Thomas Friedman, the Demonization of Israel, and the Assault Against Josh Block
The attacks started with a column on the leftist website Salon, where Justin Elliott argued that Block had accumulated anti-Israel statements from liberal writers and given them out to a neoconservative journalist group. The story is told well in The Week by David Frum, who notes that the real story is how “two of the best-funded, most prominent, and most important liberal institutions in Washington, D.C.,” part of “mainstream, liberal America,” the Center for American Progress and Media Matters for America, both have members who are accusing Israel’s defenders of being guilty of “dual loyalty,” the old charge of anti-Semites.
Frum links to a Washington Post report that the two think tanks are considering severing ties with Block, precisely because he has exposed real anti-Semitic attacks coming from liberal Democrats. Block is a self-proclaimed centrist Democrat, and an unabashed defender of Israel and its ties with the United States. As Greg Sargent of the Post reported, Block’s fate “will be a big deal to people in left-leaning foreign policy circles in Washington.” If he is forced out of his affiliation, it means that to defend Israel is now no longer kosher in intellectual and liberal policy-making circles in Washington, D.C.
As Frum aptly puts it, the real issue is “a referendum on whether it is more unacceptable inside today’s liberal Washington to use the language of anti-Semitism — or to protest the language of anti-Semitism.”
What one has to do is to put together the attacks against Block with Friedman’s unprecedented column, in which our nation’s leading foreign policy pundit reaches his lowest point yet. Steven Rothman, a Democratic congressman from New Jersey, made this point to Jennifer Rubin, a PJM and Commentary alumnus now with the Washington Post:
Thomas Friedman’s defamation against the vast majority of Americans who support the Jewish State of Israel, in his New York Times opinion piece today, is scurrilous, destructive and harmful to Israel and her advocates in the US. Mr. Friedman is not only wrong, but he’s aiding and abetting a dangerous narrative about the US-Israel relationship and its American supporters.
I gave Prime Minister Netanyahu a standing ovation, not because of any nefarious lobby, but because it is in America’s vital national security interests to support the Jewish State of Israel and it is right for Congress to give a warm welcome to the leader of such a dear and essential ally. Mr. Friedman owes us all an apology.
Rep. Rothman’s statement makes it clear why that liberal member of Congress, a Jewish Democrat, supports Israel. It also reveals that Congress is at present firm in its understanding that Israel is not only America’s best ally, but that our relationship with it is primary for our national security.
What is dangerous, therefore, is the new current of anti-Israel agitation coming from the intellectual liberal community, made up of self-proclaimed “progressive” Democrats who are trying to move Congress to adopt their own animosity towards the Jewish state as Democratic policy.
As an unnamed Democratic aide on the Hill told Rubin, there is “genuine, bipartisan support for Israel that reflects America’s heartland.” It is the new liberal/left intellectuals in the liberal think tanks that are now leading the charge against Israel. Clearly, Thomas Friedman has become the most important outfront member of this group. It is they, however, who are out of touch with the American people. One must ask them, do they really want Republicans to be the only political party in our country standing firm with Israel?
Some day when the Obama Khalidi tape is released we will have a better understanding of the current Democratic party’s anti-Israel shift.
According to Mearsheimer and Walt, Thomas Friedman is himself a representative of the selfsame “Israel Lobby.” Funny, huh?
No doubt this is why Friedman has openly signed on with the Israel-haters: He’s covering his tush and protecting his seat at the Special Table, between the wide receiver and the second-prettiest cheerleader. Maybe now that he’s made a public gift of his integrity, they’ll let him sit by the quarterback and the cheer captain on Tuesdays!
Agreed. Tom Friedman is, to revive an old but apropos term, a court Jew. He may have sung the words, but the Obama administration wrote the score.
I read the column and could detect neither anti-Semitism or vileness. In fact it seemed a rather reasoned discourse that provided needed context as far as the Right in Israel goes. I would say that obvious ethnocentrism while at the same time claiming a conspicuous lack of same is its own problem.
Take the population of Jews in America and Israel together and you have greater New York’s size. This does not comprise America and the emphasis on a combined 13 million, only half of who are Americans in a country of 300 million does seem undue. Greater good. I like the sound of that better.
You wanna be pals, let’s be pals but I’m not Jewish and I have other fish to fry so let’s fry ‘em together and compare passports. Mine has no religious affiliation. Friedman’s remark about Wisc. was true as far as it goes. Yes, in general they’re brainwashed politically correct pedagogues by default but there is also balance and proportion that far from Tel Aviv that has its own priorities.
So, in essence, you agree with Friedman’s statement that “That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby”?
No, I disagree that saying so constitutes vile, anti-Semitism. This self-hating Jew stuff has got to stop. It is no substitute for debate and is its own demonization. If one has a case, bring it. Assuming someone disagrees with you because they are either a moron or a racist or self-deluded is wrong. No one can read minds like that and assuming one knows a person better than they know themselves is arrogant.
Sometimes circumstances force us to use our judgement and instincts as a final arbiter but I’d like to see more reason and less assumption. I can prove Leftist political correctness is a delusion by simply pointing to real results in a real world since the Left also uses cheap psychology to explain why a team lost a game so to speak; I just have to point to the score – that’s real. You can not prove Friedman is a self-hating, useful idiot by simple disagreement on an issue that is extremely complex and lasting for decades.
