GAZA CITY (AFP) – The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas which rules the Gaza Strip on Tuesday blamed what it called a “Jewish lobby” in the United States for the global financial crisis.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum said in a statement that the crisis was due to “bad administrative and financial management and a bad banking system put into place and controlled by the Jewish lobby.”

While pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into a rescue package, US President George W. Bush has remained silent about “the Jewish lobby that put the US banking and financial sector into place,” he said.

He said the lobby “controls the US elections and defines the foreign policy of any new administration in a manner that allows it to retain control of the American government and economy.”

The Anti-Defamation League said last week that the US financial crisis has provoked an outpouring of anti-Semitism on the Internet, with Jews being blamed for the debacle on Wall Street.

“The age-old canards about Jews and money are always just beneath the surface,” said Abraham Foxman, the national director of the US group which fights anti-Semitism.