WHERE AMERICAN AMBASSADOR GUTMAN HAS GONE WRONG: MUSLIM ANTI-SEMITISM IS NOT ISRAEL'S FAULT
by Omri Ceren
Well-degreed, eager to be well-liked in Belgium as its "favorite
ambassador," American Ambassador Howard Gutman is not about to start
reading Qur'an, Hadith, Sira.
According to the Ambassador, Muslim anti-Semitism is Israel's fault.[1]
Growing global anti-Semitism is linked to Israel's policy towards
the Palestinians, the American ambassador to Belgium told stunned
Jewish conference attendants in Brussels earlier this week.... [Howard]
Gutman told participants he was apologizing in advance if his words
are not to their liking. He then proceeded to make controversial
statements about his views on Muslim anti-Semitism, Yedioth
Ahronoth reported Friday. A distinction should be made between
traditional anti-Semitism, which should be condemned, and Muslim
hatred for Jews, which stems from the ongoing conflict between Israel
and the Palestinians, Gutman said. He also argued that an
Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty will significantly diminish Muslim
anti-Semitism.
In no particular order:
- As a sheer historical matter, of course, he's demonstrably
wrong.
Muslim anti-Semitism stretches back centuries.[2] Just last week we
passed the 70th anniversary of the meeting between the Mufti of
Jerusalem and Hitler,[3] where the two of them conspired to wipe out
European and Middle East Jewry. The Mufti, citing Muslim dogma and
history, committed to helping the Nazis fulfill their genocidal
ambitions. A few decades later, then-Secretary of State John Foster
Dulles was explaining to Congress why the U.S. was withholding war
planes from Israel while selling them to Saudi Arabia, and he
explained that[4] Muslim states "have felt for a long time it goes back
centuries a very particular animosity toward the Jews because they
credited the assassination of Mohammed to a Jew."
It could be Dulles just didn't realize that Muslim anti-Semitism
had only existed for a couple of decades, and that the Mufti just
didn't know he was supposed to wait for the creation of Israel to
become anti-Semitic. Although given how Muslim anti-Semitism is
eschatological, and involves precise roles for Jews during the
end-times and reserves an explicit place for them in hell, it's more
likely he hated Jews for religious reasons and that Gutman is making
things up.
- The Obama administration is going to have to get creative about
walking this one back. It's gracious that Gutman told attendees in
advance they wouldn't like what he was about to say, but rhetorically
and argumentatively it makes things more complicated. Usually when the
White House tries to walk back its anti-Israel gaffes, officials roll
their eyes and insist the controversy is just being manufactured to
smear Obama. It's going to be hard to claim Gutman's words weren't
meant to be controversial, inasmuch as he began his speech by noting
he was about to say something controversial.
- It's also going to be hard for the administration to say
Gutman's views do not reflect Obama's broader approach to Israel and
the Israeli-Arab conflict. Quite the opposite, they fit perfectly into
the linkage dogma embraced by Obama and the foreign policy left, where
pathologies in the Arab world are the result rather than the cause of
the Israeli-Arab conflict. Pseudo-sophisticated experts insisted for
years that Sunnis wouldn't mobilize against Iran because of Israel, a
myth that was debunked by Wikileaks.[5] They emphasized the idea that the
Israeli-Arab conflict prevented Arab democratization, something the
Arab Spring disproved. And now apparently centuries-old and world-wide
Islamic anti-Semitism is the result of a sliver of a state fighting
for its existence on the Eastern Mediterranean.
- These outbursts are becoming something of a capital T "Thing"
for Obama donors, of which Gutman having raised[6] more than
$500,000 for the president and the Democratic Party is one.
George Soros also expressed the view on multiple occasions.[7] One
more time and it becomes a trend! Soros's 2003 statements, by the by,
went viral on hate sites like Stormfront, conspiracy hubs like
AboveTopSecret, and progressive forums like Democratic Underground.
Gutman's statements will undoubtedly do the same, this time with the
imprimatur of an Obama-appointed U.S. official.