David Innes did not specify the dispute that has lasted for decades. See http://clarespark.com/2009/09/11/oil-politics-and-obamas-view-of-israeli-history/. As for antisemitism, which he disavows, see my compendium of the sources of the problem–one that is not taught in the schools or revealed in the media: http://clarespark.com/2010/11/14/the-abcs-of-antisemitism/. Upwardly mobile Jews have adjusted to American life by remaining silent in the face of the larger silence about what is, and what is not, antisemitism or less violent forms of Jew-hatred.
I was of course referring to the long running conflict between Popeye and Bluto for supremacy vis-a-vis olive oil in the West Bank. What the heck conflict did you think I was talking about?
And no I couldn’t decode Obama’s Jew-hate in those particular passages and your theory as to the nature of the conflict is an over generalized projection far wide of the mark for me without an ounce of nuance.
Were you saying I disavow anti-Semitism? Where did I write that and and more importantly why would I write it since there is ample evidence of anti-Semitism in the world. I merely don’t think someone’s reasoned opinion, especially by a Jewish guy, meets the standard.
As a substitute for debating other Jewish people, those people are portrayed as self-hating and so therefore not really Jews and so capable of anti-Semitism in a leap of logic that is monumental in its stupidity and ability to induce a need for therapy in people one doesn’t even know. For me it’s the equivalent of the fundamental argument behind the glib nonsense of almost every black American writer on the Left which is: White People Bad, Black People Good.
Your last paragraph about upwardly mobile Jews is a simplistic oil change mostly fallen to the ground and again slapped onto at least tens of thousands of people you’ve never met and who have no faces or names.
A good argument is to show evidence of an over arching philosophy by your opponents if you want to point fingers and with a lot of names and quotes that are very similar and with no decoder ring needed. Obama can be taken down over Israel but not in that way. You don’t have to dig for quotes about Israel but about his fundamental method of assigning morality by race since he makes little secret of it.
You’re not going to catch out Obama saying things about Israel but you will find him doing so by exaggerating the moral and intellectual qualities of Muslims with inaccurate and retro versions of history and that is where most people have chosen to go at Obama when it comes to Israel. If you want to catch Obama, catch him emphatically and assertively saying things that reveal what he wants to believe and nothing about reality simply by virtue of the fact that he couldn’t possibly know if they’re true.
Obama is slippery but he lets his guard down as in the Gates affair because his entire world view is centered around race and subjects that have no racial dimension to them are subjects he has no attention span for. Look how he golfed during the BP oil spill and contrast that with the aggressive stance of the DOJ on matters of race. Last time I checked it wasn’t the NAACP.
David Innes: I read the column and could detect neither anti-Semitism or vileness
Sadly a lot of people cannot detect anti-semitism.
It is why it was so easy for Hitler
HItler wasn’t Jewish and anti-Semitism has been expanded out to include the ridiculous and in doing so paints non-Jews and Jews alike with a brush so broad and overextended that you threaten to occupy the same intellectual space you rail against: bigotry.
Here’s proof and a simple test: take 100 comments about Arabs and Muslims made at PJM and replace the words with Jew. You’ll see those comments have come to be beyond the pale yet when applied to Arabs that overextended brush mysteriously shrinks to include virtually nothing against Arabs as Arab hatred. It is a double standard and a rather monstrous one.
Your rather inclusive definition of anti-Semitism is as depraved as the tired accusation of Islamophobia against the entire American middle class when it even looks cross-eyed at a muslim.
Since there is obvious anti-Semitism in the world, by expanding the definition out to include the ridiculous, you water down the concept, distract attention from where it is needed and shoot yourself in the foot by crying wolf and wrecking your own credibility.
Friedman “hates” Israel? He wants Bibi dead? He’s so stupid he doesn’t know he hates himself but you do? Fine, knock yourself out. And don’t throw Hitles at me; it’s exactly that smug co-opting of the moral high ground put on automatic that is so disturbing.
One of the interesting facets of this is that Friedman apparently doesn’t consider Congress to be representative of Americans but look at the body he implies is more so: the student body at the University of Wisconsin.
As to Congress “bought and paid for,” it seems to me this could easily be tested. He could check the donations for Congress and cross-reference that with known Zionists (I have a feeling he means “Jews” and not “Zionists” but perhaps I’m being uncharitable) to see which ones have received money from people active in the Jewish community.
But this would require tedious slogging, checking, and analysis and for a well-known NY Times columnist that’s better left to others.
Friedman’s not implying the U of W is more American: he’s saying, rightly or wrongly, they have no strings attached. Since the “bought and paid for” remark attracted so much attention, I would’ve thought that obvious on the face of it.
In my opinion the so-called ovation in Congress had nothing to do with eager bribe takers adoring their masters; suggesting something like that is childish. If Friedman was attempting irony or sarcasm he fell short. Simple tradition and politeness is probably the reason for the applause; didn’t they applaud the depraved President of Mexico?
“My guess is that many students would boycott him and many Jewish students would stay away, not because they are hostile but because they are confused.”
No, they wouldn’t stay away because they were “confused,” but because of the hateful pro-Palestinian nonsense that is being shoved down their throats by far-left college “teachers.” To the both the teachers and a lot of the the students on liberal campuses like Columbia and Berkeley, Israel is always the problem, never, ever, the Palestinians, let alone Hamas. This is probably why a jerk like Thomas Friedman gets nice fat lecturing fees at the most progressive universities. You never bite the hand that feeds you.
