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Blacks are Cursed, Obama Is Evil

Say Russian-language Israeli media, while denying racism

by
Ari M. Brostoff
July 07, 2009

Russian-language media in Israel has been abuzz with racist chatter about Barack Obama in response to the president’s Russia trip, Haaretz reports today. Though Russian-speaking Israelis tend to be a secular crowd, the community’s media personalities have been quoting a lot of Bible: specifically, the part in Genesis where God punishes Noah’s son Ham by turning his skin black and condemning him and his descendants to slavery, in conjunction with a verse in Proverbs where “a slave who becomes king” heralds evil. “We aren’t racists, we simply hate blacks,” the former editor of Vesty, the Russian paper published by Yediot Ahronot, told Haaretz.

Of course.

Ari M. Brostoff is Culture Editor at Jewish Currents.