White House defends US envoy Gutman over Israel remarks

[Gerald]

The White House has rejected Republican calls to sack the US envoy to Belgium over remarks he made last week on anti-Semitism in Europe.

Ambassador Howard Gutman said failure to resolve the Middle East conflict was breeding a new type of bigotry.Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney accused the envoy of downplaying anti-Semitism.But the Obama administration said it had "full confidence" in the diplomat, and that he was expressing his opinion."He was sharing his views on an issue," state department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters on Monday. "Our commitment to Israel's security is ironclad."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16041640


Note: 5 December 2011 Last updated at 22:04 GMT

[Gerald]

http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/2741/howardgutmanbelgianprem.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/52/howardgutmanbelgianprem.jpg/)

Will the White House be forced to fire Gutman?

[Tribesman]

So the Republicans are attacking a Jewish bloke for comments he made that are true.
Rational thinking does not sit well with a certain mindset.

[Gerald]

These things, forgets quickly away ... besides, there are always other more important things and many, Politicians do not think rationally.

[Tribesman]

Politicians do not think rationally.
The sad thing is the muppet politicians are spouting meaningless crap over what was a short but good opening speech.

What they are somehow in a fit about......
http://www.ejpress.org/article/voices/54872

[MH]

If lasting peace was reached then....possibly there would be much less bigotry....and i was wiping humus with Nasrallah from one plate.
Question is what EU Muslims have to do with it?
Why fire the brainy smurf;)??

Still bigotry is bigotry.... media is full of it also some university campuses including radical leftist lecturers and so on....the problem goes deeper than elementary school.

No i don't confuse criticism with this other crap...

[Tribesman]

No i don't confuse criticism with this other crap...
Yet again and again it is plainly demonstrated by yourself that you most certainly do.

[MH]

lol ok...

[Penguin]

http://www.ejpress.org/article/voices/54872

Thanks for posting the full speech!
I read it, and still have the opinion that his hope for abating antisemitism if there would be peace in the Middle East sounds naive at best.
As if there was no jew-hate before the foundation ofm Israel. And people taking their problems they have with the Israeli state into sentiments against jews is also nothing new since 63 years.
He seems to want to find something rational in racism, what anti-jewishness is a form of; nothing rational to see here.
Hell, Germany is a state with one of the lowest jewish population in Europe, still anti-jewishness is about the same as in neighboring states. The same phenomena as a blatant xenophobia in parts of East Germany, where nearly no foreigners live. Bigots don't need any rational arguments, they don't even need the actual persons they hate living there to say how they steal our women/jobs/cars or control the world. This is what makes them so braindead but also dangerous.


But this second problem is in my opinion different in many respects than the classic bigotry ***8211; hatred against those who are different and against minorities generally -- the type of anti-Semitism that I discussed above. It is more complex and requiring much more thought and analysis. This second form of what is labeled ***8220;growing anti-Semitism***8221; produces strange phenomena and results.
I agree with this actually, that anti-semitism is more complex than "classic" racism.
Today's bigotry against Jews is actually often a mix of religious bs, a political stance against Israel and stereotypes which had existed since several hundreds of years.
However I don't agree with his hope for a solution. If the state of Israel would cease to exist, there would still be antisemitism.

Rational thinking does not sit well with a certain mindset.

Yup, and this is the mindset of people who connect the actions of a state to prejudices against others. The same mindset btw as blaming Arabs in Europe for the actions of the Saudi regime. And the same mindset the ****ers have who tried to torch a synagogue in Worms last year and wrote something among: "Leave the Palestinians alone!" Yes, a religious temple is responsible for a state...let's go and torch a catholic church because we hate what the Romans did, as the Pope resides in Rome! :damn:

[Gerald]

The sad thing is the muppet politicians are spouting meaningless crap over what was a short but good opening speech.

What they are somehow in a fit about......
http://www.ejpress.org/article/voices/54872I see a pattern.

[Tribesman]

@penguin
It will still exist, but will the other kind exist and grow?
That was the point.
Complex? Yes very, you get Jewish people getting accused of anti semitism on a daily basis...the reason being that they criticise Israeli policy and some pro Israeli minds cannot distinguish between Jews and Israeli policy which in fact puts them in the same boat as the mindless bigots who hate Israeli policies because they hate Jews.
The sad thing is that the blanket usage actually helps the bigots.