It is a definite that anyone with a pro-Jewish/Israel point of view would get a bad reception at my old alma mater, UofWis. It wasn’t that way when I got my undergrad degree, but that was a long time ago. Now, UW is just another large hardcore leftwing place that, among other disgusting things, gleefully enables the IsraelApartheitWeek/Month of JewHatred. I would not send my dog there. Echhh!!!
As to the THEFRIEDMAN, I find him in common company with Jewish Self-loathers, who hate not only themselves, but all non-hard-left-wing Jews, and hold special contempt for the amazing creation that is Israel—first reincarnation in 1875 years! I am well aware that JewHate is a contageous behavioral disturbance and that not a few Jews are infected(see THEFRIEDMAN, et., at.). It makes them all the more sorry characters….(sigh….)
Finally, one needs to keep in mind that the old gray lady ain’t what she once was. Check the financials, circulation, and very weird reportage. Me, I get the daily Wall Street Journal. Don’t have time to read garbage. Do you? Eh?
There is no such thing as Jewish self-loathers. It is the cheapest cheap psychology and a dumb urban myth that is reverse, reverse anti-Semitism and stands alongside Jewish bankers taking over the world.
> the old gray lady ain’t what she once was.
Yeah, how great she was in the times of Walter Duranty…
For Friedman he question of ” dual loyalty ” is reserved for Americas Jews alone.
I see thousands of the tri-color emblems of Italy on car windows, thousands of ” kiss me I’m Irish ” stickers, Puerto Rican flags aplenty and well as a vast array or other emblems of ethic pride all over New York. I am not offended by any.
Does Friedman go after the Congressional Black Caucus for promoting aid to African countries? Does Friedman wail at the outreach to Hispanic voters when they waive Mexican flags or demand immediate citizenship for the boatloads of illegals from their countries of origin?
Mr. Friedman, denying the strategic service to American interests Israel has provided over the decades – the Israeli attack on Saddams nuclear reactor before Americans landed in Iraq or delivering an intact Soviet Mig to the American Air Force at the height of the Clod War come to mind, displays a dismissal of historical fact in favor of his own form of delusion.
The question of ” dual loyalty ” has always been a phony bogeyman. The idea that one cannot love two countries at the same time is absurd. Does love of ones mother dilute love for ones father?
And lastly, it is quite interesting that in Friedman’s mind ” dual loyalty ” is bad but ” citizen of the world ” is good. Thus if one loves both Israel and America it is bad . If one loves all the countries of the world and has allegiance to none in particular it is good.
Friedman needs to things desperately – a library card and a therapist.
Maybe he’s just sucking up, so he’ll be accepted in the “better” circles.
“For Friedman he question of ” dual loyalty ” is reserved for Americas Jews alone.”
Friedman has no “dual loyalty”, of course. His allegiance is totally with the Chinese Communist Party.
There’s a big difference between casual ethnic pride somewhere on the back burner on an American’s list of priorities and active lobbying for a country one loves but for some reason refuses to actually live in.
In this sense I agree that Friedman should indeed go after the Congressional Black Congress and La Raza and I think illegals marching down our streets a few years back waving Mexican flags should’ve had hoses turned on them. You love Mexico that much but live here illegally and complain we’re racists too? No problem, go live there, build a country, this ain’t it. I do in fact see a problem with dual loyalties when the question is one of how aggressive those loyalties are. Only a perception of such a thing put Japanese in internment camps in WW II.
As for nuclear reactors and migs, the Israeli spies in America would seem to match delusion for delusion and so cancel each other out and the idea that Israel is not operating, understandably I might add, its own agenda independent of American interests given Bibi’s videotaped statements is absurd.
I have no problem with AIPAC doing their thing here as lobbying congressman is something that is a very large industry and I don’t see the sense of singling out one over the other and saying they’re too successful when the measure of that success often rises to the level of a conspiracy theory.
AIPAC is very straight forward about what their aims are while the CBC and La Raza lie through their teeth about their goals, advocacy and imperatives. Watch any interview with the President of La Raza and it’s a lie fest. As long as AIPAC is so conspicuously out in the open and frank about their aims I just don’t see a problem there – so they’re successful – sue them.
Though some view Jews as playing the Holocaust card, generally speaking, they don’t seem to overplay the vast reality of that event, no matter what Norm Finkelstein says.
If you want to talk about an industry, ask yourself why the general strain of reacting to the supposed evil and racist conformity of 1950s America carries on in the arts, media, education long after balance has been achieved.
The answer is that it pays money and sustains careers and feeds into racialist notions of smug moral superiority to explain away failure and replace that failure with entitlements and crutches the American middle class pays for – the political Left has become nothing more than an excuse factory to the detriment of the very people who made this country great.
How many people in the U.S. earn a living based on the idea that Americans are still women and gay hating, Islamophobic racists? When will the NAACP announce mission accomplished? The answer is never because it pays well even though the NAACP produces nothing other than a laundry list of accusations, hate speech and divisiveness as if it is still 1930 and La Raza gets millions of dollars of federal money.
In the main, Jewish advocacy groups do not act as if it is still 1945 and see America as a sea of hostility but act as if they swim in a sea of partners who share an equal horror of the Holocaust. Jews in America carry their own water and don’t in fact bruit about victim status. There’s a difference between wearing victim as an escutcheon and simply remembering.
