Thomas Friedman almost gets it right about the Abraham Accords

You know things are weird when Thomas Friedman is practically the only voice of relative sanity at the New York Times.

The left-leaning media has been trying very hard to ignore the Abraham Accords as a meaningless event from the Trump era. This is to placate the Israel hating contingent who have been positioning it as yet another manifestation of Zionist evil. 

Thomas Friedman, for all his faults, sees how big a deal the new peace deals are.

[S]omething big seems to be stirring. Unlike the peace breakthroughs between Israel and Egypt, Israel and Lebanon’s Christians and Israel and Jordan, which were driven from the top and largely confined there, the openings between Israel and the Gulf States — while initiated from the top to build an alliance against Iran — are now being driven even more from the bottom, by tourists, students and businesses....

If the Abraham Accords do thrive and broaden to include normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, we are talking about one of the most significant realignments in modern Middle East history, which for many decades was largely shaped by Great Power interventions and Arab-Israeli dynamics. Not anymore.

Today, “there are three powerful non-Arab actors in the region — Iran, Turkey and Israel — and they have each constructed their own regional axis,” argues Itamar Rabinovich, the Israeli Middle East historian, who just co-wrote “Syrian Requiem,” a smart history of the Syrian civil war. Those three axes, Rabinovich explains, are Turkey with Qatar and their proxy Hamas; Iran with Syria and Iran’s proxies running Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen; and Israel with the U.A.E., Bahrain and tacitly Saudi Arabia and Oman.

It’s the interactions of these three axes, says Rabinovich, that are really driving Middle East politics today. And because the U.A.E.-Israel axis brings together the most successful Arab state with the most successful non-Arab state, it’s radiating a lot of energy.

With Israel and the U.A.E., “what you are seeing are two ecosystems fusing together,” says Gidi Grinstein, head of Reut, the Israeli strategy institute. Israel is a society that for many years faced hostility from its neighbors and had no oil. “So, over the years, Israel learned to go from isolation and scarcity to abundance and global influence by developing its own explosive innovation economy in areas such as water, solar, cyber, military, medical, finance and agriculture.”

The U.A.E., by contrast, is transitioning from decades of oil abundance to an era of oil scarcity by building its own ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship in the same fields as Israel.

The U.A.E.’s population consists of one million citizens and nine million foreigners, most of them low-wage, non-unionized laborers from India and other parts of South Asia and the rest professionals largely from America, Europe, India and the Arab world. The U.A.E.’s growth strategy for the 21st century — of which the opening to Israel is a key part — is to become THE Arab model for modernity, a diversified economy, globalization and intra-religious tolerance.

To that end, in November the country announced a major liberalization of its Islamic personal laws — allowing unmarried couples to cohabitate, which, among other things, makes the U.A.E. more accepting of gay and lesbian people; criminalizing so-called honor killings of women who “shame” their male relatives — as well as made divorce laws much more equitable for women and loosened restrictions on alcohol.

The U.A.E. is still an absolute monarchy, and a multiparty democracy is not on the menu. But greater gender equality, a more open education system and religious pluralism are. It still has work to do in all those areas, though — witness the embarrassing saga around the leader of Dubai, whose daughter is reportedly being held hostage in her father’s palace. But the U.A.E.’s new social laws constitute a big leap forward in its quest to attract the talent needed for a non-oil economy.

All the neighbors are watching, and they are particularly watching how Iran and Saudi Arabia react.

If you are a Lebanese Shiite living in the poor southern suburbs of Beirut having to scramble every day to barter eggs for meat — as the economy teeters on collapse — you’re asking, Why are we stuck with Iran and its axis of failing proxies like Hezbollah, which just keep letting the past bury our future?

That is a dangerous question for Iran and Hezbollah. And more Lebanese are asking every day. 

The importance of the accords has been obvious to anyone who isn't saddled with a reflexive anti-Israel ideology. Which is exactly why articles like this have been few and far between in mainstream media. 

Friedman, being Friedman, still has his own baggage, still trying to resurrect vestiges of the Saudi peace plan that he relentlessly pushed in 2002. 

