Tom’s Big Picture

You would think in our increasingly global society where valuing diversity is our highest value that an epidemic spitting on someone because of their religion would at least merit a mention in the nightly news summary. I mean, that sounds like something out of a Steven Speilberg “comic book Nazi” movie, except the messiness of reality reverses the media-anointed perp/victim mythology (click here for the story):

Christians in Jerusalem want Jews to stop spitting on them
By Amiram Barkat

A few weeks ago, a senior Greek Orthodox clergyman in Israel attended a meeting at a government office in Jerusalem’s Givat Shaul quarter. When he returned to his car, an elderly man wearing a skullcap came and knocked on the window. When the clergyman let the window down, the passerby spat in his face.

Funny how Israel gets a free pass to pursue policies in their national interest: a preferred place for their historical religion, a restrictive and selective immigration policy, a functioning border fence to keep out terrorists and a foreign policy in its own self-interest. Funny how the neoconservatives and neoliberals who support Israel’s right to do so deny the same to Americans.