Umm, Ted Kennedy and the IRA? Are you actually disputing the commitment of the Irish lobby in the US? Or the Pakistani, Hindu and a dozen other lobbies? Nothing ‘casual’ about any of them. Israeli lobbying is not unique or distinct in any way shape or form and claiming otherwise certainly appears to be, well yes obsessive and anti-semitic. And I have personal Irish and Hindu experience, not jewish.
If one writes about Mars it is not an insult to Jupiter or a case of insisting Jupiter doesn’t exist. Does one need a “I do not live in Plato’s Cave” cultural relativism disclaimer in front of every piece of rhetoric?
Tom Friedman would be far less influential if his last name was Smith, useful Jewish idiot that he is.
To think that Jeffrey Goldberg and the vast army of Jewish scribblers at the NYTIMES, Time Magazine, and Newsweek think like him and aspire to his influence is just mind-boggling and sad.
Obama said Friedman and Zakaria were the two journalists who most inludence him.
Here’s my crack at influencing Obama, Friedman style:
“I was on the way back from a UN sponsored conclave in Thailand, on the holocaust native shrimp populations are suffering as a result of deep see drilling in the South China Sea, and met a dual citizen Bangladeshi-American software engineer at the Dubai airport lounge, telecommuting to his job in Shanghai, where he designed medical imaging software for a Korean company selling equipment into the South American market our own medical equipment makers were not aggressive enough to take advantage of as they refused to learn and speak Spanish. He had his Swedish-born social worker wife along with him, who worked with autistic African children in Zimbabwe, arranging occupational therapy for these different but very special kids way across the continent at the Namibia General Hospital. These two international citizens of the modern world felt that the current Israeli government was far too independent vis a vis what humane liberal policies should be. Right then and there, I felt that if we could have a Chinese style dictatorship for one day in the US, free of interference from a congress beholden to, if not outright coerced and threatened by AIPAC and the Likud, we could demand Israel establish a Palestinian State with technocrat Fayyad at its head, and its capitol on the Temple Mount. THAT is how this problem could be solved, in our interconnected, wireless world.”
Bravo!
Thanks. It was nothing, literally.
Kudos to you Sir.This is hilarious and brilliant. Please try to post it at the NYT website after Friedman’s column, so that he can see it as well. I bet even the sainted Thomas F will be highly embarrassed!
Isn’t there a bit of Nicholas Kristof in this as well? Perhaps they write each other’s columns, as well as those of our President.
Finally,why not apply as the weekend replacement at the NYT for Friedman? They won’t know it’s parody.
Ron Radosh
Ron, I’m honored but not deserving. It’s like blowing soap bubbles. Try it.
(I just checked, and comments are closed at the NYTIMES)
I think it might be easy for a software engineer (perhaps the Bangladeshi-American guy working in Shanghai) to create a Friedman Column generator. For very little investment, one could have endless reems of paper-selling verbiage.
Maybe the NYTIMES already has one?
Michael,
You really did encapsulate Thomas Friedman in his/its entirety. I have noticed for some time that his columns have a formula format with its characteristic self-impressed tone.
He wrote himself out a long time ago. Whatever creative spark he had back in the 1980s has been long exhausted. I suspect he probably expends minimal time and thought churning out his malignant columns.
Maybe Friedman already got himself a Friedman Column Generator. He’s a rich guy, after all.
He just has to tell it how many ‘Bibi’s, ‘Likud’s and ‘occupied’s to include per 100 words, while he goes off to give another talk at the University of Wisconsin.
Nice little system he’s got running.
There’s really nothing new about Friedman’s screed. Liberal orthodoxy for the last half-century has been that all our problems with the Islamic world are due to Israel’s existence. If Israel disappears, the problems disappear; Q.E.D.
(And of course, everything will be wonderful if we have a single Arab warlord to deal with for oil, in spite of their hatred of fossil fuels- cf. the successive progressive romances with Qaddafi, Khomeini, Saddam Hussein, Assad pere’ et fils, etc.)
Also, and inevitably, the progressives love fawning over “oppressed minorities”, which is how they define the Palestinian movement. Anyone who claims they are oppressed and calls for violence as the cure-all is OK in the progressive book, especially if they have an unbroken track record of anti-Americanism, hatred of Western civilization, alliance with any Communists or other socialists they can find, etc. Progressives define righteousness by how violently one opposes anything which smacks of actual civilization, as opposed to tyranny or out-and-out destruction. (If they can’t run everything, they’ll be happy to see it destroyed so they can “start from zero”.)
As for Friedman’s belief that the American people have been “brainwashed” by the money of the “Israel lobby”, this is simply a redeployment of the old liberal argument, “Americans are in favor of gun control, but it’s being blocked by the money of the gun lobby, especially the NRA”. As well as, “The American people are in favor of ‘green’ energy, but it’s being blocked by the oil lobby and the money of Big Oil.”
No progressive ever believes that the “American people” disagree with them except when they are “brainwashed”- or just stupid, as Thomas Frank concluded in “What’s The Matter With Kansas?” The phraseology is fixed, and the articles (“Israel lobby”, “gun lobby”, “oil lobby”, “Israel”, “NRA”, “Big Oil”) are swapped in and out as needed. Modern-day progressives recycle their “arguments” with the same pseudo-religious fervor that they bring to recycling 2-liter plastic soda bottles.