The U.A.E., Bahrain, Morocco and Saudi Arabia need to understand that they have more leverage now to influence Israeli-Palestinian relations than they realize. Israel does not want to lose them. Imagine if Saudi Arabia agreed to join the Abraham Accords, but only on the condition that it could open the Saudi Embassy to Israel in Israeli West Jerusalem while, at the same time, opening an embassy to the Palestinians in an Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem.

Just that one move would help preserve the possibility of a two-state deal, would revitalize the 2002 Saudi peace initiative and would further isolate Iran’s axis of failure. And Israel would find it very hard to reject.

Friedman still doesn't get that the Palestinians themselves have made the Palestinians irrelevant, and the Arab states no longer want to coddle them when they can't get their own act together, split between the old guard that wants to destroy Israel politically and the terrorists who still dream of destroying Israel militarily.  The Gulf states realized that Israel is not only a permanent part of the Middle East but it is an ally that they can have a mutually beneficial relationship with, and they are disgusted that Palestinians who could have taken advantage of that dynamic instead rejected it time after time - while demanding more money.

Nevertheless, Friedman does a good job here in laying out how earth shattering the new alliances are, and the Israel haters really cannot argue.

 

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Tom Friedman's fact-free column includes an antisemitic trope

Yesterday we were treated to another Thomas Friedman column in the New York Times where he repeats his fact-free memes, ignoring reality in the face of his world class expertise in fantasy:

Netanyahu is setting himself up to be a pivotal figure in Jewish history — the leader who burned the bridges to a two-state solution and to the Jewish diaspora at the same time.

... It worked perfectly to deflect the U.S. president from pressing the relevant questions: “Bibi, you win every debate, but meanwhile every day the separation of Israel from the Palestinians grows less likely, putting Israel on a ‘slippery slope toward apartheid,’ as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak recently warned. Where is your map? What are you going to do with 420,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank? Where is your imagination for how to reverse this trend that will inevitably lead to the end of Israel as a Jewish democratic state?”

 Friedman's favorite newspaper, Haaretz, only last month revealed exactly how far Netanyahu was willing to go for a two-state solution. It answered every question Friedman asks, in detail. It was Abbas who refused both the Israeli and American draft peace frameworks.

But that contradicts what Friedman knows in his heart. So he must ignore evidence and facts.

Note also that Friedman knows that he cannot actually argue with Netanyahu by saying Bibi wins every debate. Obviously, what Friedman knows in his heart is more important than actually being able to argue it effectively.

It gets worse:

I won’t waste much time on Bibi’s deft manipulation of President Trump to shift all the blame onto the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas for the absence of progress in the peace process. Bibi masterfully distracted Trump with a shiny object — a video of extreme statements by Abbas (with no mention of extremist actions by Israeli settlers).

Let's assume that some "settlers" really do perform extreme actions. Friedman is postulating two things that are, simply, stupid:

1) The actual antisemitic and pro-terror statements of the political head of the Palestinians are not as important than the actions of people who are acting against the laws of the State of Israel.

2) Israel must provide a balanced view of itself to the world, showing both its good and bad sides when engaging in diplomacy. This is a unique requirement not demanded of any other nation on the planet.

It's even worse.  Friedman, although obviously not an antisemite, is engaging in antisemitic tropes. This paragraph comes very close to saying that the Jews control the White House. Undoubtedly that was not his intention but there is very little difference between him saying Netanyahu is manipulating Trump and antisemites saying Jews control Washington.

Jews are very sensitive to antisemitism. Yet no one seems to be upset at Friedman's statement here. The ADL is never going to issue a statement against someone they agree with so often. This statement of Friedman's in the most prestigious US newspaper  is arguably far worse than the many topics that engage people's time (like websites that fail to list Israel in their list of countries or retailers that resell anti-Israel T-shirts.)

He gets a pass because he is a superstar  to liberal American Jews and because his statement is as much about Bibi's diplomatic skill as it is about Trump's supposed naivete.

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Hey Thomas Friedman, who is dividing world Jewry?

Thomas Friedman has yet another self-righteous piece of stupidity in the New York Times.

 [President Trump,] you may be the last man standing between Israel and a complete, self-inflicted disaster for the Jewish state and the Jewish people.

Let me explain it in terms you’ll appreciate: golf.

