U.S. Backs Envoy After Anti-Semitism Remarks

[Purveyor]

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s administration on Monday rejected Republican calls to fire the US ambassador to Belgium after he said that the Middle East conflict was partly to blame for anti-Semitism.

Ambassador Howard Gutman, who is Jewish and the son of a Holocaust survivor, said in a speech that a new type of anti-Semitism has emerged in Europe that is not “classic bigotry” but instead linked to the conflict and hence resolvable.

Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, the front-runners for the Republican presidential nomination, both called on Obama to dismiss Gutman and renewed charges that his administration was not supportive enough of Israel.

“We have full confidence in him,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters. He said that Gutman, a political appointee and longtime fund-raiser for Obama’s Democratic Party, was expressing his personal opinion.

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/12/05/u-s-backs-envoy-after-anti-semitism-remarks/

[ProSense]

1. More

via Think Progress: Gingrich And Romney Seize On Inaccurate Quote To Falsely Accuse U.S. Ambassador Of Downplaying Anti-Semitism

[ellisonz]

2. I'm fine with his comments.

Panetta's comment that Israel needs "to get to the damn table" and Clinton's comparison of the increasing power of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel to the Jim Crow South are not productive. You're not going to get the Israelis to do anything by pissing them off. It's a war-zone and it's not the Israelis alone that are not working towards peace. There are plenty of capable candidates to head the State Department. I look forward to a second term without the corrosive influence of the Clinton's on the State Department. It was a mistake to put her in the Cabinet in the first place.

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