White House scrubs National Security Adviser’s ‘Greedy Jew’ Joke From Transcript

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Source: The Raw Story

President Obama's National Security Adviser James Jones told a joke stereotyping Jews as greedy merchants to a Washington policy forum Friday night.

The remark -- little-noticed except in the New York-based Jewish newspaper The Forward -- drew laughter and applause but raised more than a few eyebrows among those in attendance.

In fact, the White House left the joke out of Jones' official speech transcript, "which conveniently began a couple of minutes into the speech."

Jones was speaking to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel thinktank. According to the Forward, the Institute was founded by Jewish donors.

The joke, according to video of it posted on YouTube, was:

GENERAL JAMES JONES: In order to set the stage for my remarks, I'd just like to tell you a story that I think is true. It happened recently in southern Afghanistan.

A member of the Taliban was separated from his fighting party and wandered around for a few days in the desert -- lost, out of food, no water. And he looked on the horizon and he saw what looked like a little shack, and he walked towards that shack. And as he got to it, it turned out that it was a shack, a store, a little store owned by a Jewish merchant.

And the Taliban warrior went up to him and said, 'I need water. Give me some water.'

And the merchant said, 'I'm sorry. I don't have any water, but would you like to buy a tie. We have a nice sale of ties today.'

Whereupon the Taliban erupted into a stream of language that I can't repeat, but about Israel, about Jewish people, about the man himself, about his family. 'I've just said I need water. You try to sell me ties. You people don't get it.'

And passively the merchant stood there until this Taliban was through with his diatribe and said, 'Well, I'm sorry that I don't have water for you. And I forgive you for all of the insults that you've levied against me, my family, my country. But I will help you out. If you go over that hill and walk about two miles there's a restaurant there and they have all the water you'll need.'

The Taliban, instead of saying thanks, still muttering under his breath, disappears over the hill, only to come back about an hour later. And walking up to the merchant, he says, 'Your brother tells me I need a tie to get in the restaurant.'

More, with video: http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0426/national-security-adviser-tells-greedy-jewish-joke-jewish-crowd/