Did you happen to follow the story involving Barack Obama and Woodmont Country Club? Woodmont is the mostly Jewish golf club in Maryland, just outside D.C., where Obama played as a guest several times during his presidency. Near the end of his term it was rumored that Obama would seek membership there.

Then he clashed with Netanyahu over Obama’s refusal to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s relentless expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Shortly thereafter, The Washington Post reported that a Woodmont member, Faith Goldstein, had sent a private email to the club’s president declaring that Obama “is not welcome at Woodmont” because of his U.N. vote.

It was appalling to think that Jews, who for so many years were themselves excluded from joining certain country clubs, would consider excluding our first black president, especially for his acting on the basis of what half of Israel believes — that continued expansion of Jewish settlements into Palestinian-populated zones of the West Bank will eventually make the separation of Israelis and Palestinians in a two-state solution impossible, and thereby threaten Israel’s character as a Jewish and democratic state.

Fortunately, in the end, the decent members of Woodmont prevailed. As The Washington Post reported, the club’s president, Barry Forman, invited the Obamas to join, declaring that “it is all the more important that Woodmont be a place where people of varying views and beliefs can enjoy fellowship.”

Why am I telling you this story? Because Israel is getting closer every day to wiping out any possibility of a two-state solution. Just last week, Netanyahu’s government pushed through the Knesset a shameful new law declaring that wildcat Jewish settlers who had illegally set up caravans on private West Bank Palestinian land, and erected their own settlement there, will have their settlements legalized, although the Palestinian landowners have to be compensated.

First Friedman essentially calls Jews racist, even though President Obama's race had zero to do with the country club story. (He also completely misrepresents the "Regulation Law" pretending that Israel now allows "wildcat Jewish settlers" to just grab land without checking if it is privately owned.) And calling Jews racist seems to be the only reason for Friedman to tell over this story, because the only tie he brings between the country club story and his usual anti-settlement screed is this:

I don’t expect Israel to just up and leave the West Bank without a Palestinian partner for a secure peace, which Israel doesn’t now have. But legalizing this land grab by settlers deep in Palestinian areas is not an act of security — it will actually create security problems. It is an act of moral turpitude that will make it even harder to ever find that Palestinian partner and will undermine the moral foundations of the state. This is about right versus wrong.

And if that is where the debate goes, what happened at Woodmont golf club will happen everywhere. That debate will tear apart virtually every synagogue, Jewish organization and Jewish group on every campus in America, and around the world. Israel will divide world Jewry.

It isn't Israel that is dividing world Jewry, it is the Thomas Friedmans of the world who claim that Israel has no rights in its homeland to begin with. That's why he equates his fake Jewish racists with Jews who believe that there are actual legal and moral reasons why Judea and Samaria should not be Judenfrei.

Who is more divisive  than a smug columnist who declares every Jew who disagrees with him to be the morally equivalent to racists? How much can Tom Friedman care about Jewish unity when he makes such a claim?

While Friedman pays lip service to the fact that Palestinians aren't a peace partner, he lays the blame on Israel by saying that only Israel is killing the two state solution - despite the fact that Israel has lready accepted and offered the Palestinians a state multiple times.

Let's put this in terms Friedman might be able to understand.

Here is the top of the PLO official webpage, today:

I'll increase the size of the logo in case your reading glasses aren't on:

Where, exactly, is Israel on this PLO map of their ersatz state?

If Friedman wants to unite Jews, he should write about how the "moderate" Palestinians have never budged from their position that the "peace process" is a Trojan horse to destroy Israel. That's something all Jews should be aware of, but they certainly wouldn't know it from reading Friedman's columns.

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Best takedown of Tom Friedman comes from a grocer

Thomas Friedman wrote in a NYT op-ed last week:

If I were an Israeli grocer, just following this deal on the radio, I’d hate it for enshrining Iran’s right to enrich uranium, since Iran regularly cheated its way to expanding that capability, even though it had signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. After all, Iran holds “death to Israel” marches and in 2006 sponsored a conference to promote denial of the Holocaust. Moreover, Iran’s proxy, the Lebanese Shiite militia, Hezbollah, in 2006, started an unprovoked war with Israel, and when Israel retaliated against Hezbollah military and civilian targets, Hezbollah fired thousands of Iranian-supplied rockets all across Israel. No — no matter the safeguards — I as an Israeli grocer would reject this deal from my gut.