In all such cases, progressives believe that any dissenting voice daring to disagree with them must be silenced, and that the Great Unwashed must be forced to think, behave, and act as the progressives desire. Because, of course, it’s The Only Right Way To Be.
Progressivism is totalitarianism with a good hairdo, an Armani suit, and a lobotomy. It looks good, but it is oblivious to its own intellectual bankruptcy.
clear ether
eon
When a man turns to treason, he needs no other explanation.
Friedman is the ball carrier for the Daily Duranty, only the Soviet Union is not his paramour…China is.
When the small c communists devised, plotted, schemed and blueprinted their infiltration and indoctrination ploys to take down this country, leftism demanded that it blossom into an anti-West AND for some odd reason, an anti-Israel conspiracy as well.
The term “small c communist” is attributed to Bill Ayers. Frankly, at the Daily Duranty…and certainly with Friedman…there were and are very strong attachments to actual Communist enclaves. Russian and Chinese atrocities are whitewashed, scrubbed clean and packaged back as It’s A Wonderful Life snippets of utopian propaganda.
Using putative “Jewish voices” to hit all the high notes that shatter glass in Israeli homes and government buildings…is the high symphony of treason by the “insider”. The Jewish last name is the shield against “motive”…for isn’t someone with THAT name beyond reproach for suspicion of hatred, loathing, betrayal and treachery…against ALL things and matters concerning Judaism?
For Christians the answer might easily be understood by the apostles. Judas was an apostle, was he not?
For Americans, Benedict Arnold was an American, was he not?
Friedman, Chomsky, Krugman, Zinn, Soros…all born Jewish, were they not?
There is no imprint upon a man’s soul that shields him from “motivational impurity”. In any race, in any nation, in any religion. Those who are inclined to commit treason and treachery for leftism…and not much of anything else, at all. Ignore their last names, ignore their heritage, lineage, bloodlines. They are extremists, trying to tear down a system.
Nothing more. Clearly they do adhere to a bond to Jews, the most certainly do not adhere to ANY bond to Israel…and frankly, they don’t adhere to any bond to America…you or me. They are not our countrymen in spirit…they are radical revolutionaries…many of them hiding in disguises as centrists, moderates or some other masquerade.
The Fabian in the White House is more like them…his entire past has been steeped in their radicalism.
The revolution is on and in full flight. Israel is caught up in its slipstream. So are we, my countrymen. So are we.
We defend Israel because it is just and right to do so. And, she and we…are under the same attack, by the same enemies. And as we draw breath, it is our solemn duty to defend both …as brothers in arms against treason and treachery…even disguised as “one of us”.
Thanks for that. Excellent.
Maybe there is something to the 2012 prophecy…I fear things won’t end well, OWSers and Panthers and others are poised to effect the treachery on multiple fronts. Methinks someone has been adding lead to the drinking water. Normalization is not going well for the small c’s, so new crises are needed…destabilization is in play now.
For me, bleachers, it’s really very simple: Israel is a productive democracy, Palestine is not. So who do you think I’m for?But something about “the oppressed,” “the little guy,” “the powerless,” has always attracted the support of the Left, no matter what “the oppressed” etc. actually stand for.
Exactly wight. But let’s look a little more closely at who the oppressed Palestinians are:
Their modern heroes are famous for murder. They name schools and squares after people who kidnap kids, take them to caves, and mash their heads to jelly, who break into homes and cut the necks of sleeping children and their parents, who blow up Passover Seders killing old men, women, and children, who shoot pregnant women and kids point blank. The most famous Palestinian is a murderous deviant who died of God knows what, now buried in a concrete filled hole in Ramallah.
What history they have is manufactured, a usurpation, no, outright theft, of Jewish history, aided and abetted by Koranic interpretations. Kings David and Solomon, and even Jesus, were not Jews, but Palestinians, in their view; Jerusalem is not an ancient Jewish city, but an Islamic city the Jews are trying to usurpate with their phony Jewish history, to illegally ‘Judaize’.
They seem a distillation of the worst elements of Arab and Muslim civilization, as these are the elements one would want to have in a people whose ‘nationality’ was formulated as a weapon, and who were shaped to forever hate and forever kill.
Excellent post bleachers. Wonderful in fact.
However when you say, ” Clearly they do adhere to a bond to Jews…. “, I think it would be more accurate to say, ” Clearly they exploit their having been born Jews as they actively seek to sever their bonds with both Jews and Judaism… “.
Boy that was a pretty ridiculous post from beginning to end: it only lacked a flag waving on a distant hill. Nice to know there’s no room for diverging opinions, only useful idiots and traitors.
Nice to know “just and right” is etched in cement if not tabernacles. And please can we give Duranty a rest? Why trumpet an idiot as a diabolically clever subversive and whose influence is as overblown as your post?
American liberal have never gotten over Israeli voters picking Likud over Labor in the 1977 election, and their continued support for Likud over the majority of the past 34 years.
Israel had huge support among liberals from its founding through 1977 because they thought the Israeli voters were just like them — liberal Democrats, who believed the same things they did on every issue. Tossing them in favor of Begin, and in later years, Sharon and Netanyahu invokes the same sort of anger they had at New Jersey voters tossing out Jon Corzine in favor of Chris Christie, or the anger The Nee York Times showed back in 1993, when city voters dumped David Dinkins in favor of Rudy Giuliani.
