U.S. Jewish groups ‘used power and influence at Bibi’s bidding to still the hand’ of presidents — Friedman

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman says the Israel lobby did Benjamin Netanyahu’s “bidding” in preventing any recent U.S. president from taking meaningful action on Palestinian disenfranchisement.

“AIPAC and American Jewish organizations who have done Bibi’s bidding… at every turn used their power and influence to still the hand of any [U.S.] administration wanting to have a more serious and energetic and vigorous policy. And for that they will have to answer to history,” he said in an interview.

Friedman said this stilling effect is now working on the Biden administration.

Peter Beinart interviewed Friedman about Zionism and Israel politics on December 9, and the columnist dilated on topics that he doesn’t usually speak about publicly, he says, because he feels he’ll be quoted out of context on social media, and his words will be used against him.

Some of his points: Friedman says he has worked all his professional life for the two-state solution and is still committed to it as “the least bad” way to solve the conflict. It’s on “life support” with “conflict management” but that’s all better than the alternative. He agreed that there is a fundamental “moral contradiction” between a Jewish democracy and liberal democracy, but he accepts that, taking little interest in anti-Zionist activism in the Jewish community.

Benjamin Netanyahu has gone “crazy” because of the fear of prison, Friedman says his Israeli friends tell him. But Netanyahu’s legacy is that he convinced governments everywhere to avoid dealing with the oppression of Palestinians on the West Bank.

He says that social media is destroying journalism because every reporter is afraid of being pilloried in social media; and he justified the New York Times’s long late bias toward Jewish correspondents in Israel because Jews know the issue “from both sides.” Hmmmm.

Here are some excerpts.

Beinart asks whether Biden’s policy can’t be described as doing nothing to stop the deepening of apartheid with U.S. money.

Friedman says he’s pushed every administration since Bush 1 to support the two-state solution, then blames the Israel lobby.

“I’ve been doing everything I could to nudge and nurture every administration in that direction. I don’t want to speak for them [the Biden administration], I can’t speak for them. They’re at the end of a long frustrating legacy of American foreign policy in the region.

The people I am most angry with and have written about at is AIPAC and the American Jewish organizations who have done Bibi’s bidding over the years. If the reason the administrations are where they are at right now, Peter, is because people like the American Jewish Committee and AIPAC at every turn used their power and influence to still the hand of any administration wanting to have a more serious and energetic and vigorous policy. And for that they will have to answer to history.

It’s why I wrote once that Bibi Netanyahu was able to speak to the US Congress [in defiance of Obama in 2015] because it [Congress] was bought and paid for by AIPAC. I also wrote that he can speak there, but Bibi Netanyahu– and this is his real legacy for me– could not speak at the University of Wisconsin. If Bibi Netanyahu wanted to speak tomorrow at the University of Wisconsin, they would have to bring out the National Guard. Shame on him, that is his real legacy.

Friedman says he has heard that Netanyahu is “quite changed” by the prospect of going to prison for corruption.

That’s made him crazy, that’s what people tell me… to want to get into bed with these guys [rightwing Religious Zionism party] and change the law.

Friedman says that he resents Netanyahu for destroying the two state solution.

My resentment of him, Peter, is he always wants to win the debate… He wants to make a point not a difference….He’s worn out everybody. He’s worn out the Americans, he’s worn out the Europeans, he’s actually worn out everybody…

But there’s still 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank who need governance, who have aspirations. To me what is left is, He’s won every debate and left Israel with this huge human problem, which he’s managed to get everyone to ignore, to get so many people to ignore and isolate, but it’s still there. I think that will be his legacy, that he managed to talk everyone out of doing what was necessary in order to solve this problem.

Beinart says a minority of younger Jews would describe themselves as anti-Zionists. How do you feel about that? Friedman responds that he’s fighting that attitude:

I don’t speak on this issue publicly anymore… I just find that it isn’t productive, you know, so I just haven’t engaged that much with that community, so I don’t have a strong answer. People think that Israel is that lost, whether they are Jewish or not Jewish– that’s what I am trying to fight against. But I recognize that that’s out there. I have two daughters… they are not of that category of anti-Zionist but I’m aware of their generation and what’s going on.

(Friedman has said that his job was to fight for Israel at the New York Times in any crisis.)

Citing his prominence, Friedman ducked the question of Should the U.S. withdraw aid to Israel over its human rights abuses.

I’ll say that, and ten people will go and tweet that, they’ll take it completely out of context. Whatever I think, I’ll write down, think about it ten different ways. I’ll say it then, but not to you on the fly. I know how people will use this. I know that very keenly… I’ll write it when I write it.

Social media is destroying journalism.