An Israeli grocer responds:

"You tell Friedman that this grocer was a military officer, who knows how to fight a war, and that I fought with my head and not my gut. You tell Friedman that as a 'makolet' owner, I know that I will give credit to a customer who pays his bills, but will demand money up front from someone who has a record of cheating. And you tell Friedman that as a kind person, I will give charity to a person who is economically suffering, but if it's obvious that the poor person will spend the money on drugs, I'd prefer to bring him into my grocery and give him some basic foods for free, but I would not just give him money to spend as he wishes on dangerous things. You tell Friedman that I think these negotiators could have used some Israeli grocers at the negotiating table with Iran."

Friedman's arrogance, ignorance and condescension, all revealed in one paragraph.

(h/t Norman)

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How Israel helped the apartheid-era blacks of South Africa

One of the supreme ironies of those who claim Israel is "an apartheid state" can be seen from this 1997 article, by David Kaplan, recently rediscovered, which describes Israel's involvement in helping the blacks of South Africa during the apartheid era.

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That it has been doing so without any fuss or fanfare may explain why so few Israelis or South Africans know about it. A closely kept secrete, the programme has been running since the dark days of Apartheid.On the day that a delegation of the South African Zionist Federation in Israel (Telfed) visited the campus, the atmosphere amongst the participants was jubilant. Met with traditional South African dance and music, the 28th group of participants was celebrating the near completion of their course with a farewell cocktail party.Among the veterans of the Beit Berl programme are over two dozen mayors of South African towns and cities including the present mayors of the country’s two largest cities, Johannesburg and Cape Town, as well as those from smaller towns like Randburg, George, and Grahamstown. To that list, we can now add Port Alfred’s mayor, Eric Khuluwe. He tells us,

“Port Alfred is growing at an enormous pace as people are streaming in from the rural areas, seeking employment. The job situation is bleak and we are finding it an uphill battle to provide basic civic services. We have sixty-one local councils in my district and we need to involve as many people on the local level as possible in decision-making. This is the policy of the ANC government and is indicative of the nature of our democracy that empowers people to determine their own destiny. The Beit Berel three-week intensive course was excellent; it widened my horizons and provided practical guidance on team-management. I feel far better equipped to return to my city now and impact on its future. “

Since 1986,over twenty South African Members of Parliament, as well as hundreds of local government officials and ministers of provincial councils have passed through Beit Berel. Patrick Adams, a Coloured man in charge of Emergency & Disaster Management for the Cape Metropolitan Council in Cape Town, says,

“The course was very professional. I am in charge of Reconstruction & Development programmes in the Western Cape region, and my team is currently immersed in running numerous housing and community projects. Not only have I learned a new dimension of problem solving, but I have also been exposed to the problems in Israel and enjoy a greater understanding of the issues here.”

What seems routine today all began in the undercover world of the early 80s when clandestine contacts took place between progressive Israelis and the anti-apartheid forces in South Africa. The local powerhouse behind this project is Professor Shimshon Zelniker, who has masterfully manoeuvered between South Africans, Americans and Israelis, a fascinating amalgam of colourful characters including Hollywood stars, Jewish politicos, civil rights activists, freedom fighters and donors.Zeinicker, a professor of political science at Beit Berel and at UCLA, was a member of Shimon Peres’ advisory team in 1982.

“I was given responsibility for third-world policies, and my first mission was making positive contact with leaders of the struggle in South Africa”

The players in this unfolding theatre of clandestine operations spread across three continents. In South Africa, Clive Menell of Anglovaal paved the way by bringing on board Archbishop Benjamin Tutu. Soon other internationally renown personalities like Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden joined the circle, as did Ethel Kennedy, who twisted Tutu’s arm into meeting with the Israelis.This was the turning point, for what followed was a secret meeting in South Africa between a delegation of Israelis representing anti-apartheid sentiment and prominent Blacks, such as Albertina Sisulu and Ntatho and Sally Motlana.

“We came out of the meeting with a clear mandate for action. Armed with an understanding that there would be no political manifestos and no pictures of politicians kissing each other, but a programme geared solely to assisting in the struggle, we approached Jews in the United States for support. In Israel, Yossi Beilin, Alon Liel, Ruth Baron and myself, among others, spearheaded the programme to be called the Israeli and South African Centres for International Cooperation” (ICIC) and would be based at Beit Berel."