Just remember that people like Thomas Friedman think Likud=Republican, and someone like Netanyahu=Christie (or Newt Gingrich, if you want to equate the Israel PM to the most disliked of the current presidential hopefuls). Understand that, and understand that liberal Democrats now think of Israel as been populated by crazy Republican types, and all the bile spewed out at the country and its policies is a lot easier to explain.
Absolutely right, John. Once Israel got real and ditched the kibbutz as its raison d’etre (a change that coincided to a large extent with the arrival of Russian Jews), it became non grata to the American left — with which most American Jews identify. A liberal Jewish friend of mine is going through the throes of trying to reconcile his treasured leftism with his support of Israel right now. Of course, it can’t be done.
Here’s a link to some of the statements that Mr. Block compiled:
http://tinyurl.com/82v6moj
Mr. Block notes:
“Across everything…there’s a weird combination of sneering recklessness and smug childishness that underlies a lot of their rhetoric. ”
Mr. Block may not realize it, but “sneering recklessness and smug childishness” is characteristic of all post-Vietnam left-wing rhetoric. Not just on Israel, but on every imaginable issue.
Well it’s easy to understand why someone would demonize the Israeli government because it did 911. Here is the evidence:
http://www.mathaba.net/news/?x=622552
Christopher Bollyn is offering a free download of his book Solving 9-11: The Deception that Changed the World. A must read. He is one of the best 911 investigators.
http://www.bollyn.com/solving-9-11-the-book
“One must ask them, do they really want Republicans to be the only political party in our country standing firm with Israel?”
Of course they do. They seem to honestly believe that if they make that perfectly clear, then the Jihadis will only murder Republicans when they start slaughtering Americans here in-country.
Part of me thinks Friedman is happy to sell Israel down the river, as long as he gets to see the Likud, and its symbol, Netanyahu, bent over a barrel getting the treatment Gadaffi got before being executed.
In Friedman’s mind, the Likud is forever tainted by the sin of being in power when the Lebanese Christians slaughtered Palestinians, for which the Likud is responsible because they bought and paid for the Phalangists just like they bought and paid for Congress. And this was almost as bad a sin as the Likud coming to power in the first place, displacing the enlightened Labor socialists because democracy be damned – that’s only for other people, after all, not Israel, which has a constitutional requirement to be governed by PC socialists who are apologetic for the wars they win, alwasy give back the territory, and who in any case must take their orders from the White House because Israel is not a real country, just an extension of socialist Jewish summer camps he went to as a child, except with real camel rides and a very salty lake you can read a newspaper in while floating on your back as your counselor gets you a felafel sandwich.
Its telling that he has never chosen to take Saudi Arabia to task for any of its transgretions against human rights, women’s rights, witch’s rights, gay’s rights, people who want to read a bible’s rights,
I can understand why many Jews who believe that all the West Bank belongs to Israel, that none of it should ever be returned to the Arabs would be disturbed by Thomas Friedman’s column in the New York Times. But what happens if the Arab people living in these lands don’t want to be controlled by Israel? Are Friedman’s critics really saying that these Arabs should foerver languish under Israeli occupation? That is Friedman’s premise and it does no good to call him names instead of dealing with this huge issue. One day the PA will simply quit and tell Israel that it’s their problem now. When this happens, Israel will be forced to become a single state for the Arabs and the Jews. This will be far more dangerous to israel’s identity, values and and freedom than helping the Palestinians create a state of their own.
You’re right: if they had the brains the PAs would realize their best hope of realizing their dream of having the entire ex-Mandate would be to become Israelis and breed.
Has ISrael not been trying to help the Palestinians have their state? If you think not, how so?
Do they give the Palestinians their state on any terms whatsoever? Or should a few basic things be settled first, such as, oh, I don’t know, perhaps ‘Palestinians must give up telling their young kids, who will grow up into adult Palestinians some day, that Jews are not descended from monkeys and pigs (or is it dogs and hamsters – I forget), and that they can’t teach math by saying ‘I have 10 Jews and I blow up 4 – how many are left?’.
Do they insist that the Palestinians can’t have anti-aircraft missiles and mortars, or do they say, ‘that’s OK, we trust you not to fire them at our jumbo planes landing at Ben Gurion, because that would kill a lot of people and destroy our economy and then we would have to wipe you out or expel you to Jordan and Egypt and maybe even Burkina Faso and the world will hate us even more.
And what if the Palestinians don’t agree to these conditions? Then what?
Please tell, because that is exactly where we are now.
You can’t give a state to people who don’t exist. They’re invisible; that’s why houses are bulldozed like they were abandoned years ago but the people are actually in them. They wave their arms but they’re phantoms. “Hello, I’m here!”
” But what happens if the Arab people living in these lands don’t want to be controlled by Israel? ”
The can get off the dole paid by the UN the EU and get off their asses to take the twenty mile bus ride to Amman, the capital of the 80% of Palestine already under Sharia Law.
Here’s the real (and telling) laugher: “The real test is what would happen if Bibi tried to speak at, let’s say, the University of Wisconsin.”
I hate when the “WTF-LOL” crowd posts their obnoxious Web-isms, but here’s one that’s appropriate: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
As if the University of Wisconsin is in the sphere of reality. They would applaud Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for standing up to the evil imperialist/capitalists of America as they scream for more taxation to line their pockets.
I think Friedman ought to try addressing the halftime crowd at a Steelers game. He just may get a healthy dose of reality there.
Even better, a Packers game.