I have seen how these social networks are destroying journalism. Because everyone’s walking around looking over their shoulder. I’ve seen this with reporters. They tell me. They get eaten alive on one social network or another. I think it can be a really distorting thing… People are just sitting out there waiting for something they can weaponize and use against me. I’m going to be very, very careful what I say…

It’s an energy suck, Peter, it drains your energy, and I don’t want to drain energy..

In the Middle East everyone wants to own you. And if they can’t own you they want to destroy you.

Friedman has lately sounded the alarm bells about Israel — “the Israel we knew is gone” — in view of the likely new Netanyahu government. He explains:

What’s so alarming about this moment is that it seemed to me that there’s a whole set of equilibria for keeping the two state solution on life support… a whole set of equilibria that have enabled us to manage the conflict enough that we can entertain the illusion– it may only be that– that there will be a two state solution… This government imperils that. We are on the edge of something that would irreparably, irreversibly change some things that would both change the character of Israel in ways that are really dangerous and eliminate any possibility of a two state solution

Beinart asks, Isn’t the idea of a Jewish democracy a “fundamental moral contradiction,” and Israel’s history of mass expulsions and discrimination proves the point. Friedman:

It probably is, but first of all there are a lot of moral contradictions in the world that we have to deal with all the time. The world’s full of them. Perfect in my view is never on the menu, particularly in the Middle East. And for me, I’m always looking for least bad and the least bad way to resolve this for me is the two state solution. That’s what I’ve always worked for, that’s what I’m trying to keep alive.

There has been an unbroken settlement of the Jewish people in parts of Palestine for millennia… My whole philosophy is… do you want to make a point or do you want to make a difference? There are so many points I can make on both sides… I’ve always been focused, on how do I make a difference To make this work better for people on both sides, on more days in more ways. That’s all I can contribute at this point.

Friedman uses the term “apartheid” rhetorically, so as to push people to stop Israel going there.

I’ve used the word in my columns, I’ve quoted Ehud Barak and others using the word. I’ve used it in the context, if we don’t find a way out of this very soon we are in an apartheid reality and that is something that will be enormously corrosive to Israel. Again, my whole focus is getting people to move right now. I’m not interested in labelling people right now so much as getting people to move. I’m not at all reluctant to use that word… It’s out there, it’s very real, a real threat. Whether it’s the full scale perfectly analogous reality right now, I’m not getting into that historical debate.. I’m much more interested in making a difference and making a point, how do I bring enough Israelis and Palestinians to that point… If we’re not there, that’s where we’re going folks and you better be ready to defend that.

Friedman rationalizes the stream of Jewish pro-Israel bureau chiefs in Jerusalem, a tradition recently broken.

I’ve always thought it was an advantage being Jewish, because the story kind of flowed through me. I knew about it from both sides, or at least I thought I could know what it was about from both ways, in a way that maybe someone from Montana wouldn’t. But I celebrate people like [the late] Anthony Shadid.

But did you really know it from both sides? Why not a regular Palestinian columnist or correspondent:

I think there’s validity to the grievance… At the same time I think there’s been a lot of movement since I started…

Friedman cites an “Israeli Arab” working in the New York Times bureau in Jerusalem, who went to Tel Aviv University. He doesn’t seem to know that term is generally abhorrent to Palestinians (as Yumna Patel had to explain to me at a late age). So no, you don’t know it from both sides now, do you Tom?

P.S. A few comments. I love Friedman’s honesty about the Israel lobby. He needs to get angrier about this and explain why presidents are afraid of the lobby.

Friedman might use the word apartheid; but his paper still doesn’t report on apartheid –even as every human rights group calls it apartheid — and the Democratic Party avoids the word like a plague.

Friedman is a Zionist, a fervent one, he’s acknowledged. The Bibi-ism he deplores is baked into U.S. Jewish life and needs to be taken on strongly. Abe Foxman was a boyhood mentor of Friedman’s, and Foxman tells us that American Jews can never criticize Israel over its settlements or treatment of Palestinians. The Times refuses to tell this story. In fact, Jewish bureau chiefs for the Times assisted Netanyahu by not taking him on as he was getting people to ignore Palestinians. Jodi Rudoren, stuck inside her synagogue-youth version of Israel, and bantering with Foxman, refused to accept that her job was to inform Americans of the state of the two-state solution (an illusion/conflict management/life support), and did little to break the news about those millions of disenfranchised Palestinians. Now Friedman is panicked.

The best way to avert these reactionary trends in Israel and the U.S., politically, it is to get Palestinian reporters and writers and politicians to tell us what Israel really is. They may have a different calculus than Friedman about the desirability of “conflict management” and the “illusion” of two states.

Thanks to Yakov Hirsch.