A 12-member delegation of black American officials has discovered what many other U.S. visitors have learned before them: It is easier to criticize Israel’s policies in Israel than in America.
The group, on a 10-day Israel tour sponsored by the Foreign Ministry and the American Jewish Committee, consists of congressional aides, city council members and municipal judges from Atlanta and Philadelphia.
“You can’t say anything in the United States critical of Israel without offending American Jewish sensibilities,” Thomas Dortch, state executive assistant to Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), said at a news conference in Jerusalem on Wednesday.
“But here there’s been a real give-and-take with the people with whom we met, and we have taken the authorities to task whenever we found their version of events did not coincide with reality.”
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