- Just for completion's sake, it's worth noting that even if
Gutman wasn't simply inventing history, the idea of Israeli
concessions as a salve for Muslim anti-Semitism is backwards.
Islamists put theological priority on humiliating and extracting
concessions from Jews, such that vaunted "confidence-building
measures" are more likely to fuel rather than dampen Muslim
anti-Semitism. Scholar Richard Landes keeps an entire archive[8] on
the phenomenon, and you can see here[9] and here[10] and here[11] for
some recent examples. There might be other reasons to coerce Israel
into making security and territorial concessions to Arab entities. But
decreasing Muslim hatred for Jews can't honestly be described as one
of them.
To understand, to recognize the immutable source of Muslim
antisemitism has nothing to do with israel would be too painful for
him. That's understandable. But it's still not acceptable for him to
take his psychological need not to believe in what is staring him in
the face, and from that turn things topsy-turvy and blame Israeli
acts, designed to protect the people of Israel, as the cause of Muslim
antisemitism.
Footnotes
[1] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4156355,00.html
[2] http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=675&pageid=23&pagename=Arts
[3] http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2011/11/seventy-years-since-arab-mufti-haj-amin.html
[4] http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/01/beaky_buzzard_zionistmossad_ag.html
[5] http://www.mererhetoric.com/2010/11/28/wikileaks-anti-israel-foreign-policy-experts-got-saudi-arabia-other-arab-countries-100-backward-on-iran-attack/
[6] http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-fundraiser-and-ambassador-blames-israel-anti-semitism_610946.html
[7] http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/03/11/JTA071103.html
[8] http://www.theaugeanstables.com/category/honor-shame-culture/
[9] http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/148893#.TtqimtQqfTQ
[10] http://www.onejerusalem.org/2011/10/egyptians-stage-forced-intervi.php
[11] http://www.haaretz.com/themarker/martyrs-courtesy-of-egypt-tv-and-gilad-shalit-1.391178
Editor's Addendum
These are some of the Readers' Comments that added useful information:
@MainesMichael:
Gutman - a perfect encapsulation of everything that is wrong with modern American left of center Jewry. Also, a perfect example of Obama's exploitation of lickspittle Jews as a lever of his Israel policy.
If I was Israeli, I wouldn't want my daughter marrying the son of this oaf.
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Keith Rice
You'll note that the Left has long been trending toward the erstwhile USSR's positions on ... everything. While they claim not to be enemies of the US, I ask how it is possible when they consistently echo the positions and claims of our greatest, albeit extinct, enemy.
Selling out the Jews to their enemies is a small price to pay for the prize of global Marxism.
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DansDaMan
Sorry to boil Omri's fine post into 25 words or less. But it's written in the Koran, an article of faith, that Muslims have to work to destroy the Jews.
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rulierose
anyone who's ever read the Koran knows that Jew hatred pre-dates
the modern state of Israel by centuries. but it's not surprising to
hear this idiocy from the most anti-Israeli administration in years.
talk about "blame the victim"! do we also blame black people for
racism?
these horrid people--all of them, from Obama to the corrupt and paranoid Holder right on down the line--need to be GONE.
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John Burke
Someone wise has said that Jews always attract anti-Semitism -- by being Jews.
Of course, Israel does have an impact only Gutman is confused about what it is.
It is one thing to have a couple of hundred thousand Jews living under Muslim sway in an Arab Palestine. It is quite another to have five million of them in a wealthy, militarily powerful state that has repeatedly mopped the floor with Arab armies. The latter set of circumstanced unleashes all the horror and murderous fury of age-old Muslim anti-Semitism.
That would go away if only the Jews would go away.
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Omri Ceren is a contributor at Commentary Magazine’s blog Contentions.
He is the founder and editor of Mere Rhetoric, a political blog
dealing with the geopolitical, cultural, and economic dimensions of
the global war between the West and political Islam.
This article appeared
December 4, 2011 in Commentary Magazine and is
archived at
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/12/04/muslim-anti-semitism-israel/