CLANDESTINE RECRUITMENT
The early days saw us

“pounding the pavements in South Africa for some twenty months recruiting support and participants. The success of the operation was predicated on our ability to keep it under wraps.”

Asked how that was possible, Zelniker replied, “You know how porcupines makes love? Very carefully”.

The first group of twenty arrived in 1986 representing three constituencies – Soweto, the Cape Coloured community and Women’s groups.

“We brought in the Histadrut to help in the initial training,” said Zelniker. “After the success of that first group, it was easier to obtain more funding. We approached very prominent, radically anti-Israel, Black leaders in the U.S. and received their blessing. Individual Jews donated large sums of money in the full knowledge that they would receive no recognition, and the American Government very quietly also assisted us in funding.”

Zelniker’s shuttling to and fro between Israel and South Africa was not without risk.

“My associate Ruth Baron was also detained. There were many ways the South African Authorities could have derailed the programme and they made it crystal clear that physical intimidation could be escalated. We were worried about the graduates being whisked away on their return from Israel for interrogation and intimidation, which on occasion did happen.”

Despite all the harassment, including infiltration by the South African Bureau of State Security (BOSS), the programme flourished.At one point in the late 1980s, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times bumped into a group of Black trainees in Tel Aviv. He thought he had uncovered the scoop of the century – ANC and AZAPO forge secret ties with Apartheid’s ‘ally’!

“He telephoned me and said,‘this is sensational. What’s it all about?” When I explained to him the need for secrecy I thankfully managed to persuade him that the programme and South Africa’s future were far more important than his ego. He dropped the story.”

It was only a year or so after Mandela’s release that the programme’s profile entered the public domain.

“In 1993 we introduced a rural community development programme in the former homelands, and it was then that we came out into the open,” reveals Zelniker.

Today the programme has wide appeal throughout South Africa. Another participant in the present programme is Thabisile Msezane from Boksburg, who runs a day care-centre. Thabasile explains, “In the Boksburg area there were no schools and children loitered aimlessly in the streets wasting away their lives. Each day I noticed a little boy roaming around the shopping centre where I bought milk. He would ask me for money to buy food. I thought,

“What kind of future does this child have?”As I was starting a day care centre, I wanted to enroll this kid and so went in search of his parents. I was directed to a shabby compound behind a farmhouse, where I found his them. While speaking to the boy’s father, the child spread the word amongst his friends telling them he was going to school. By the end of my conversation, I had enrolled another twelve children. Today I have 150 pupils, some of whom walk a distance of twelve kilometres to get to the school.”

Trevor Ngwame, a councillor from Johannesburg, was all praise for the Beit Berel programme.

“We are dealing with the legacy of apartheid – no jobs, lack of housing and poor education. My approach is to offer people hope, and motivate them to organize themselves. We have seen how successful Israelis have been in overcoming insurmountable odds.Like South Africa, this country has never been short of problems and yet it manages to advance amazingly. This is what we want to do. Of course, Israel’s problems are very different, and in the South African context we have to ensure that people see a light at the end of the tunnel. I am not naïve to believe that matters are going to fall into place overnight. While the government must deliver the goods, the people also have to rise up to the challenge and they need the tools to it. This programme has been a tremendous help in this regard.

Zelniker concludes, “As a Jew I have learnt that liberation is not simply about taking the people out of the ghetto. It means taking the ghetto out of the people. To say that I am proud of this programme would be an understatement.”

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The peerless cluelessness of Thomas Friedman

A reader who commented on my Thomas Friedman article last week at The Algemeiner pointed me to a stupefyingly ludricous passage in Friedman's celebrated book, "From Beirut to Jerusalem," pp 126-127:

Ariel Sharon never sent Yasir Arafat flowers.

Whatever one thinks of the former Israeli general and Defense Minister, Sharon did not play games with his enemies. He killed them. After a few years in Beirut, I came to understand a little why the Jews had a state and the Palestinians didn't. The European Jews who built Israel came out of a culture of sharp edges and right angles. They were cold, hard men who always understood the difference between success and failure, and between words and deeds. Because the Jews were always a nation apart, they developed their own autonomous institutions and had to rely on their own deep tribal sense of solidarity. This gave them a certain single-mindedness of purpose. They would never settle for a substitute homeland; life for them was not just another Mediterranean life cycle or fatalistic shrug.

