Tell Me: Who are You?
Over at Volokh.com, Jewish law professor David Bernstein (by his labeling, not mine) begins his post on Rep. Eric Cantor this way:
Congressman Eric Cantor, soon to be the highest-ranking Jewish Congressman in history, recently met with Israeli P.M. Binyamin Netanyahu. Following the meeting, Cantor’s office issued a press release summarizing it:
Eric has a long standing friendship with Prime Minister Netanyahu and appreciated the opportunity to catch up last evening. The discussion lasted over an hour and covered a range of topics that included Iran, the United Nations, and the recent U.S. election which saw the Republicans win the majority in the House.
...
Eric stressed that the new Republican majority will serve as a check on the Administration and what has been, up until this point, one party rule in Washington. He made clear that the Republican majority understands the special relationship between Israel and the United States, and that the security of each nation is reliant upon the other.
Well, I'm glad "Eric" and "Binyamin" are on a first name basis and all, getting friendly and trading promises while discussing this "special relationship."
But isn't it more accurate to say that Rep. Cantor is a Jewish-AMERICAN Congressman??? * (How quickly some seem to forget that primary allegiance when the goals of the two countries diverge...)
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* Would you say the late Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley was an Irish Mayor? I think not... Get the difference, "David"?
Something Biblical about the futility of serving two masters... choose who you'll serve already when taking direction, since overall our traditions, individual rights, and expectations of freedoms are divergent, it seems. (ie/ No special roads for some here. No recognized civil distinctions based on religion or ethnicity. Get it? Life is Better Here. Maybe your bloodline is not recognized as superior, but as an "American" alongside so many others who left their homelands voluntarily, you get to take up something even bigger by subsuming your former ethnicity and identification into that new label. Not good enough for ya? Buy a one-way and go back "home", no matter how you define that...)
Do you want to risk your American childrens' futures for the survival of the ever-expanding borders of the Jewish state? I'm afraid, it has come to that...
Good for Professor Bernstein, and "Eric", though, for acknowledging this is a discussion that we're better off having, sooner rather than later. And please, no cries of Remember the Holocaust! or accusations of garden-variety anti-Semitism poisoning the very serious and very needed discussion.
(Remember when Cuban Americans in the 1960s believed that their adopted homeland owed some special relationship to their own home countries? Remember where, foreign-policy-wise, that took us, almost crippling the country for a time? Some say the miscalculations even killed a president, an American one, at that.)
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