Ugly news about the American discourse, and the role of the Israel lobby inside liberal institutions. A longtime editor at a public radio station in Baltimore has been fired in part because he questioned US pandering to Israel. David Zurawik reports in the Baltimore Sun:

Sunni Khalid, managing news editor at WYPR-FM, has been dropped by the public radio station after more than nine years on the job there.

Khalid, a former Baltimore Sun reporter, had been on probation in February for comments he posted on the Facebook page of a friend questioning the influence of Israel on American politics.

“I, for one, have had enough of this pandering before the Israeli regime,” he wrote. “The war-mongering toward Iran has, once again, distracted the world from Israel’s brutal military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.”