The single-mindedness of the European Zionists also had a certain ruthless aspect to it. They emerged from ghettos in which they were never invited by the outside world to drink coffee. They were never part of a Middle Eastern kaleidoscope, like Lebanon, where today's enemy could be tomorrow's friend. For the Jews coming out of Europe, today's enemy was tomorrow's enemy. The world was divided into two: the Jews and the goyim, or Gentiles. The Arabs, for the Zionists, fell into two subsets of goyim—agents and enemies. Agents you ordered and enemies you killed.

The rhythm of life in the Arab world was always different. Men in Arab societies always tended to bend more; life there always moved in ambiguous semicircles, never right angles. The religious symbols of the West are the cross and the Jewish star—both of which are full of sharp, angled turns. The symbol of the Muslim East is the crescent moon—a wide, soft, ambiguous arc. In Arab society there was always some way to cushion failure with rhetoric and enable the worst of enemies to sit down and have coffee together, maybe even send each other bouquets.

This passage is incomprehensibly idiotic on so many levels. Besides the obvious - do I really have to point out how inane his point about religious symbols is? -  Friedman is generalizing his experiences in relatively cosmopolitan and liberal Beirut to the Arab world as a whole.

Sure, Arabs love to have coffee - but the idea that this means they accept compromise with Jews is the exact inversion of the truth.

No one represents Friedman's disgusting characterization of bigoted, menacing, trigger-happy European Jews more than Menachem Begin. You know - the person who traded territory that was double the size of Israel itself for a piece of paper.

The real Arab world is a place where antisemitism is mainstream and where rejectionism of Israel  is absolute even in countries that have "peace treaties" with Israel. It is the Arabs who have announced boycotts of Jews since the 1920s, Arabs who stated the "three no's" of Khartoum, Arabs who accuse even Hamas terrorists of being too pro-Israel.

Even in Friedman's wonderful, tolerant Beirut, we see absolute rejection of anything that tastes remotely Zionist.

It is the Arabs who utterly reject normalization with Israel, and those hardheaded European Jews who want to be accepted in the Middle East. (The Jews from the Arab world tend to be more hawkish, because they understand the mentality of the Arabs a lot better than Friedman does.)

Oh, I think its also a fair bet that moderate, compromising Arafat never sent Ariel Sharon flowers either.

How can anyone take Friedman seriously after reading trash like this?

(h/t Gary)

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NYT's Tom Friedman endorses Abbas' intransigence

Yet more idiocy from Thomas Friedman in the guise of being a concerned observer:

Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel is always wondering why his nation is losing support and what the world expects of a tiny country surrounded by implacable foes. I can't speak for the world, but I can speak for myself. I have no idea whether Israel has a Palestinian or Syrian partner for a secure peace that Israel can live with. But I know this: With a more democratic and populist Arab world in Israel's future, and with Israel facing the prospect of having a minority of Jews permanently ruling over a majority of Arabs - between Israel and the West Bank, which could lead to Israel being equated with apartheid South Africa all over the world - Israel needs to use every ounce of its creativity to explore ways to securely cede the West Bank to a Palestinian state.

I repeat: It may not be possible. But Netanyahu has not spent his time in office using Israel's creativity to find ways to do such a deal. He has spent his time trying to avoid such a deal - and everyone knows it. No one is fooled.

Israel is in a dangerous situation. For the first time in its history, it has bad relations with all three regional superpowers - Turkey, Iran and Egypt - plus rapidly eroding support in Europe. America is Israel's only friend today. These strains are not all Israel's fault by any means, especially with Iran, but Israel will never improve ties with Egypt, Turkey and Europe without a more serious effort to safely get out of the West Bank.

The only way for Netanyahu to be taken seriously again is if he risks some political capital and actually surprises people. Bibi keeps hinting that he is ready for painful territorial compromises involving settlements. Fine, put a map on the table. Let's see what you're talking about. Or how about removing the illegal West Bank settlements built by renegade settler groups against the will of Israel's government. Either move would force Israel's adversaries to take Bibi seriously and would pressure Palestinians to be equally serious.

