While the special relationship of all ethnic and religious minorities in the USA with their old countries and the existence of their pressure groups is regarded as normal, the support given by U.S. Jews to Israel and the pro-Israeli lobby causes some Americans to view the Jews as disloyal to the USA. Examines the "paper" by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, "The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" (first published in 2006 on the Internet and then in the "London Review of Books"; an expanded book appeared later, in 2007). The authors contend that U.S. support of Israel is harmful to American interests, and is due to pressure exerted by a mighty Israel Lobby which acts to the detriment of the state. They argue that the Israel Lobby had a crucial part in the decision to attack Iraq in 2003. Notes that despite the academic style of their paper, Mearsheimer and Walt have revived the myths of a Jewish conspiracy, of Jewish control of the mass media, and of a Jewish secret power. Dwells, also, on the Tony Judt affair. In 2006 Judt, who supported Mearsheimer and Walt, was to deliver a lecture on a binational alternative for Israel. His lecture was cancelled, which he ascribed to pressure by the Anti-Defamation League. Supporters of Mearsheimer and Walt used it as a demonstration of the Israel Lobby's intervention. Criticizes Jimmy Carter's book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" (2006) for its clear anti-Israel bias.

The story many have told can lead one to believe in the existence of a united Jewish people: rich, powerful, placed under centralized command and responsible for establishing a worldwide power strategy through money. Such a belief would merge with the fantasies that have spread across every century from Trajan to Constantine, from Matthew to Luther, from Marlow to Voltaire, from the Protocol of the Elders of Zion to Mein Kampf, to all that which is propagated today via the anonymity of the Internet. This is the story ripe to be challenged and retold. Herein lies the history of the relationship between the Jewish people, money and the world at large. The author is well aware of the subversive nature of this subject. It is a topic that has unleashed so many controversies and brought about so many massacres as to have become a veritable taboo, a topic that must not be evoked under any circumstance for fear of provoking some age-old catastrophe. Today, no one dares write on this topic, as if centuries of study have served no purpose other than to fuel book burning. It remains nevertheless in the best interest of modern mankind to understand how those who discovered monotheism also founded the ethics of capitalism, how some became its primary brokers and leading bankers, while others its most unrelenting enemy. In this book the author tackles the facts and the lies of the history of the relationship between the Jewish people, money and the world at large. "It seems essential that our world, and Jewish people themselves, face a part of their history that they may not care for but of which they have every reason to be proud." REVIEWS "The Economic History of the Jewish People by Jacques Attali is set to be as controversial as it is well documented and thoroughly researched by one of the foremost financial authorities of Europe, the Head of the Commission to Promote Economic Growth in France. Attali has written numerous books and knows this subject thoroughly. He has tackled it from the standpoint of history, myth, and dirty stories, proving some and dispelling others with facts. He has traced the economic experiences, leadership, and fall of the Jewish people from 2,000 years BC until present upheavals of economy worldwide. The book is fascinating for anyone interested in history, finance, or the Jewish people. It is an eye-opener in some instances and shows the influence, admitted or behind-the-scenes, which the Jewish people have had on the entire history of our world through the ages and how they have been rewarded or persecuted along the way for their use of any kind of tender (legal or illegal) around the world for 4,000 years. Really interesting and so very well written." Bonnie Neely, Amazon Top 1000 Reviewer, 2010/05/24

In recent times, ethnicity and issues of origin have become a hotly debated topic among Jews both in Israel and in the Diaspora. This is particularly true both of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, who for years had remained at the margins of the Israeli national narrative, as well as the Israeli Palestinian minority. Much the same may be said of Diaspora Jews. Among the public spaces where ethnicity has become more visible are museums, together with heritage centres, art galleries, and the Internet. The aim of Memory and Ethnicity is to investigate how ethnicity is represented and narrated in such spaces. How have groups of Jews from such different backgrounds as Morocco, Egypt, India or the US elaborated their past legacies and traditions vis-a-vis a variety of national narratives and cultural or political ideologies? This volume describes the emergence of a new museological scene - that mirrors a multi-vocal Jewish and Israeli public sphere in which ethnicity has become central to a nation's cultural imagination. By considering museums as places of memory where an ethnic/communal identity is displayed, Memory and Ethnicity analyses which memories are preserved, and which suppressed. This study sets out to enrich the understanding of Israeli and Jewish cultural history, and also to deepen the field of museum studies from little investigated perspectives.