It’s time for U.S. and Obama to speak up for Israel

By Brian Greenspun (contact)

Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016 | 2 a.m.

So many thoughts, so little space.

When is a European boycott not called a boycott? When it involves Israel.

The European Union insists that a decision not to include any services, grants, scholarships and other relationships that come from the “occupied territories” or “Greater Israel” or the West Bank and Gaza — whatever Europe wants to call the land that Israel captured when the invading Arab armies lost the Six-Day War they started in 1967 — in its agreements with Israel is not a boycott. It is merely a “policy change.”

The idea that Europeans would try to threaten Israel’s economic well-being to force it to make an ill-timed peace with the Palestinians is counterproductive and counter to what has always been Europe’s position on peace in the Middle East.

Peace can only be made between the parties. Period. That also happens to be the United States’ position. Even though our country has opposed the settlements in the West Bank, not a completely unreasonable position, the United States under every president has held fast to the belief that Israel and her neighbors need to work this peace thing out among themselves.

So now Europe is acting like, well, Europe. That is not unexpected. But what is unexpected and what runs counter to well-established American tradition and foreign policy is our country’s resolute silence in the face of Europe’s cowardice.

Friends don’t let friends drive down the wrong path. When will President Barack Obama tell our allies, the Europeans, to straighten up and fly right? It is bad enough that Iran and her surrogates are trying to destroy the tiny Jewish State. Now Europe is piling on.

Time to speak up, America.

• • •

Let’s hear it for New York values.

Even though Sen. Ted Cruz’s use of the term was — how shall I say this? — from the genre that gave credence to some of this country’s greatest anti-Semites, both in and out of Congress, it is always fun when the Big Apple shows us some of its real values. Like its great sense of humor.

I am sure Sen. John McCain isn’t the only American and American hero who thinks Sarah Palin leaves a lot to be desired. I don’t think anyone will disagree that the day McCain, the Republican presidential nominee in 2008, announced the former Alaska governor was his choice for vice president was the day he lost all hope for becoming president.

Except, perhaps, Donald Trump.

Trump allowed Palin to not only endorse his candidacy this past week but to talk about potential positions in a Trump administration. The Donald has said he gets his information from TV shows. Didn’t he watch television in 2008?

In any event, the New York Daily News heralded Trump’s decision to share the stage with Palin by running a cover spread of the two of them pointing a finger at each other.

The headline read, “I’m with stupid.” Now that is a New York value.

• • •

And here at home it appears that the Nevada Public Utilities Commission may take another stab at getting this solar energy thing right this week.

You may recall that the PUC just changed the rules about using solar energy on home rooftops by giving its client, NV Energy, a gift to be paid for not only by existing solar users but by abandoning forward-thinking policy toward renewable energy.

I have been using solar energy at my home for many years. OK, so I am biased. I am biased toward the idea that we have more sunshine in Southern Nevada than practically anyplace else on Earth. So if there is one place where we should be taking advantage of unlimited and free energy (after the expense of installing solar panels), Nevada should be leading the way.

Instead the PUC, all appointees of Gov. Brian Sandoval, decided the stated policy of Nevada to encourage the use of solar energy was “unfair” to NV Energy. Of course, the commissioners said they were acting for nonsolar-using ratepayers, but the real beneficiary of that decision is the energy monopoly.

The question has to be: How can a state and a governor that have brought us the Tesla battery factory in Reno and the new Faraday electric car manufacturing plant in North Las Vegas also be the state and governor that say no to a policy of encouraging environmentally friendly and free solar energy?

It may make cents for NV Energy and its many supporters in government circles, but it makes no sense in what has been dubbed the “Saudi Arabia of solar.“

I hope for the many thousands of customers who invested their money in solar because the law allowed and encouraged them to do so that the PUC gets it right this time.

I also hope that the state of Nevada gets its public policy right, too. We should be doing all we can to encourage clean, renewable solar energy.

For God’s sake, this is the 21st century!

Brian Greenspun is owner, publisher and editor of the Sun.