Newt Gingrich calls on US ambassador to Belgium to be fired (user search)
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  Newt Gingrich calls on US ambassador to Belgium to be fired (search mode)
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Author Topic: Newt Gingrich calls on US ambassador to Belgium to be fired  (Read 4682 times)
Verily
Cuivienen
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Posts: 16,663


Political Matrix
E: 1.81, S: -6.78

« on: December 04, 2011, 09:53:04 PM »

I think the bad thing about what Gutman said is his implication that Muslim Antisemitism should not be condemned because it stems from Israel's actions. Antisemitism doesn't happen in a vacuum, there is always some reason but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be condemned.

And I don't know what your problem is with the weekly standard, they were merely copying an article from Ynet, so you should complain about them first if you have a problem with the way the article was written.

I think what he meant wasn't that Muslim anti-Jewish views shouldn't be condemned, but that they are fundamentally different from the frenetic, insane and completely unjustified anti-Jewish views of historical anti-Semitism (and modern descendants of it, as far as they exist, which isn't very far), and that failing to distinguish between sources and motivations causes trouble. Muslims in the Middle East who hate "Jews" don't hate Jews because they think Jews drink the blood of newborns or are plotting to take over the world the way medieval anti-Semites or Nazi anti-Semites, respectively, believe(d). They hate Jews because they equate Jews with Israel and hate Israel for the long-running conflict between Arabs and Israel in which there is no side obviously "in the right"--which at least grounds the hatred in something tangible.

Of course, sometimes the former and the latter get combined. There was a weak strain of historical anti-Semitism in the Middle East well before the first Zionists arrived in the Mandate of Palestine, and that kind of frenetic hatred comes out sometimes. And there is no doubting that the hatred of everything Israel has somewhat translated into religious hatred as well. But it is also true that a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that was accepted as legitimate by a lot of Muslims/Arabs would put a rest to a lot of the anti-Jewish settlement in the Muslim world.
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Verily
Cuivienen
Atlas Icon
*****
Posts: 16,663


Political Matrix
E: 1.81, S: -6.78

« Reply #1 on: December 05, 2011, 11:49:21 AM »

I think he's wrong about the causes of Antisemitism, especially since a large portion of Muslims in the world are Semites.  I also think you can be anti-Israel and not be an anti-Semite, and vice versa. 

Please spare us the idiotic word play.  Yes, it is a bad choice of phrase, but anti-Semitism is a synonym for anti-Jew, not not anti-Jew or Arab.

The guy is a diplomat; he's not suppose to make "a bad choice of phrase."  It's like talking about Montezuma's revenge in front of the president of Mexico.

Not nearly so extreme, and the analogy would only work if he were the ambassador to Israel anyway.
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