District 5 Diary: David Chiu, Israel, and Islamic fascism

Supervisor Chiu is back from Israel. San Francisco Magazine---or is it Modern Luxury?---has a short piece on his impressions on the trip:

During the trip, there were international headlines about a stabbing in the West Bank, rocket attacks in Gaza, and Israeli air strikes into Syria from the Golan Heights. “What the United States experienced in Boston," Chiu said, "Israel experiences on a daily basis.”

Yes, indeed, which is what the Robert Spencer/Pamela Geller ads on our Muni buses were about---and which Chiu wrote a fatuous Board of Supervisors' resolution condemning the bus ads.

The trip, convened more or less annually for three decades by the Jewish Community Relations Council...helps to "understand nuances and complexities of pluralistic pulsating country that’s thousands of miles away, but whose issues often play out in Bay Area in much less nuanced ways," according to Abby Porth, the organization's Associate Executive Director.

"Pulsating"? Is that going to replace "vibrant," the all-purpose term used by boosters, politicians, and planning bureaucrats to describe neighborhoods they approve of?

Chiu echoed the sentiments, saying, "Events in the Middle East often lead to tensions in San Francisco—flotilla resolutions, circumcision bans, MUNI bus ads, and divestment measures at Bay Area universities. There apparently will be a new round of bus ads that describe Israel as an apartheid state. But there was nothing like seeing on the ground these issues play out in the daily lives of residents. It drove home the importance of not bringing a simplistic lens to incredibly complicated issues." (links added)

The ads denouncing Israel as an "apartheid state" are apparently now running on Muni buses, but I haven't noticed any "progressive" protest about the slander.

Thanks to Michael Petrelis for the link.

A South African criticizes comparing Israel to South Africa.