Once again, Friedman tries to sound even-handed - he understands Israel's precarious position, he doesn't know if Israel has a peace partner, he knows that the situation is complex and fluid.

Yet he does not ever mention that all of the intransigence is from the Palestinian Authority. He doesn't point out that even the dovish Israeli governments got nowhere with Abbas, even with specific maps and plans.

To Friedman, there is but one goal: Israel caves to Palestinian Arab territorial demands. And if the PA refuses to make a deal, then Israel must give more, and more, and more until they do.

In Friedman's fantasy world, once Israel shows it is "serious," then somehow some magic pressure will appear that will force the PA to respond. Unfortunately this has never happened. In fact, Abbas' position hardened not during Netanyahu's time in office - but during Olmert's!

What is particularly galling is that Friedman, like J-Street, couches his calls for Israel and Israel alone to make concessions as if he is doing it out of love for Israel. This is garbage. If he loves Israel, he needs to wake up and use his bully pulpit to expose the Palestinian Arab intransigence and constant calls to destroy Israel via "return" - a demand that has not changed one bit since 1948. He needs to expose the incitement in Palestinian Arab society. He needs to expose the fact that the PA has not changed its position one bit since 1988 - and brags about it. He needs to point out that previous Israeli creativity to reach a peace agreement was met not with flexibility but with more demands. All of this is well-known, even to a know-it-all like Thomas Friedman.

That's what someone who cares for Israel would do.

UPDATE: The Islamic Jihad newspaper "Palestine Today" loved this column, quoting it extensively. Which is exactly what one would expect them to do with something written by such a concerned friend of Israel, right?

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Tom Friedman's latest stupidity

From Saturday's Thomas Friedman NYT op-ed:

If you look into the different “shop” windows across the Middle East, it is increasingly apparent that the Arab uprisings are bringing to a close the era of “Middle East Wholesale” and ushering in the era of “Middle East Retail.” Everyone is going to have to pay more for their stability.

Let’s start with Israel. For the last 30 years, Israel enjoyed peace with Egypt wholesale — by having peace with just one man, Hosni Mubarak. That sale is over. Today, post-Mubarak, to sustain the peace treaty with Egypt in any kind of stable manner, Israel is going to have to pay retail. It is going to have to make peace with 85 million Egyptians. The days in which one phone call by Israel to Mubarak could shut down any crisis in relations are over.

Friedman has got to seriously stop thinking that he is God's gift to journalism and wake up from his self-congratulatory coma. Only then can we start to hope that he will clear his brain from years of accumulated flotsam and jetsam and start to see what's really going on.

Mubarak did not do Israel's bidding as Egyptian leader, and neither did Sadat. They did America's bidding. They wanted to continue the scam of being considered "moderate" Arab allies of the US and they wanted to continue to receive billions in aid. But they did nothing that Israel wanted them to do.

The proof, as Friedman well knows but purposefully ignores, is the nature of the peace treaty. For three decades, Israel always tried to normalize relations with Egypt, and Egypt always did everything it could to maintain the coldest peace possible. Israeli tourists went to Egypt, Israel tried to do cultural exchanges, Israel pushed for closer economic and scientific ties. Only when the US pressured Egypt did the Egyptian leadership agree, and that didn't happen often.

Now Friedman says that it is Israel that has to try harder?

It gets worse:

Amr Moussa, the outgoing head of the Arab League and the front-runner in polls to succeed Mubarak as president when Egypt holds elections in November, just made that clear in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. Regarding Israel, Moussa said: “Mubarak had a certain policy. It was his own policy, and I don’t think we have to follow this. We want to be a friend of Israel, but it has to have two parties. It is not on Egypt to be a friend. Israel has to be a friend, too.”

Moussa owes a great deal of his popularity in Egypt to his tough approach to Israel. I hope he has a broader vision. It is noteworthy that in the decade he led the Arab League, he spent a great deal of time jousting with Israel and did virtually nothing to either highlight or deal with the conclusions of the 2002 U.N. Arab Human Development Report — produced by a group of Arab scholars led by an Egyptian — that said the Arab people are suffering from three huge deficits: a deficit of freedom, a deficit of knowledge and deficit of women’s empowerment.

