On CNN, Boteach lectures two prominent Muslims about freedom they ‘enjoy’ in US and Israel

The terrorist attacks in Paris have given a platform to neoconservatives to argue that the west is fighting the same war that Israel is, with radical Islam, and that Muslims must declare which side they are on in this struggle.

Shmuley Boteach, the rightwing rabbi who lately penned a book on the secrets of a good sex life, has been on CNN twice in recent days, each time lecturing Muslim writers about how good they have it in Israel and the west, in ways that the media would never tolerate if, say, a white person was patronizing African-Americans.

First Boteach appeared on Don Lemon’s show with Rula Jebreal, and likened Jews to the blacks in the movie Selma, as targets of discrimination. The rabbi called on Muslims to march:

I want to see a million Muslim march, not just three half million French men and women marching. Muslims have to take their religion back from monsters. You can no longer say it’s a small minority inciting anti-Semitism against Jews.

Jebreal did not accept the Selma analogy:

I want to tell the Rabbi, this is really something that we learned from Selma, as you mentioned: when you uphold the supremacy of one ethnic group, this is not a democracy anymore, this is an ethnocracy. We need to reject that whether it’s in Europe, in Israel, or here in America. We can’t have segregation as an answer. It’s inclusion and unity.

This enraged Boteach:

Let’s stop the nonsense. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. You are a Palestinian woman who has Israeli citizenship. You are allowed freedom of expression. No one tells you who to fall in love with, you don’t get shot by your uncle or by your brother because you fall in love with someone your father doesn’t approve of. You live a Western life. You live with the kind of human rights that Israel protects. Israel has 1.5 million Arab citizens, there is no segregation and we all know that. So let’s not excuse terrorism with some Israeli policy.

Jebreal got to say that Boteach’s argument was “unfair,” before Don Lemon ended the segment. Unfair? Here is Adalah’s list of laws that discriminate against Palestinians inside Israel, including laws limiting Palestinian land ownership.

Boteach went on to lecture Jebreal in a column at the NY Observer:

On the contrary, Israel is the only country in the entire region where the population enjoys full and uninhibited democratic freedoms along with religious and gender equality. As an Arab woman with Israeli Citizenship, Rula Jebreal should be the first to know that.

A day later Boteach appeared in another segment on CNN with Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, an American writer of Palestinian/Kuwaiti/Egyptian background. Here again, Boteach instructed Shihab-Eldin what he must do in the name of all Muslims.

Shihab-Eldin condemned the Paris killings, but asked, “Why must Muslims do it in the name of Islam?”

Boteach then said that jihadis are murdering in the name of Islam. “Don’t you want Islam to shine as a great beacon of light to the world?” (Boteach surely sees radical Islam as inherent in Islam as he sees Zionism as inherent in Judaism.) When Shihab-Eldin did not accept the responsibility, Boteach lectured him:

You know what doesn’t make sense to me. Muslims like yourself, who are fortunate to live with western values and who are able to express themselves without fear of the government and who are able to protest, are able to read the truth in the newspaper, are able to marry whom they want–

Shihab-Eldin broke in, “I wouldn’t say they can express themselves without fear of the government.”

But Boteach explained that he was wrong:

Well I think so. They enjoy western values. Don’t they want the same thing experienced by 1 billion Muslims around the world… so you should call for that and not defend it.

How insulting that a rightwing rabbi gets to lecture prominent Arabs on cable news about the freedoms they enjoy in Israel and the west. Entitled whites in Selma surely did the same thing.