug:

[yellowcanine]

15. I don't see it as being anti anybody, but a general should know better than to tell jokes like that

in a speech.

[ljm2002]

17. The headline is way more inflammatory than the joke is...

...although I do question the advisability of telling any ethnic-based joke in a public setting like that -- fraught with peril, as we see in this case.

It is true that jokes like this can be told by a member of the ethnic group in question. That is always different. Back when I was a kid and still Catholic, I remember that we could tell priest jokes, while we would become defensive if some non-Catholic would tell the same joke.

I've had Jewish and Italian jokes told to me by Jewish- and Italian-Americans, and again, I would not feel free to tell the same jokes.

Anyway, from reading the joke / funny story in its entirety, I do not find this as scandalous as it appeared from the headline.

[tekisui]

19. There aren't really any Jews in Afghanistan, though.

The General brought the Jews into the joke, specifically to use a Jew.

[ljm2002]

23. Well it was an inappropriate joke, surely...

...I'm just saying that the headline used the term "greedy Jew", and the story did not really translate directly into that sentiment. Now it did feed into some stereotypes, yes; on the other hand, if you were to make the traveler an Anglo and the storekeeper an Arab, it would still work in terms of the story. So it just did not seem to me to be as inflammatory as the headline was. YMMV

[Aramchek]

20. you really searched long and hard for this bit of Super-Mega News, didn't you?

[tekisui]

22. No.

[SpartanDem]

24. Raw Story's headline is sensationalist, but Jones should no better

as a public official about telling jokes like this