RISCH: Serves Israel, not Idaho

After voting Republican for forty years, I have decided to vote for Todd Achilles, the independent candidate or Idaho’s US Senate seat. The reason for my change is based on Jim Risch’s allegiance to a foreign country that is performing genocide.

Israel claims to be a Jewish democracy. The term “Jewish democracy” is an oxymoron as a term like “Lutheran democracy” would be. If it is a political body that is strictly for people of a certain religion, it is not a democracy. Furthermore, to exist it must operate in one of two ways, which I will refer to as “Plan A” and “Plan B.” To avoid the accusations of antisemitism, I will use the fiction of a “Lutheran democracy” to illustrate how these plans must be resorted to for the political body to work.

In Plan A, the Lutherans would be faced with the challenge of perhaps not having a majority and therefore be unable to rule as a Lutheran entity. This could simply be resolved by not allowing non-Lutherans to take part in the “democracy.” Plan A is usually referred to as an apartheid system. Plan A was used in South Africa and ancient Sparta for example. In Sparta the citizens ruled over the helots who had no rights and lived as virtual slaves.

Plan A always eventually fails because the ruling class must always guard against the helot’s need to achieve “self-determination.” 

Whereas Plan A was an unstable apartheid system, Plan B promises a means to find peace and stability. 

Netanyahu has taken Israel from Plan A to Plan B with the help of Jim Risch, who always votes to give Idaho taxpayers’ money to Israel, while Israel, in turn, has made sure that some of that money goes back to Jim Risch.

ROBERT MELDAHL

Coeur d’Alene