Over the weekend, a handful of news reports claimed that Howard Gutman, the U.S. Ambassador to Belgium, blamed Israel for anti-Semitism and failed to condemn anti-Jewish bigotry espoused by Muslims at a European conference on anti-Semitism. “A distinction should be made between traditional anti-Semitism, which should be condemned, and Muslim hatred for Jews, which stems from the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians,” Haaretz wrote that Gutman “reportedly” said. Haaretz appeared to be quoting a Ynet News paraphrase of Gutman’s remarks, which doesn’t reflect what the ambassador actually said.

Before even checking the facts, a number of high-profile Republicans called on Gutman to be fired or to resign. “President Obama must fire his ambassador to Belgium for rationalizing and downplaying anti-Semitism and linking it to Israeli policy toward the Palestinians,” said Mitt Romney. “Pres Obama should fire his ambassador to Brussels for being so wrong about anti-semitism,” tweeted Newt Gingrich.

And yet what all these Republicans and other right-wingers calling for Gutman to be fired failed to do was actually read the full remarks that he delivered. According to a transcript of his speech, Gutman — who is Jewish and whose father survived the Holocaust — clearly condemns Muslim anti-Semitism, saying that it is a “serious problem” and that no Jewish student should ever feel intimidated on a college campus, for example. He simply argues that this growing anti-Semitism and tension between Arabs and Jews in Europe is partly a result of the unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict:

What I do see as growing, as gaining much more attention in the newspapers and among politicians and communities, is a different phenomena. … It is the problem within Europe of tension, hatred and sometimes even violence between some members of Muslim communities or Arab immigrant groups and Jews. It is a tension and perhaps hatred largely born of and reflecting the tension between Israel, the Palestinian Territories and neighboring Arab states in the Middle East over the continuing Israeli-Palestinian problem.

It too is a serious problem. It too must be discussed and solutions explored. No Jewish student – and no Muslim student or student of any heritage or religion – should ever feel intimidated on a University campus for their heritage or religion leading to academic leaders quitting in protest. No high school or grammar school Jewish student – and no Muslim high school or grammar school student or student of any heritage or religion – should be beaten up over their heritage or religion.

Gutman goes on to argue that “Israel, the Palestinians and Arab neighbors in the Middle East” have the power to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and resolve tensions between Arabs and Jews worldwide. There is nothing bigoted about this conclusion. In no way did Gutman excuse or justify Muslim anti-Semitism. And the AP reported today that the Obama administration agrees, saying “it has full confidence” in Gutman and that he will “remain in his post.”

Facing deep spending cuts, the Department of Defense, including Secretary Leon Panetta, and military-industrial trade associations have complained that tightening the U.S. security budget will cause greater unemployment. And even while toeing the (dubious) conservative line that government spending cannot create jobs, right wingers like Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA) insist that military spending must stay high to keep unemployment from increasing.

But a new study (PDF) from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, highlighted by economist Dean Baker shows that, contra the conservative talking point, non-military spending can create more jobs than money going to defense programs. The study’s authors, economists Robert Pollin and Heidi Garret-Peltier of the Political Economy Research Institute, used statistics from the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other sources to deduce how many jobs are created by public spending in various arenas. Among them, military spending was the lowest, creating fewer jobs per billion dollars spent than even consumer-oriented tax cuts.

Here’s a chart from the study showing how many jobs each area produced from a billion dollars in spending:

Averaged between the three domestic spending priorities of clean energy, health care, and education, those areas create about twice as many jobs per dollar spent as military expenditures. The lower numbers for clean energy and health care spending still create 50 percent more jobs than the military category, and results from putting money into education will mean vastly more employment opportunities.

The paper also weighs the distribution of jobs created over different income levels. Especially with benefits factored in, non-military spending creates jobs at more varied compensation levels, low-, mid- and high-paying jobs. Because spending on the domestic priorities creates so many more jobs, that money will still create plenty of high-paying jobs. The authors conclude that “spending on clean energy, health care, and education will all create many more jobs overall, at all pay levels, than spending on the military.”

Economist Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, commented on the University of Massachusetts study on his blog:

In other words, if the point of spending is to create jobs, then the military is the last place that we would want to put our dollars. But, many in Washington believe in the military spending fairy who blesses the dollars spent on the military with unmatched job creating power that has no basis in normal economic analysis.

It turns out that pouring money into the military is not the only way to use public spending to create jobs. It’s also not even close to the best way: Spending on domestic progressive priorities like clean energy, health care, and education could actually accomplish this more effectively.

After a speech on Friday by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta that implored Israel to make moves to thaw its cool relations with strategic partners and overcome its growing isolation, neoconservative commentators went bananas. Former Bush Mideast hand Elliott Abrams, speaking with neocon Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin, wondered, “Does anyone wonder why Israelis don’t trust this administration to guard their security?” (In September, Abram’s himself said it was “true” that Israel and the U.S. enjoy “the best military-to-military relationship ever.”)

The most overblown response, though, came from right-wing don Bill Kristol. Speaking through a press release from the far-right-wing pressure group he heads, the Emergency Committee for Israel, Kristol attacked President Obama’s comments last weekend to Jewish donors that his administration’s security cooperation with Israel had reached new heights in the partnership. Kristol said:

Nobody believes President Obama when he claims, as he did last week, that he “has done more for the security of the state of Israel than any previous administration.” That’s because he hasn’t — and because President Obama and his administration keeps acting to weaken the security of the state of Israel.

The problem with Kristol’s statement, and one he seems to willfully ignore, is that there are at least a few people who don’t hold his stated opinion about the Obama administration’s work on Israel’s security, among them Israel’s leaders.

In a speech delivered to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) national convention in May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called American security cooperation with Israel during the Obama administration “unprecedented”:

Yesterday President Obama spoke about his ironclad commitment to Israel’s security. He rightly said that our security cooperation is unprecedented. He spoke of that commitment not just in front of AIPAC. He spoke about it in two speeches heard throughout the Arab world. And he has backed those words with deeds.

In September, Netanyahu personally thanked Obama in a speech for his attentiveness and support in resolving a crisis when demonstrators overtook Israel’s embassy in Cairo.

The various U.S. security commitments to Israel are legion. In the same speech Kristol criticized, Panetta announced that “the U.S. armed forces and the [Israel Defense Forces] will conduct the largest joint exercises in the history of that partnership.” This spring, Israel used an expanded aid package from the Obama administration to develop the Iron Dome missile defense system that protects citizens of southern Israel from rocket attacks with a 93 percent success rate. And the U.S. has worked closely with Israel in slowing Iran’s nuclear progress, even reportedly partnering up to create the Stuxnet virus that hampered Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and selling Israel bunk-busing bombs. All the work has included unflinching diplomatic support for Israel in international fora.

In August, former Israeli prime minister and current Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that he could “hardly remember a better period of support, American support and cooperation and similar strategic understanding of events around us than what we have right now.” Last month, Barak said Obama is an “extremely strong supporter of Israel in regard to its security” and that his administration was “excelling in this.” He added: “I don’t think that anyone can raise any question mark about the devotion of this president to the security of Israel.” Maybe someone should tell Bill Kristol.