Telegraph 13 Marzo 2009

Un esempio di come gli ebrei distorcono il senso delle parole, nella fattispecie il termine "anti-semitismo"

If a year ago you'd asked what or who was poised to strike a body blow against the Jewish Diaspora, informed opinion would have speculated about the threat from Islamic extremism, wrung its hands about anti-Semitic enclaves in Eastern Europe, pointed at galloping assimilation, or rued the growing schism between traditional and progressives Jewish strands.

But as it squinted out on the horizon the enemy was already within the citadel - in the shape of an arch-villain worthy of Marvel comics.

Even the name 'Madoff' sounds like an ironic wordplay, for a sociopath who is to financial investing what Harold Shipman was to general medical practice.

We now know Bernard Madoff's $50bn swindle evaporated life fortunes, wiped out charities and apparently pushed at least two investors to commit suicide.

Central to Madoff's Empire State-sized impudence was the bamboozling of fellow Jews, some of them his closest friends. The epic con involved burrowing into the very arteries of American Jewish life - the great hub of world Jewry.

Starting with the well-heeled Jewish country club circuit in New York and Florida he was entrusted with entire family fortunes. Around the putting greens and card tables the seemingly high returns from a Madoff investment was dubbed "the Jewish bond" - the shakedown had begun.

"The guy was totally respected. He was a heymishe (folksy) Jewish guy. He had sweet old ladies and he let their children in," said a Manhattan lawyer who invested with Madoff.

Property tycoons and retail kings, big hitters from Hollywood (Stephen Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg), the odd US senator and even a Nobel laureate (Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel) handed over their millions.

Soon gentiles followed Jews, loading up the financial doomsday machine

Then came the biggest schmucks of all. Self-styled investment wizards, claiming monster salaries, waving glossy brochures that purred smugly about due diligence. Billions of dollars of their clients' money poured into greatest Ponzi scheme of them all.

So far so rich. But Madoff is no anti-capitalist anti-hero.

His villainous treachery was completed with his swindling of Jewish charities out of at least $2 billion, blowing a massive hole in the educational and welfare provision for millions of people. (In fact, some experts suspect that Madoff specifically targeted charitable foundations to keep his scheme going.)

As a result, he has managed to harm contemporary Jewry in ways anti-Semites could only dream about.

In the words of prominent educator Avraham Infeld, he "obliterated" long-standing charitable foundations for Jewish causes in Israel, Eastern Europe and North America.

Nor was the Jewish philanthropy exclusive aimed at Jews. The mega donors funded improvements across society.

In the American arts, academia and medical research, Madoff's name is being cursed as loudly as at New York's Yeshiva University, the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles or the Hadassah hospital, Jerusalem.

Mort Zuckerman, who runs a charitable trust that lost $30 million to Madoff, said no one since Julius Rosenberg, executed in 1953 along with his wife, Ethel, for giving atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, "has so damaged the image and self respect of American Jews."

Indeed, some in the Jewish community also fear the high-profile case will stoke a revival of centuries-old stereotypes of cunning, dishonest Jewish business people.

No wonder the packed courtroom applauded when Madoff was led of to jail for up to 150 years and at least one rabbi has called for him to be "excommunicated."

By Julian Kossoff

Source >  Telegraph | March 12