Howard Gutman
I thought it was a grandiose joke when Bill Kristol said on Saturday that the ambassador to Belgium must be recalled because he dared suggest that Israeli intransigence was fueling Muslim anti-Semitism. Well who’s laughing now? The two Republican frontrunners, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, have now called for the firing of Howard Gutman.
What do they want that Bill Kristol commands? The support of the Israel lobby– the backing of a large segment of the establishment.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned Gutman. Also the Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. That group has hosted Islamophobes Pam Geller and Robert Spencer, and they get quoted in the Post!
Here, by the way, from the Washington Post, is a precise report of Gutman’s comments. Notice that he finds moral parity between settlement building and suicide bombers….
According to his prepared remarks, Gutman, who is Jewish, described two forms of anti-Semitism — one that he described as “classic bigotry” against Jews and a second type of “growing anti-Semitism” that is the result of the inability to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Throughout the Muslim communities that I visit, and indeed throughout Europe, there is significant anger and resentment and, yes, perhaps sometimes hatred and indeed sometimes an all-too-growing intimidation and violence directed at Jews generally as a result of the continuing tensions between Israel and the Palestinian territories and other Arab neighbors in the Middle East,” Gutman said, according to his prepared remarks.
He added, “It is the area where every new settlement announced in Israel, every rocket shot over a border or suicide bomber on a bus, and every retaliatory military strike exacerbates the problem and provides a setback here in Europe for those fighting hatred and bigotry here in Europe.”
P.S. I don’t think he’s going to lose his job. But I’m not the smart money, am I?
Never underestimate the spinelessness of the slime mold in the White House.
No, you’re not.
You’re just a decent guy trying to make the world a better place.
So I must sarcastically ask, “What is wrong with you? And, “How dare you, sir?”
Back in the day, these people used to go after semi anti-Semites. These times it is mostly left wing Jews(Kushner, Finkelstein, Judt etc). Even people like the craven Goldstone(pre-begging).
Masada.
Ambassador Gutman seems like a gentleman with insight. Hope Hillary and Obama have his back.
Good that those comments got some play. Even if he is fired.
Funny to think that saying that Arabs’ anger at Israel is a (“a”, not “the only”) reason for Arab anger at the West, at USA, should anger Zionists. (Maybe what angers Zios is to SAY so, to discuss it, to get Americans thinking about it.) Zionist anger at Gutman’s statement — if assumed to relate to the truth of his statement rather than to his making the statement — almost seems to constitute a guarantee that NO ARAB is angry at the West because of ANY action by Israel. Wow! Not only — in this view — can Israel do no wrong, but Israel cannot even be (improperly, of course!) blamed by its victims and their friends for what it does.
Maybe some Arabs also hate our freedoms, who knows? For example, some definitely hate the caricature of the Prophet published under the banner of “freedom of press”. And the (mostly European) laws punishing anti-Semitism (perhaps as redefined to embrace anti-Zionism) may rub painfully against the perceived non-punishment of anti-Islamic expression.