Word: ashkenazy
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...crossroads. The peace process with the Palestinians is at a stalemate. Israel's conflict in south Lebanon with the Syrian backed, Iranian-funded Hizbullah has reached a pitched crescendo. Internally, the economy is in the midst of a slippery slide, while fault-lines between religious and secular, Ashkenazi and Sephardi (Jews of European origin vs. Jews of mid-Eastern origin), political left and political right, are tremoring towards earthquake. The new prime minister will be charged with arbitrating these complex, seemingly intractable problems...
...site of a tragic military training accident while chief of staff. While he has been exonerated in the courts, the accusations themselves are not forgotten history, and they continue to cloud his reputation. Second, his Labor party has had a difficult time shrugging off the perception that they are Ashkenazi elitists who discriminate against the electorally powerful Sephardic community...
...fringe group of anti-peace process zealots. In fact, those on the extreme right reject Bibi as too moderate and will not support him. Rather, Bibi's popular strength is much more organic. Netanyahu is the king of the Israeli underclass. Those who are alienated from Israel's privileged, Ashkenazi upper-class find a real leader in Netanyahu. In particular, Bibi has skillfully stitched together an ethnically heterodox and eminently loyal support base of Sephardim (Jews of Middle Eastern origin), Russian immigrants, and the ultra-religious. Although Barak may enjoy the applause of Israel's socioeconomic elite, they constitute only...
...Times was comically eager to point out that other ethnic groups probably have a lesser genetic tendency to a larger number of diseases, so Ashkenazi Jews shouldn't feel that put upon. Nevertheless, both stories raised the possibility that blood tests for this genetic defect will be used by health insurers and employers to discriminate against people with the defective gene. (Why? Oh, possibly bosses may not want their workplace atmosphere soured by a lot of grumpy people who've just undergone a colonoscopy...
...blood. The folks who believe this are mistaken. But even the politically correct position--that "intelligence" is actually a bundle of different mental capabilities that people have in varying amounts, and that these capabilities can be strongly affected by environmental factors--leaves room for a large genetic component. Few Ashkenazi Jews, I suspect, would trade their genes for a random draw from the gene pool, whatever their fear of colon cancer and whatever they may have felt (and said) about Charles Murray, notorious co-author of The Bell Curve...