Israelenews:
Nikolai Bondarik fears that there will be dire consequences for Russia if the heavily favored front-runner in the presidential election, First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, wins as expected on March 2.
With Medvedev in power, Russia's natural resources will be plundered by foreign investors, Moscow will alienate its traditional Arab allies, and tens of thousands of Israelis will become managers at key Russian institutions, "including the police, army and secret services," Bondarik said by telephone from St. Petersburg.
The reason for Bondarik's alarm: He is firmly convinced that Medvedev is Jewish.
"We are categorically against him because he is an ethnic Jew and does not conceal his sympathies toward Judaism," said Bondarik, leader of the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Party, an unregistered nationalist organization.
The conspiracy theory that Jews are plotting to seize power has always enjoyed an illustrious place in the history of Russian nationalism -- and it surfaced again when Medvedev, a candidate whose perceived Western leanings are distasteful to many nationalists, became the prohibitive favorite to succeed President Vladimir Putin.
There is no hard evidence that Medvedev has Jewish roots, and a spokeswoman for his campaign declined to answer a question about the subject.
Medvedev himself told Itogi magazine this week that he was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church at age 23. He has never made any public comments about whether or not he has ethnically Jewish ancestors.
As many would also argue, a candidate's ethnic background should not really be an issue.
Still, nationalist web sites are rife with speculation that Medvedev might be Jewish, largely based on his mother's maiden name and patronymic, which could indicate either Russian or Jewish roots.
In December, the month Putin backed Medvedev as his successor, the Yandex search engine got 4,699 queries on "Medvedev Jew" after receiving only six in November. On the Russian version of Google, the top 10 queries beginning with "Medvedev" include "Medvedev Jew" and "Medvedev Visited Synagogue." [read the rest]
posted by: jrtelegraph
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