The current Israeli government, however, shows little sign of being prepared for peace retail.

After Friedman points out that Amr Moussa is an anti-Israel deologue, Friedman again says that this means that Israel has to try harder! Even though, he himself acknowledges, that Moussa built his career on demonizing Israel.

Friedman later writes:

Alas, though, the main strategy of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas will be to drag Israel into the Arab story — as a way of deflecting attention away from how these anti-democratic regimes are repressing their own people and to further delegitimize Israel...

Yet only two paragraphs earlier, Friedman admitted that Amr Moussa does the exact same thing!

So the likely new Egyptian leadership is no more likely to avoid using Israel as a scapegoat to deflect its own problems than the old one, and it is already showing signs of acting the way that Friedman notes that Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran act.

All these facts are in this very column, yet Friedman cannot connect the dots which add up to:

"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

To Friedman, this doesn't mean that the US must redouble its efforts to turn the so-called Arab Spring into a real chance for true freedom and democracy, of governments that are mature enough to face their real problems transparently and tackle them. Not at all. To him, Arab governments acting like teenage bullies must be met with more Israeli concessions, more pandering to the dictators, more effort to please those who cannot ever be pleased.

Three days in a row of inane, idiotic New York Times articles - and I don't even read the paper.

Thanks, David G, for sending me this trash, knowing I cannot resist responding :)

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Thomas Friedman's fantasy - and Egyptian reality

My latest post on NewsRealBlog looks at Thomas Friedman column in today's NYT.

Excerpt:

Friedman has fallen hook, line and sinker for the Arab lie that they give the West that Arabs are only anti-Israel because of the “occupation.” In Egypt, it is pure, old-fashioned Jew-hatred that drives anti-Israel sentiment.

And that Jew-hatred is not state-sponsored. Egypt has worked to publicly give the impression that it treasured its Jewish minority and history. It recently renovated historic synagogues and annually allows Jewish pilgrims to visit the gravesite of Rabbi Yaakov Abuhatzeira every January.

While some of the Egyptian media will sometimes have anti-Semitic articles and TV shows, it does not appear that this is coming from the state — but from the people themselves, including Egypt’s so-called liberal opposition.

Read the whole thing.

(h/t SoccerDad for alerting me to the Friedman article)

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Thomas Friedman's version of "truth"

From Thomas Friedman's column in the NYT:

I’m in Tahrir Square, and of all the amazing things one sees here the one that strikes me most is a bearded man who is galloping up and down, literally screaming himself hoarse, saying: “I feel free! I feel free!”

In a region where the truth and truth-tellers have so long been smothered under the crushing weight of oil, autocracy and religious obscurantism, suddenly the Arab world has a truly free space — a space that Egyptians themselves, not a foreign army, have liberated — and the truth is now gushing out of here like a torrent from a broken hydrant.

...This is not a religious event here, and the Muslim Brotherhood is not running the show. This is an Egyptian event. That is its strength and its weakness — no one is in charge and everyone in the society is here....

You almost never hear the word “Israel,” and the pictures of “martyrs” plastered around the square are something rarely seen in the Arab world — Egyptians who died fighting for their own freedom not against Israel.

I have no doubt that Friedman is reporting what he is seeing and understanding in English, but he was not in Tahrir Square last Friday - when hundreds of thousands prayed together:

It is folly to deny the religious dimension here. Egypt's "seculars" are far more religious than Western secularists.

As far as no mention of Israel, John Rosenthal uncovered - just by doing regular Internet searches - many anti-Israel and anti-semitic messages at the protests:

And just today, the Palestine Times paper discusses some of the Arabic slogans that can be heard in Tahrir Square, including "Leave Mubarak, Tel Aviv is waiting for you!" and "Mubarak is a stooge selling gas to Israel."

One other joke going around the protests is that if you want to get Mubarak to leave, you have to speak Hebrew to him so he understands.

If Friedman wants to report the truth, just parachuting onto the scene for a day and relying on locals to translate is not the way to be a reporter. But his ego is so huge now that he is convinced that his limited perception is representative of what is going on and he fearlessly reports things as true when it is easy to find proof that he is missing large parts of the story.

(h/t SoccerDad)

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