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of Knesset mem- bership, including access to FROM information that could be FROM ISRAELI- useful to Israel's enemies, WITHDRAWN - WITHDRAW N and they carry on with GAZA impunity.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.