Its pretty telling Friedman used college students as his example because his whole life is a suck up to a specific kind of college student and college grad. He doesn’t want to admit that if these college students have brothers and sisters in the military the siblings are very, very pro-Israel.
As for Maine’s Michael, I feel sorry for him. Having Thomas Friedman in your head must be pretty painful for yourself and your family. I had him evicted from my head after I went to a steakhouse and insisted the management realize that in the future all restaurants will have to be Chinese.
You mean to tell me in my rock solid support for Israel as a crazed, heartland “Zionist” Christian doing his damnedest trying to usher in the rapture and invoking God’s Wrath on mankind (snort), I could have been paid for it as well, courtesy of another rich, Jewish lobbying group?
Well, bust my buttons! Where’s the beef?
/sarc off
These idiots on the coasts, more specifically the New York Times, have absolutely no idea why we unsophisticates in Jesus Land, lend our support and our dollars to Israel, and yet can be diametrically opposed politically to liberals, especially Jewish liberals in this country. The logic escapes them completely, and with their superficial power and understanding, they aren’t ever going to figure it out either.
Hey Thomas, if our Christian support were due to receiving a stash from the Jewish cabal, there would be no support. Maybe it’s not that cynical? Maybe a combination of history, shared tenets and little horse sense says it is also in our own best interests to be Israel’s friend?
It actually amuses me to take pleasure in Friedman and that ilk’s abject ignorance.
I guess you can buy the entire US congress on the cheap.
AIPAC has a total operating budget of around $20 million. They have offices a few blocks from the capitol and about 100 employees. They send a lot of fundraising mail ( I know because I get it all the time), give free trips to Israel for congressmen etc. I am guessing that at least half of that goes into all that overhead. Given that I come up with a rough estimate around $20,000 per congressman to purchase their loyalty.
So you agree with Friedman and his University of Wisconsin acid test?
Of course not.
The point I was trying to make is that the “bought and paid for” meme doesn’t add up. It is ridiculous and simply fits in with the old canards that somehow 3% of the population (a good number of whom are either indifferent to or even against Israel) somehow control the entire United States government. Just like they at the same time control the banks, wall street, media, and presumably the United Federation of Planets (well Spock and Kirk were both Jews you know).
It is a purely antisemitic smear which attributes far more to “the Israel Lobby” than it could possibly attain. If anyone could “buy” a senator for $20 grand we would all have one in our garage.
According to Friedman, the GOP believes
“America’s role is to just applaud whatever Israel does, serve as its A.T.M. and shut up.”
That’s what the GOP really considers “standing firm with Israel.”
“My guess is that many students would boycott him and many Jewish students would stay away, not because they are hostile but because they are confused.”
Uh, I think the Jewish students who stay away would be doing so because they either think like Uncle Tomeleh Friedman or lack balls and don’t want to ’cause trouble’, though I’m not sure there’s a difference between the two groups.
As someone above has said, compare and contrast with the reception Ahmadinejad would receive. I don’t recall a Friedman column on A’jads reception a couple years back at Columbia, but then, I stopped reading him a few years ago, as soon as I figured out his Jewish last name was no more than a handle that allowed Jew haters the world over to pick up his ideas and use them as a club to bash Israeli heads in.
Maybe congress still loves america enough to care about who is with us in the mideast. Even with the oil lobby, and the mega bucks members receive, they know the arab countries only want our demise. Congress would rather stand with our friends than our enemies.
Here is latma’s take on Tom Friedman. It starts at 3.14 minutes into the show.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPYQyNzFuwk
sheesh. You all seem so outraged and surpised, as if this Tom Freidman article represents a new and ugly turn by the democratic party. What do you think Occupy Wall Street is all about? Hmmmmmmm …. greedy bankers responsible for all that is wrong in the world. think…think…. where have I heard that theme before???
This theme has been raising it’s ugly head for over a decade and you are just now getting a clue?
It amazing to me that Friedman is taken seriously at all. Perhaps that is so because the folks reading his columns are really clueless. For some time Friedman was the NYT point man on ” global economic issues “. He magically became an expert due to marrying money. Very big money.
Tim Russert interviewed Friedman on CNBC in July 2006. To quote Friedman, “We got this free market, and I admit, I was speaking out in Minnesota — my hometown, in fact — and guy stood up in the audience, said, ‘Mr. Friedman, is there any free trade agreement you’d oppose?’ I said, ‘No, absolutely not.’ I said, ‘You know what, sir? I wrote a column supporting the CAFTA, the Caribbean Free Trade initiative. I didn’t even know what was in it. I just knew two words: free trade.’”
Thomas Friedman, graduate of the Nancy Pelosi school of journalism. Lets vote on it and read it later.
I agree: Friedman is so ivory tower that riding a city bus 5 blocks would be like living in a Sao Paolo shanty town for a year for other people.
Actually F’s views are very much in concert with those of the Israeli Left (a committee of the whole?).
Pro-Israel goys really don’t understand Israeli politics which are a only little to the right of Obama/Friedman.
As to dual loyalties, well Sharansky has just gone on record demanding that Pollard be freed. The last time the issue was raised here, many senior people threatened to quit.
