The important news in Tom Friedman’s latest column is that he uses the word “apartheid.” The New York Times columnist says Netanyahu has destroyed the happy “fiction” that the occupation of the West Bank is temporary, so Israel is “practicing some form of apartheid there.”
Netanyahu’s steady destruction of this shared fiction is now posing a real problem for other U.S. and Israeli shared interests…
If Netanyahu’s government is going to behave as if the West Bank is Israel…Why should the U.S. continue to defend the idea in the U.N. and the International Court that Israel is just temporarily occupying the West Bank — and therefore is not practicing some form of apartheid there[?]
Well, better late than never! For years, Tom Friedman, the top foreign policy columnist in the country, refused to even consider the word apartheid. He didn’t want the left to twist his words, he would say.
Friedman’s concession reflects the pressure that is mounting inside the Beltway to acknowledge reality: Israel is devoted to Jewish supremacy, and its endless “Judaization” of Palestinian land has eliminated the possibility of a Palestinian state.
The pressure has mounted because even Jewish thinkers at the Council of Foreign Relations with liberal Zionist credentials say that it’s Jewish supremacy —
Israel is a state that is built for, by and about Israeli Jews, that’s what it’s about. It’s about Jewish supremacy. That’s a hard word to actually evoke. But I don’t think there’s any way around it…Where does it leave us? The one [idea] that’s clearly being evoked more and more, is apartheid. It may not be an exact analogy, but it’s pretty close.
Friedman is tough, but he feels the ground is shifting. Every human rights organization now calls Israel an apartheid state. Nearly half of Democrats say Israel practices apartheid. The New York Times Op-Ed page publishes Tareq Baconi stating that it’s apartheid. While PBS’s top anchor, Amna Nawaz, is done with the b.s. — and asks, “How is Israel a democracy?”
Friedman’s base is also changing: young Jews are turning to anti-Zionism.
Consider Friedman’s role. He gained enormous influence by being (an excellent writer and) a spokesperson for the Jewish establishment and the Israel lobby. Friedman acknowledged the role to a New York Jewish audience years ago: “Israel had me at hello,” he said, and he’d always be there for Israel in a crisis.
“Folks, don’t worry. In times of crisis, I know where I will be. When the Jewish state is under threat–”
Friedman continues that role in his latest column. He is trying to save the Jewish state now that its reputation is going into the toilet. Israel is delegitimizing itself. “Bibi” Netanyahu, a man of great political talent, Friedman writes, is being “led around by the nose” by the racist/fascist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and is thereby abandoning that vital “fiction” that Israel will one day give up the West Bank.
That’s what’s so disgusting about Friedman’s column: he admits he knew it was a fiction all along.
If you’re a journalist and know that what every policy maker is espousing is a “fiction” — isn’t it your job to expose such hypocrisies? Especially when they affect the lives of millions of people?
Not Friedman. He wants to put the mask back on apartheid. He wants to return to the time of everyone accepting Israel’s claim that the occupation will end, and Israel gets to be the great startup nation with a high standard of living for Jews. He wants a managed conflict, with Palestinians living under apartheid and everyone pretending it’s not. Because he doesn’t care about Palestinians.
No, in the end Friedman is an Israel lobbyist working for Israel —Folks, don’t worry, I know where I will be when Israel is in crisis.
He covers himself by claiming that the fiction is also in the U.S. interest. But there’s zero U.S. interest in supporting Israel’s occupation for decade after decade. No, it has made a mockery of the claim that the U.S. stands for human rights, and it has fermented extremism, like the 9/11 hijackers, who cited Israel’s occupation.
The only interest here is Israel’s interest, and the Israel lobby enforces it. Democratic politicians offer blind support for racist Jewish supremacy for cultural reasons but also because of the amount of money the Israel lobby pours into the Democratic Party. “Gigantic.” “Shocking.” “The elephant in the room.” (Pick your expert.)
Friedman has always threaded the needle of being a wee critical of Israel while making sure that our government supports Israel no matter what. Now there is a strain on that “no matter what” part. These fascists are too much.
So Friedman is pushing Biden to announce that he is “reassessing” the Israel relationship so as to shock Israel back to the fiction, and says that Biden has the support of American Jews to do just that. You won’t get hurt in 2024 if you say so, Friedman promises. The U.S. and Biden need to reassess the relationship to send a shock to Israel and get it back on the right path.
Back to the hateful fiction. When Palestinians are getting slaughtered daily and their lands taken out from under them in pogroms. This column is anti-Palestinian, and that bigotry must be exposed and denounced.
P.S. Friedman lies about the number of settlers. There aren’t 500,000, more like 750,000. And thanks to Ilene Cohen and Donald Johnson.
