EDITORIAL: Drop Site News
The Free Press, an American news organisation founded by the Zionist editor-in-chief of CBS News, Bari Weiss, and now owned by David Ellison, reported recently that the Trump administration had launched an investigation into Trita Parsi, one of America’s most prominent critics of the US-Israeli war on Iran.
The aim is to revoke his legal permanent residency, which he has held for some 15 years — and deport him.
In the wake of the article, the US State Department took the unusual step of denying that any such investigation exists; the article came after pro-Israel activist Laura Loomer has repeatedly pressured the Trump administration to deport Parsi, suggesting that the lobby is trying to produce an investigation where none exists.
- READ MORE: Trita Parsi on the US-Iran peace deal and being threatened with deportation
- US, Iran set to hold talks in Switzerland; Israel kills 16 in Lebanon
- Other Trita Parsi articles
- Other Gaza, Iran and Lebanon reports
That The Free Press would participate in this campaign is as shameful as it is expected. Anyone who supports an actual free press must speak out now.
The attack on Trita Parsi, co-founder of the think tank Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a well-respected and widely known advocate for a more restrained American foreign policy, is intended to stifle dissent.
If this debacle in Iran taught us anything, it should be that launching a new war without public debate portends catastrophe. Trita Parsi’s critics are calling him an enemy of the United States, but if the country had listened to him, we would be much better off today.
Best of being American
Trita truly represents the best of what it means to be an American with his courage to speak the truth no matter whether that truth is popular in the moment.
But it doesn’t even matter if he was right. In America, we believe freedom of speech is sacrosanct.
At Drop Site News, the American Conservative, and Breaking Points, we don’t agree on everything, but we do agree that without freedom of expression, without the freedom to criticize our government, all the other freedoms will fall by the wayside.
Trita Parsi on the deportation threat. Video: Democracy Now!
We stand with Trita Parsi and we hope you will too. Even if you don’t agree with what he says, we must defend his right to say it.
Petitions are already circulating with tens of thousands of signatures demanding that Parsi be deported.
No sentiment could be less American. But freedom can’t rest on the paper it is written on.
We as a people, right, left, and center, must insist it remain in force.
Republished from Drop Site News.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.