On July 9, 20,000 Malaysians gathered in Kuala Lumpur to demand more transparency in electoral laws in connection with next year's national elections.
Police unleashed tear gas and chemical-laced water on the demonstrators and temporarily detained nearly 1,700 of them. According to reports, authorities also detained six opposition activists without trial and accused them of trying to use the rally to spread communism. Police said they found T-shirts and other materials linked to communist figures.
Apparently, these measures didn't suffice for some of Malaysia's nervous ruling elite. The editors of Utusan Malaysia, owned by Prime Minister Najib Razak's United Malays National Organization ruling party (UMNO), defaulted to a time-tested maneuver: When in doubt, blame the Jews!
The Jews? Most citizens of the overwhelmingly Asian economic giant have never and will likely never meet a Jew in their lifetime. And yet the folks at Utusan Malaysia, which is influential among Muslims in rural areas who rely on government-linked media to shape their worldview, are apparently confident warnings about a "Jewish plot" would resonate in a land without Jews.
To understand why, you need only look at the track record of the man who dominated his nation for a quarter of a century, Malaysia's fourth prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad. read the rest on: The Huffington Post
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