Even in this supposedly enlightened age, some convicted rapists claim their victims were responsible for their fates because of something they said or the way they dressed. Similarly, domestic violence counselors hear all too often from men who beat their wives or girlfriends because they “had it coming” due to their conduct or words. In all such cases, this blame-the-victim syndrome represents the ultimate rationalization for criminal behavior and ought to be rejected out of hand. In a similar vein, President Obama should take some time out of the 17-day vacation he just started to sit down for a little chat with Howard Gutman, the man he appointed as U.S. ambassador to Belgium. Gutman told a Brussels conference on anti-semitism last week that a distinction should be made between traditional anti-Semitism and contemporary Muslim hatred for Israel, which, he claimed, stems from the ongoing conflict between the Jewish nation and the Palestinians. The ambassador said “this is a complex problem indeed. It requires its own analysis and solutions. And the analysis, I submit, is not served simply by lumping the problem with past instances of anti-Jewish beliefs and actions or those that exist today among minority haters under a uniform banner of ‘anti-Semitism.'”
The solution to this problem, according to Gutman, lies in a change of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, not in a change of heart toward Jews among Muslims more generally. Without a policy change, Gutman claimed, an enduring Middle East peace can never be achieved because “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.” If only Israel would make one more concession, the rockets and terrorist attacks would end.
Gutman, son of a Holocaust survivor and an accomplished Obama fundraiser from the 2008 campaign, should know better than to accept as legitimate an argument that conveniently ignores the most basic fact of the Middle East crisis: Every Muslim nation in the Middle East opposed the UN’s creation of Israel in 1948 precisely because doing so established a Jewish homeland, and they refuse to this day to recognize Israel’s right to exist (Jordan and, for now at least, Egypt, are the sole exceptions.). It is one thing to argue that Israel hasn’t made enough land concessions to the Palestinians, but it is absurd for anybody – much less a U.S. ambassador – to claim that such a mere policy difference accounts for the succession of Muslim wars against the Jewish nation, the stage of siege against it by Hezbollah and Hamas, or the murderous promises of Iran’s Mullahs to wipe it off the face of the earth.
Both former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich have called on the president to replace Gutman. Sadly, this almost certainly won’t happen, not because Romney and Gingrich are possible opponents in 2012, but because Obama agrees with his ambassador’s meretricious statement.
