Upping The Ante By Calling Anti-Semitism

David Cameron and his UK government are learning what American lawmakers have known for decades:  anything less than full-throated support for Israel's policies will eventually lead to Israeli charges of anti-Semitism.  What, you thought Cameron was going to be allowed to point out the ridiculousness of the collective punishment in Gaza?

Shimon Peres said England was "deeply pro-Arab ... and anti-Israeli", adding: "They always worked against us."

He added: "There is in England a saying that an anti-Semite is someone who hates the Jews more than is necessary."

His remarks, made in an interview on a Jewish website, provoked anger from senior MPs and Jewish leaders who said the 87-year-old president had "got it wrong".

But other groups backed the former Israeli prime minister and said the number of anti-semitic incidents had risen dramatically in the UK in recent years.

The controversy follows the furore last week over David Cameron's remark that Gaza was a "prison camp", as he urged Israel to allow aid and people to move freely in and out of the Palestinian territory.

Mr Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who is three years into his seven-year term as president and was awarded an honorary knighthood by the Queen in 2008, said that England's attitude towards Jews was Israel's "next big problem".

"There are several million Muslim voters, and for many members of parliament, that's the difference between getting elected and not getting elected," he said. 

I really cannot think of another country on Earth that would say to a democratically elected ally "Your people hate us, your leaders hate us, and you have always hated us."

The real problem of course is that Israel feels Europe is embracing Muslims too much, and as a result they are now openly accusing Britain of being anti-Semitic.  And this guy won a Nobel peace prize?

Not that we don't have our own idiotic zero-sum flag wavers here in America.  Peres stopped just short of calling the UK an enemy of Israel, but not by much.  Here in America, we openly call our own citizens enemies of the state for not fully supporting another country.

I'd wonder what the Winger reaction to this will be, but I can already surmise that the calls for Britain to "purge" their Muslim population or else will soon be coming, and that some may even go so far as to say we should downgrade relations with the UK.  Even worse, more xenophobic and more inane suggestions will undoubtedly be made.

I wonder how many of our own politicians will fall all over themselves condemning our closest European ally?