The only member of the White House press corps to be denied a visa by Saudi Arabia for the upcoming visit by President Obama is Michael Wilner, a Jewish American and the Jerusalem Post’s Washington bureau chief. In response the White House has expressed its “deep disappointment.” Well, that’s one way of putting it. But we all know what this is on Saudi Arabia’s part: it’s the most open form of politically motivated anti-Semitism. Yes, anti-Semitism has the tendency to be “disappointing,” it must be so very disappointing for Jews who find they are still being demonized and discriminated against. But really by the same measure the White House spokespeople may as well have simply described the Saudi decision as boring. These officials no doubt just find it so incredibly boring having to keep dealing with this tiresome business of the Arab world hating Jews.
The White House claims it will continue to pursue the matter, but given the lack of any sense of genuine outrage coming from officials there, it seems naïve to think anything will come of it. Yet this is an outrage, and the administration should describe it as such. Mr. Wilner is an American citizen; he is also Jewish and the discrimination at work here is clear. U.S. National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan also described this as an “unfortunate decision.” At the very least she might begin by describing it as utterly unacceptable. Yet the administration’s tolerance for this kind of thing seems disturbingly high.
Wilner is not Israeli, but in such cases one is often told that this is not really about Jews or Jew hatred, but simply about Israelis. Just such thinking is promoted by the boycott movement. Yet, even if we were to buy into the notion that this is simply about Israelis–Wilner, after all, works for an Israeli newspaper–what are Israelis other than Jews who live in the Jewish state? Such moves never target Arabs living in Israel. This notion that it is not as bad to target an Israeli Jew not only promotes the belief that it is perhaps not quite right that Jews should have a state, but also that there are certain places that it is permissible to forbid Jews from living. This is the logic that imprisons Jews in ghettos, that says that certain places are off-limits for Jews.
President Obama may have bowed before the king of Saudi Arabia, but this is a country where the most vicious hatred of Jews is deeply entrenched in the national culture. As Eli Lake highlights in today’s Daily Beast, there are still serious concerns about the kind of incitement to hatred being promoted in Saudi school textbooks. As Lake notes, the State Department is refusing to release its most recent report on these books, yet it assures us that the Saudis are making promising progress on this matter.
Douglas Johnston of the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy, which the State Department commissioned to carry out the study, has said, “We strongly suggested it should not be published because they are making great progress on this.” This is hardly a very persuasive explanation. If the progress has been so impressive then what is it that anyone could wish to hide by not publishing the report?
One wonders how far along the Saudi textbooks have really come since December 2011 when the Institute for Gulf Affairs exposed how these schoolbooks were still demonstrating how to sever hands, advocating the reconquest of formerly Muslim parts of Europe, and stirring up hatred against Christians and Jews, with a particular dislike for that renowned Jew Charles Darwin. Yet, with President Obama visiting Saudi Arabia this week, apparently none of this can be allowed to spoil his trip.
The White House says it is disappointed by the Saudis’ refusal to grant entry to this Jewish American journalist, but no doubt not as disappointed as Mr. Wilner is. Not as “disappointed” as Jews always are when they continue to be subjected to this tenacious bigotry.