I find all the caterwauling funny. Friedman is just servicing his clique.
http://www.jonathanpollard.org/2011/011111.pdf
One point that is glossed over is the description of what Natanyahu’s reception would have been at the University of Wisconsin. Friedman is right that he would have been greeted by boos and catcalls — but that is because student politics there have long been dominated by left-wing radicals — at least since the 1960s. (And now you have Islamofascist student organizations added to the mix.)
friedman is a fool and an important reason why fewer people are reading The New York Times. Why should they? The Times has betrayed professional journalism and adopted dhimmitude. Its editorial contributions are mostly meant for self-righteous and fake liberals who sympathize with the poor, oppressed palestinians and hold pity parties for genocidial sociopaths. They, as much as hamas, are determined to bring down the only democracy in the Middle East and the only state that allows arabs and muslims to vote in free elections.
Friedman is no fool.
He’s a sharp cookie who hates Jews and Israel, and agitates against them effectively.
Friedman’s a creep.
Hardly surprising given what a rag the NY TIMES is. . .
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.
Genesis 12:3
Friedman can take that to the bank…………
The Friedman columns headlined: “Newt, Mitt, Bibi and Vladimir”. Seems to me this is a bit misleading. The focus is Newt and his comment about the inventing of the Palestinians — and from there Friedman permitted his spleen to unfold itself to reval his distaste for pro-Israel members of Congress and, implicitly, his support for President On=bama’s efforts to isolate the Netanyahu government. “Mitt” is brought in only by way of comparison with Newt. “Vladimir” is brought in by means of Friedman’s loathing for Israel FM Lieberman. Seems to me, truth in headlining might have brought this title:
The Detestability of Pro-Israel Officials.”
Seems to me that before the events of 1947 and 1948, the usual context of the term Palestine and Palestinian was Jewish. The Palestine Post did not refer to an Arab paper — that paper is now the Jerusalem Post. Palestine Symphony did not refer to an assemblage of Arab musicians — that orchestra is now called the Israel Philharmonic. Friedman might have checked an article in NYT, soon after the Balfor Declaration was announced. Leading American Jews, including NYT publisher Adolph S. Ochs, were reported to oppose a Jewish state. Indeed, the words in the Friedman column –”not a real nation entitled to a state” accurately describes NYT policy on a Jewish state — from Balfour through the Holocaust. (NYT suported the infamous British White Paper cutting off Palestine to Jewish immigration — and NYT signaled, with its editorials on the
tragedy of the “St. Louis affair” — the ship that tried to bring Jewsih refugees to Cuba and was sent back to Europe–that Jews would not be welcome in the United States.)
Friedman should know that Egypt invented the PLO in 1964 as part of its ongoing anti-Israel belligerency, the 1949 armistice with Israel, notwithstanding.
He concludes his column by quoting Gideon Levy on the Israel government. This might be compared to Mr. Levy quoting Thomas L. Friedman on the same subject.
I would dismiss this kind of stuff as “Leftist Tilt Bolstering.”
“Palestine” had been used since antiquity in a geographic not ethnic context unless you count the Sea Peoples recorded at Medinet Habu, the mortuary temple of Ramses III.
I have absolutely nothing against Tom Friedman since I never read him or the New York Times. It seems to have escaped everyone’s attention that the Democratic Party’s endorsement of the Occupy Wall Street Movement indicates that its campaign to gain the presidency is resorting to ruthlessness. I say that because of the violent actions of the OWS movement and the unions in closing down the ports in California and confrontations with the police. As soon as we become accustomed to this level of violence we can be sure that more is to follow. The whole idea has been expressed admirably by Lee Harris in his book “Civilization and Its Enemies”.
Tom Friedman understands that Zionist money now controls our Congress. As Casey Stengel used to say: “You could look it up”. Real American support for Israel is nowhere near what Jewish organizations make it out to be. U.S. support for the Israeli Occupation is what caused 9/11. “israel is an ungrateful ally” as departing Defense Secretary Gates said. Most of the top military brass believe that our “special relationship” with Israel is killing America. If it’s now considered “anti-Semitic” to speak the patriotic truth – so be it. If Tom Friedman is suddenly an “anti-Semite” – then all good Americans are. Let the chips fall where they may, and let the Israel-Firsters be tried for treason.
Oh, Eff Off.
Unless its you again, Ron Paul, in which case be sure to check with your Doc. Your meds are off again, and you seem to forget who wrote your racist columns for you just a few years ago.
Nothing would please me more that to a see a ‘normal’ relationship between the US and Israel.
As things stand, US policy is to use Israeli blood to lubricate its machinations within the mid east.
That is not an Israeli desire, it is an American desire. The sooner that comes to an end, the better.
Friedman is a mean person and weird and he makes weird analogies no one understands. Even real things he sees are weird and I never see them. Why would 500 Balinese textile workers be getting on a train in Dubai? Is Friedman jet-lagged like rock stars who forget what city their in? How did he know they were from Bali? Is it possible he was in Bali? He hangs out in fast food places and the one in Legian in Bali has the same Ronald McDonald statue as the one in Luxor, Egypt across from Luxor Temple. Since they both have muslim idiots who killed lots of tourists on direct orders from a meteor I can see why one might be confused. Friedman has lots of money. If I had lots of money I’d be in Brunei with one suite of rooms, one bottle of Jack Daniels and 50 “temporary wives” and pretend I was a Mughal Emperor with his own harem. They say money is wasted on the rich. You only live once Friedman, wake up. I know a place on the Avenida Atlantica in Copacabana you wouldn’t believe and it’s right out in the open. Anyway, call me.