On his Twitter feed, Glenn Greenwald commends Rep. Barney Frank for these recent comments:
In an interview with the Boston Herald, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said that that “‘as a Jew,’ Israeli treatment of Arabs around some of the West Bank settlements ‘makes me ashamed that there would be Jews that would engage in that kind of victimization of a minority.'”
I, too, thank Rep. Frank for his candor and his willingness to rise above tribalism. (Though I also agree with Jeremy that individuals have no reason to apologize for or feel ashamed of acts they oppose simply because those acts are committed under the auspices of a collective, whether legal, religious, or ethnic, that they “belong” to. As an official of the U.S. government, Rep. Frank has plenty to feel ashamed about; as a Jew, nothing.) Sadly, though, Frank turned right around the next moment with this:
In defense of Israel, Frank added there are people “howling for Israel to pay a price [for the Gaza aid ship attack] that don’t seem disturbed that North Koreans killed 46 South Koreans by torpedoing a South Korean boat. I think we have a right to ask for some consistency.”
Now lest it be said that my vicious, throbbing anti-Semitism has blinded me to the greater sins of Kim Jong-Il (and it will be said anyway), let me go on record as condemning the attack by a government that my tax dollars do not subsidize on a military vessel during what is technically still an ongoing war. Yes, Rep. Frank, it does appear to me that one of the two attacks is worse than the other, but I’ll let you guess which one.
