Israeli envoy taunted with anti-Semitic slurs in Madrid

A torrent of anti-Semitic epithets met Israel's ambassador to Spain, Rafi Shotz, Saturday evening as he walked home from a Real Madrid-Barcelona soccer match in the Spanish capital. Shotz said the three perpetrators, patrons of a pub, shouted slurs like "Jewish dog" and "dirty Jew" until they were driven off by Spanish police escorting Shotz.

Shotz and his partner Michal chose to walk from Madrid's Santiago Bernabeu Stadium to their nearby home. Three patrons of a pub noticed the ambassador, whom they apparently recognized from having seen him on television.

In a wire report Shotz sent the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem under the heading "Anti-Semitism - a personal testimony," Shotz wrote the perpetrators stood mere meters from him, shouting slurs like "Jewish dog," "dirty Jew" and others "which cannot appear in print."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1083065.html

Sadly anti-semitism's pretty deeply ingrained in some places of Europe. This sort of ignorance will take a while to fix. It's sort of like anti-black racism over here.

a stupid war crimes trial when other Spanish officials have already nixed it.

I am sure our prisoners at the end of World War II also felt that they were being persecuted by "a stupid war crimes trial."

the eyes of crazies.

Judges in Europe are not elected; so he would not be pandering to racist thugs, if that's what you mean.

the Spanish attitude towards Jews in general or up next the Inquisition

Just as in the OP's incident, the slurs came from a handful of morons that did not represent the vast majority of Madrileños, or F1 aficionados in Lewis' case.

That's what I think of I/P forum.

;)

People waiting for bus, or those waiting for pizza, should not live in fear of suicide bombers.

The same can be said about Palestinians not having to live in fear of their olive trees being uprooted, their homes bulldozed, and their villages firebombed.

Both sides have terribly flawed political leaders.

The rest is commentary....

Rabbis call on govt to "guard" Israel's daughters
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x273592

This OP doesn't have a thing to do with the IP conflict, and yet here it is in the IP forum.

I would like to see a Middle East forum replace the IP forum, it would cover the IP conflict of course but also news about Iran, Lebanon, Syria etc. It would be great to have all these posts in one place for those DU members who follow the ME closely. Right now a lot of articles/opeds etc. about the Middle East get lost in the sinkhole we call GD.

anti-semitism. That's why it bugs me being here. WTF do people in Palestinian have to do with A-S in Spain?

instead of treating it as the moronic behaviour of a handful of dipshits.

I'm sure if the Mexican ambassador to the US was called a "dirty Mexican" or a "Mexican dog" and said anything about it he would be accused of "playing the role of martyr" or "making a big deal of it".

If George Mitchell was called an "Arab dog" or a "dirty Arab" on a visit to Israel, he ought to keep his mouth shut about it?

I remember that as a high school freshman being called a "N-word lover" for marching in support of Selma civil rights marches that were attacked by the police. We were instructed to ignore insults and provocations and just move on. One slur from one moron does not make a federal case.

If a visiting ambassador from an African country was called a racist slur I think they have every right to make that known and I would be disgusted by the incident even though I realize that people get called racist slurs all the time in this country.

when he faced racial slurs in 2007 from a handful of morons. Everyone rallied around Hamilton, and Lewis did not go into an "Eternal Victimhood" drama like the ambassador did, purely for PR purposes.

He was not at a sporting event.

Don't you even read the crap you post?

Nowhere is their any claim of anyone being drunk.

End of football match, patrons at a pub (obviously they weren't drinking tea). A hyper-sensitive diplomat anxious to ingratiate himself to his superiors, and nothing in the Spanish press about this "incident."

Nothing here:

http://www.elpais.com/global/

This doesn't make it acceptable.

Once again, nothing in the Spanish press about this.

do you think this should just be taken as nothing much? (Not absolutely beyond the bounds of possibility, given the standards of social behaviour in British lager louts.)

I don't think it should be grounds for breaking diplomatic relations, or attacking the country's government; but it's not proper behaviour. And if it is done to a prominent leader or diplomat, and they don't complain, people may take it as even greater license to use racist insults against less powerful people.

I think the ambassador was trying to ingratiate himself to his superiors.

He was walking home *from* a sports event.

and the slur allegedly came from patrons at a pub, which the ambassador claims recognized him.

Nothing in the Spanish press about this "incident." The conservative El Pais would have certainly made heyday out of it.

That doesn't make it acceptable.

There is another thread in this forum about Beitar fans and their racist slurs against Arabs. Should they be excused because 'that's how football fans act'?

All we got is Shotz's diplomatic cable.

No one is saying that all or most Spanish people are antisemitic; but this is still an unpleasant diplomatic incident; and not acceptable behaviour.

Search result:

No hay ningún documento que contenga la palabra Rafi Shotz

Compruebe que ha escrito correctamente la clave de búsqueda

There is nothing in the Spanish press about the incident that ambassador Rafi Shotz (Raphael Schutz in the Spanish press) referred to in his diplomatic wire to Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There isn't even a police report!

The Israeli ambassador may have lied about or embellished this alleged "incident" in order to ingratiate himself to his superiors, perhaps even not realizing that it was going to be picked up by the Israeli press and the other internet megaphones.

However, I did find that there was indeed an incident in JANUARY 2009 which irked the ambassador during at a dinner in the aftermath of the Gaza bombing.

The news article is dated february 2, but it refers to an incident that took place on January 10. The ambassador appears to have a very long memory, and a thin skin.

Here is the story, from the conservative Madrid daily El Pais:

El embajador de Israel pide a Saura que se disculpe

Schutz cree que en la manifestación se cruzó la línea roja

J. M. MARTÍ FONT - Barcelona - 06/02/2009

El consejero de Interior de la Generalitat, Joan Saura, debía haberse dado cuenta de que "se cruzaba una línea roja" cuando en la manifestación del pasado 10 de enero contra la invasión de la franja de Gaza se lanzaron "gritos contra los judíos" y haberse desmarcado del acto, según el embajador de Israel en España, Raphael Schutz. "Aún no lo ha hecho", añadió.

El diplomático israelí, que ayer participó en un almuerzo coloquio en el hotel Majestic de Barcelona, organizado por la Fundación Catalunya Oberta, no entró a criticar el hecho de la presencia de Saura en la citada manifestación -a la que asistieron 55.000 personas-, pero sí que el consejero todavía no se haya desmarcado de un acto de "estética yihadista" en el que "se lanzaron gritos a favor de Hamás".

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cataluna/embajador/Israel/pide/Saura/disculpe/elpepiespcat/20090206elpcat_14/Tes

Here is my somewhat imperfect translation of the article:

The ambassador of Israel asks for Saura's apology

Schutz thinks that a red line was crossed in comments
J.M. MARTÍ FONT - Barcelona - 06/02/2009

The advisor of Interior for the Generalitat (Catalan Autonomous Government), Joan Saura, must be held responsible for "crossing a red line" when he "yelled against the Jews" during a demonstration against the invasion of Gaza on January 10, according to the ambassador of Israel in Spain, Raphael Schutz. “He has not (apologized) yet,” Schutz added.

The Israeli diplomat, who participated yesterday in a lunch by the Open Catalonia Foundation at the Majestic hotel of Barcelona, did not purposely attend to criticize Saura's participation in the demonstration, attended by 55,000 people, but that (Saura) is still stained by acts of "aesthetic jihadism" in which "calls in support of Hamas" were made.