Mayor George Voinovich is not likely to get a warm welcome home when he returns to City Hall from a visit to Israel Friday. Citizens of Cleveland, local officials and the press are far from pleased with the remark His Honor dropped at a Tel Aviv press conference Monday to the effect that, despite Israel’s history of war and terrorist assaults, he feels “safer here than in some neighborhoods in my city.”
He explained later that he meant “I feel as safe in Israel as I do at home, in my own city.” But his ex post facto clarification did little to ease injured civic pride. The Cleveland Plain Dealer suggested in an editorial Tuesday that the returning Mayor might be detained at the border for “foot-in-mouth disease.”
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