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I understand the criticism over Obama and McCain's relationship to the Jewish lobby: they both made trips to Israel and they are both targeting Jews for their campaigns. Considering the small size of the Jewish population in America, it is a bit striking how much attention we get (and how much pull we have). But to characterize the stereotypical Jew as a haredi shtetl Jew is not only extremely offensive and demeaning, it's also completely untrue, historically inaccurate, and shows the ignorance, hatred, and antisemitism behind the cartoons. The vast majority of Jews are not ultra-orthodox, or even outwardly religious at all, and only a couple of the cartoons in the article depicted Jews as normal looking Americans (possibly because the ones that did were not deemed antisemitic, if they even exist).
I don't understand the reasoning for using such an outdated and ignorant stereotype except for baseless hatred. When American political cartoonists represent the Chinese, for example, they definitely don't show them with buck teeth, wearing a coolie hat, doing dry cleaning, and building a railroad.
Here's another one from Bahrain:
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It's also interesting how this cartoon is of the exact same caliber but comes from a totally different source: American white supremacy.
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