Opinion
Editorials are posted and archived on JNonline.us.
Greenberg's View
Editorial
Treasonous Actions
0
ne of the basic pillars of democ-
racy is the concept of the loyal
opposition. A minority party
or faction will not attempt or conspire to
overthrow the elected government for the
purpose of installing itself in power. It
remains loyal to the state.
Imagine a member of Congress declar-
ing that the United States is a country that
has no right to exist and encouraging Fidel
Castro to launch a few attacks on Florida.
Yet that is pretty much the situation in
Israel these days. At least four Arab mem-
bers of the Knesset have declared their
solidarity with Syria in recent months
and urged Hezbollah to continue attack-
ing Israeli soldiers. All of them also have
taken trips to Syria in direct violation of
Israeli law.
The hypocrisy of the elected represen-
tatives of a population that enjoys the
greatest level of political freedom in the
Arab world calling for the destruction of
their own government needs no further
expansion.
What does merit examination, however,
is the danger this holds for Israel. How
can any government tolerate a group of
I HOPE WE CAN
NEGOTIATE A
PALESTINIAN STATE
WITH AN ISRAELI
WITHDRAWAL FROM
THE WEST BANK.
WHAT??
BOOM!
1541P, I HOPE WE
CAN NEGOTIATE A
PALESTINIAN STATE
WITH AN ISRAELI
WITHDRAWAL FROM
THE WEST BANK.
WHAT?
BOOM!
officials who make common
cause with organizations
sworn to destroy it?
At other times in other
places, such people were
called "fifth columnists" or
I SNP, 1 HOPE WE CAN
"quislings" and when their
NE6CrIATE A PALESTINIAN
machinations were revealed
STATE WITH AN ISRAELI
WHAT??
they were removed. Yet these
WITHDRAWAL FROM THE
legislators continue to enjoy
WEST BANK!
the perks of Knesset mem-
bership, including access to
FROM
information that could be
FROM
ISRAELI-
useful to Israel's enemies,
WITHDRAWN
-
WITHDRAW N
and they carry on with
GAZA
impunity.
steveOgreentierg-arttorn
2007, ,/,/ I 4 .4.9gratr
A law adopted in 2001
prohibits visits to enemy
within its government.
organizations whose primary focus is to
states, but no attempt has been made to
When the loyal opposition steps over
destroy Israel and murder Jews.
enforce it against these outspoken advo-
the line as defiantly as these four Arab
The Zionist Organization of America
cates of violence against Israel.
members of the Knesset have done, then
supports passage of this bill, as does the
Laws are like muscles. If they are not
opposition becomes something else. It
Jerusalem Post and many other groups
used, they become slack and worthless.
becomes treason.
within Israel and the United States.
Worse yet, respect for all laws and the
It often has been pointed out that the
nation that passes them is degraded.
U.S. Constitution is not a suicide pact. Any E-mail letters of no more than 150 words to:
Proposed legislation would specifically
letters@thejewishnews.com .
sovereign nation has the right to defend
prohibit members of the Knesset from
itself from enemies within its borders and
visiting or supporting terrorist states and
I
4 1
BOOM. BOOM
7
Reality Check
Road Trip
T
wice each month, I
make the drive to
Huron Valley Sinai
Hospital for an early morn-
ing appointment. I am always
grateful to be heading in that
direction because the stream of
opposing traffic is endless.
Sometimes Union Lake
Road is bumper to bumper,
from its southern terminus at
Richardson Road all the way
back to Commerce Road.
It's on these mornings that I become
fully aware of how far commuting patterns
have sprawled in the last few decades.
When my parents moved to Southfield
40 years ago, to around 11 Mile and
Evergreen, it was regarded as way out
there. When I took some friends from
work to the house, they wondered if the
authorities had to airdrop food during the
winter. There were no malls; roads were
narrow; and there was a feeling of new-
26
August 23 • 2007
iN
ness, of being at the edge.
Now that area is classi-
fied as a far inner suburb; as
is the eastern part of West
Bloomfield, where I have lived
since 1986. That's how fast it
happened.
I know why these drivers
moved out as far as they did.
More house for the dollar.
Maybe even a chance to live
on the water, an affordable
proposition in the recent past in western
Oakland County.
I think of these people when I hear sug-
gestions, such as the one floated recently
by Congressman John Dingell, to raise the
federal gas tax by 50 cents a gallon.
Dingell is trying to deflect environmen-
talist pressure from the auto industry and
make the costs of fighting global warming
a shared expense. I am skeptical of how
much auto emissions contribute to warm-
ing. But it has become an article of faith
among a sizable portion of the body poli-
tic that cars are the prime villains.
As I have written before, if people are
serious about this issue the most immedi-
ate way to get at the problem is to make it
more expensive to drive. Forcing the auto
industry to meet impossibly high fuel
standards will almost certainly result in
more job displacements and the manu-
facture of vehicles that are much less safe
than the ones on the road today. In addi-
tion, the technological breakthrough that
can accomplish these goals may never
occur. So a 50-cent increase in the price
of gas, which would still place it well
below European levels, seems a reasonable
response.
Except for this line of cars I see coming
at me on the road to Huron Valley. Most of
these people live 20 miles and more from
their jobs and must get there in heavy
traffic, burning lots of gas. For the most
part, they are not people of great means.
They live where they do because at the
time they bought their homes it seemed
like a sensible, economical choice.
This population is so dispersed that
any attempt to devise mass transit cannot
work. Even if there were a way to bring in
express buses, land for parking cars would
have to be acquired and cleared because
very few live within walking distance of a
boarding point. Who will pay for that?
Sprawl was an inefficient and wasteful
use of land. It was enabled by cheap gas
and the absence of any sensible plan by
the governments involved. Nonetheless,
there it is.
These drivers can't walk away from their
far-flung homes and return to the inner
suburbs. A dramatic increase in the price
of gas will cause genuine hardship for
many of them.
But the anti-car zealots don't seem to
much care about that. ri
George Cantor's e-mail address is
gcantor614@aol.com.