For the foreseeable future we are going to see skirmishes between Israel and those who clearly see the Jewish State practicing apartheid. Here’s the latest round:
Muriel Asseburg is a scholar at the think tank German Institute For International and Security Affairs. She wrote this analysis:
https://www.swp-berlin.org/publications/products/comments/2017C36_ass.pdf
Israel has always claimed to be the only democracy in the Middle East. Yet the current government coalition is dominated by right-wing, ultra-Orthodox and national-religious parties advocating illiberal policies and seeking Jewish dominance across “Eretz Israel” – Israel itself and the occupied Palestinian territories. Accordingly, the government is working firstly to emphasise the Jewish elements in Israel’s identity. It is secondly pushing ahead with settlement-building in and de facto annexation of parts of the occupied territories. Thirdly, it is steadily shrinking the spaces for Israel’s civil society and human rights organisations.
Elsewhere she has used the word ‘aparthied’. Needless to say, Israel is shocked – shocked, I tell you! – and protests:
https://www.jpost.com/bds-threat/article-750094
Israeli embassy slams German scholar for calling occupation ‘apartheid’…Muriel Asseburg compared the standards the West used to assess conflict in Ukraine versus in Palestine and criticized Israel’s occupation as apartheid….The German embassy defended Muriel Asseberg, a German scholar who has been under fire for calling Israel’s presence in the West Bank apartheid, in a tweet Thursday morning.
Stay tuned for more!
I started to read that column but couldn’t get beyond the first paragraph. His self-aggrandisement is nauseating. Perhaps he was a good journalist once, now he just struts and frets his hour upon the stage.
I have to disagree that Friedman was ever an excellent writer. I learned a lot about contemporary Israel when I read From Beirut to Jerusalem more than 30 years ago but when, at the end of the book, Friedman tried to tackle a solution to the violence and suffering it was an absolute mishmash. It made me think he should stick to pure observation and never go near analysis or policy. But somehow he became a darling of the NYT and continues to be at least a semi-star. When he was covering Silicon Valley he was faddish and facile, ridiculous really. I remember a column where he said that each of us needs to be our own entrepreneur, as if capitalist society would actually reward that. This kind of ploy by those at the top, readily accepted by Friedman, is what got us the injustices of the “gig economy” Tony Judt, whose integrity and intelligence I admired immensely, reportedly thought that Friedman was a dummy. Another reason I admired Judt.
Occupied and substantially colonised with Zionist-only “settlements”, the West Bank’s “re-Judification” is believed by (US and other), to be paving the way for the Second Coming. Just wait until the Al Aqsa mosque is demolished to make way for the Third Temple! Any Palestinian moslems still living in the Holy Land will be most upset, as may be some of Israel’s Arab neighbours. (See End-of-Times theology).
There is no “conflict”. What is going on in the Holy Land is ETHNIC CLEANSING!
To the casual observer, watching Friedman’s slow walk to accepting Israel as a supremacist Apartheid state, is like watching someone slowly realize that first the Tooth Fairy, and then the Easter Bunny, then Santa, and even God (and all religion) are all just man-made fairytales used to control impressionable minds and the gullible en masse.
To the casual observer this is almost charming or endearing watching him approach this “Come to Jesus” moment. “Good boy, Tom! You’re almost there. You can do it!”
However, the reality is much more disturbing. He effectively admits that it’s all a “fiction”, and that it has ALWAYS been a fiction, and that he’s pretty much known it the whole damned time! No long journey towards the light. No lightbulb moment in the shower. No penny dropping as he counts sheep before falling asleep. No. He’s known it for decades. He’s not just known it, but also helped conceal, foster, perpetuate, and spread the lie to children, adults, politicians, the media, and the public alike for his own reasons, agenda, and ideaology. Make no mistake, this is an admission of guilt cloaked in self-righteous “concern” for Israel’s future and Israel’s benefit.
Not just that. You don’t even have to have a Phd in reading between the lines to see that he’s not only willing to still continue maintaining this fiction, but is gladly willing to walk back everything at the drop of a hat, and tread the same old path of decades past and return to parroting the same “fictions” the minute Netanyahu and his gang are ceremonially voted out of power, and a more “acceptable” (at least to Tommy boy) and slightly less overtly Jewish supremacist leader is in power again. A leader and cabinet who are easier to cover for, and who aren’t literally giving the middle finger to the US or screaming the quiet part out loud every other day of the week.
Friedman has read the room and is merely playing along… for the time being. Soon enough he’ll be asking for money for his missing tooth, hiding eggs around the yard, making a list of who has been naughty and who has been nice, and maybe even lighting some candles on Shabbat. Leopards don’t change their spots. Especially the old ones.