Discuss amongst yourselves: Are rich Jews really "threatening Obama"?

Obama is hugely popular in Norway. So popular in fact that we gave him the Nobel prize before he had the opportunity to deserve it. Now one of our largest newspapers is telling us Obama is being threatened by rich Jews.

Note! The title of this article was edited sometime today (Saturday) and changed from “Rich Jews threaten Obama” to “Jews threaten to withdraw Obama-support”. The question is – did Aftenposten manage to do this on their own or did somebody have to go cap in hand and beg?

Screenshot from Webavisen showing the original title.

The screenshot above, from Webavisen, shows the original title of the article. See the new title below.

Aftenposten changed the title after complaints from readers. The title now reads "Jews threaten to withdraw Obama-support" with the subheading saying "Barack Obama is insufficiently friendly to Israel, several rich Jews believe."

The article in Aftenposten is titled “Rich Jews threaten Obama” and is written by journalist Alf Ole Ask. The article deals with how segments of American Jewry, 78 percent of whom voted for Obama in 2008, find Obama to be too critical of Israel and therefore are considering pulling economic support. So there is the threat: Some “rich Jews” may be considering to stop giving Obama money.

This is not really a threat though, is it?

So on the one hand it is good to see that Aftenposten were able to recognize that the original title was unfortunate. On the other hand, Aftenposten ought to be sufficiently familiar with the history of anti-Semitism to avoid such mistakes in the first place.

Read more about how Norwegians are led to perceive Jewish and Israeli power.