U.S. Govt to Give ‘Minority’ Status to Jewish-Owned Businesses, Conferring ‘Billions’ in Benefits

By Chris Menahan – Information Liberation

Jewish Americans, who have the highest incomes in the country of any ethno-religious group, are going to be eligible for billions of dollars in new benefits meant to help struggling “minorities” under new rules from the US Department of Commerce.

The decision to grant Jews “minority” status is being justified as “fair, given the discrimination that Jews have faced, especially since Oct. 7,” according to the Jewish News Syndicate.

“They could beat us up. They could humiliate us. They tell us to go back to the concentration camp,” Duvi Honig, founder and CEO of the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce told JNS in reference to pro-Palestine protests on US college campuses. “We have a yellow star until today that we can’t be eligible to get minority dollars, minority grants or taxpayers, and it just didn’t make sense.”

From the Jewish News Syndicate, “US government agrees to confer ‘minority’ status on Jewish-owned businesses”:

Jews make up about 2.4% of the American population, per some estimates. A new memorandum of understanding ensures that the U.S. Commerce Department will consider entities owned by Jews to be “minority business enterprises.”

“We’re going to be able to benefit from billions of dollars of these programs, contracts, some loans, grants, the hundreds of different programs that every single Jewish business is going to benefit from,” Duvi Honig, founder and CEO of the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce, told JNS.

“This is something that impacts everyone—every single business in the Jewish world, in all 50 states,” Honig said. “We are officially a partner with the United States Department of Commerce and the government.”

The Orthodox chamber and the Minority Business Development Agency, which is part of the Commerce Department, signed the agreement on Monday [Jan 13] in Washington during a ceremony attended by Don Graves, the outgoing deputy commerce secretary, and by Jewish business owners and leaders and politicians.

Graves said that the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce’s work is “so important,” because “if you have a hope, if you have a dream, if you have an idea and you’re willing to work hard, we should give you the opportunity to turn that into something special.”

[…] [Robert Singer, a New Jersey state senator and the body’s deputy Republican leader who represents the heavily-Jewish city of Lakewood], who is part of New Jersey’s science and technology commission, said that minority businesses have an automatic leg-up when they bid for state contracts.

“This will also tie into federal dollars and therefore small business, Jewish-based business, will be able to tie into both federal and state dollars to help them grow, to help them bring more people on and be part of that entrepreneurship you wish to have, being an American,” Singer said.

As part of the agreement, the federal government is creating a new application to become certified as a minority business enterprise. The details are being finalized, but the application will no longer ask applicants to list their specific minority background. Instead, verification will be done during the certification process.

It is unclear at this time how the government will verify if an applicant is Jewish.

Honig encouraged patience as the new application is being developed. It’s been about a 15-month process so far, leading up to Monday’s signing, as part of the chamber’s network building with communities across the country and with foreign governments, he told JNS.

Monday’s result is fair, given the discrimination that Jews have faced, especially since Oct. 7, while much larger minority communities are able to take advantage of benefits, according to Honig.

“They could beat us up. They could humiliate us. They tell us to go back to the concentration camp,” Honig said of antisemitic protests on U.S. college campuses. “We have a yellow star until today that we can’t be eligible to get minority dollars, minority grants or taxpayers, and it just didn’t make sense.”

The agreement will give Jewish-owned businesses greater public awareness through federal initiatives and potential invitations to workshops, seminars, conferences and other educational opportunities.

Honig gave credit to Graves and to Eric Morrissette, deputy U.S. under secretary of commerce for minority business development, and to Joann Hill, director of customer experience at the Minority Business Development Agency.

The event was likely the final one for Graves and Morrissette in their roles in the Biden administration. Madiha Latif, the incoming U.S. deputy secretary for commerce for minority business development, also participated in Monday’s event.

“It was a friendship that the chamber established on a personal level that gave us this last event they hosted before the transition,” Honig told JNS. “At the same time, they brought with them the new deputy secretary, and we just sat now and we made a list of what we’re going to start working on for the next four years with the new administration.”

“We’re the biggest small minority in America and we had no voice– we had no eligibility to access our taxpayers’ dollars as the biggest minority and the biggest oppressed people!” Honig told PIX11.

This is basically DEI and Affirmative Action for the richest ethno-religious group in the country.

This comes after the US government spent a record $18 billion on direct military aid to Israel in the wake of October 7th.

Americans supported Trump because he said he would end all this “DEI” crap and yet his incoming Department of Commerce is already expanding it for this one group in particular.