Uri Avnery a peace-loving Israeli
November 5, 2011, 3:47 pm
Posted by Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
says, “Israel will not attack Iran. Period.”
EVERYBODY KNOWS the scene from school: a small boy quarrels with a bigger boy. “Hold me back!” he shouts to his comrades, “Before I break his bones!”
Our government seems to be behaving in this way. Every day, via all channels, it shouts that it is going, any minute now, to break the bones of Iran.”
And tells us why. Let’s hope he’s right. Here.
The plot thickens. David Frum tells an extraordinary story about an apparently trivial case that the Supreme Court will hear Monday. It seems that an Israeli born Jew with dual citizenship has sued to have his address on his passport read not as “Jerusalem” but as “Jerusalem, Israel”. Frum claims the decision could force Obama to make a decision he has been avoiding. It might shift a balance that Obama has been trying to maintain.
http://www.frumforum.com/scotus-could-force-obamas-hand-on-jerusalem#more-106478
Thanks for the link, Professor Olivier. The State Department has always been ferocious about not moving the embassy to Jerusalem. Like most other nations, ours is in Tel Aviv. There is always pressure to move it as a symbol of the Israeli claims. Note that Frum has an example that suggests the State Department is still clear on the matter. Let’s hope the Supreme Court of the Founding Fathers is too.
We goyim aren’t allowed to talk about the way dual citizenship can reflect dual loyalties, but thank goodness there are some American Jews willing to point out the conundrum.
Sure, we are – only more in some cases than in others. It’s been a puzzle to me for some time that the citizenship oath talks about renouncing loyalties elsewhere, when it seems clear that in fact that’s not required. So we’re asking at least some new citizens to lie?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_Allegiance_%28United_States%29
DS: “Only more in some cases than in others.” Want to give some specifics on that?
I only meant that political correctness effectively forbids open public discussion of some things. Maybe many things.
“Americans are free to say what they think because they do not think what they are not free to say.”
http://www.uraniumandpeaches.com/AboutTheCollaboration.html
David S. –
I suspect this time we agree. Political correctness is a problem in this country and the topic needs airing.
DS:“Americans are free to say what they think because they do not think what they are not free to say.”
Hmmm…. half true, since there are some things we genuinely do not know. But as you say, “political correctness effectively forbids open public discussion of some things.”
This implies that were we to say some things in public we would violate the etiquette of political correctness, but not that we don’t think or know those things. The American-Israeli relationship is replete with such items. As I said above we should value those Israelis and American Jews willing to be politically incorrect and those publications like Ha’aretz and the Forward that are willing to publish those comments and observations. And then there are blogs that lay things on the line that some are even afraid to read, e.g., Mondoweiss.
“My purpose is to help eradicate from the world its mania for persecution, to help align all good men, Catholic and Protestant, Jew and Gentile, Christian and non-Christian, in a battle to stamp out the ferocity, the barbarism and the hate of this bloody era. I want the good Jews with me, and I’m called a Jew baiter, an anti-Semite.”
Charles Coughlin