Yesterday’s New York Times diatribe by Thomas Friedman is being blasted for declaring that the United States Congress is “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.” Friedman contrasted the strong support that Israel receives from the American political establishment with what he insisted is declining support from American Jewry, the latter being the result of Israeli domestic and foreign policy.
And while it’s important to underline the deep unseemliness of Friedman’s implicit dual loyalty canard – a smear that has become distressingly commonplace in left-wing anti-Israel discourse – let’s also take some time to appreciate the near-comical fidelity with which he toes the “Jews are abandoning Israel” line. Here is Friedman yesterday:
I’d never claim to speak for American Jews, but I’m certain there are many out there like me, who strongly believe in the right of the Jewish people to a state, who understand that Israel lives in a dangerous neighborhood yet remains a democracy, but who are deeply worried about where Israel is going today. My guess is we’re the minority when it comes to secular American Jews. We still care. Many other Jews are just drifting away.
Here is Friedman on October 09, 1997. I’ve ellipsed out the names of President Clinton, Palestinian President Arafat, and then-Conference of Presidents Chairman Melvin Salberg, the effect being to make Friedman’s 14-year-old passage literally identical to what anti-Israel partisans are writing today:
I cannot recall a time of greater disquiet among mainstream American Jews over the drift of events in Israel. It’s for the same reason many Israelis are distressed — the dashed hopes of the Oslo peace process, combined with the rising tension between religious and non-religious Jews, all happening under an Israeli leadership that has more in common with Larry, Moe and Curly than with David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin. Both in Israel and in the U.S. there is a deepening concern that Israel today is led by people who have no clear vision and no courage to stand up to the religious and political extremists bent on driving Israel over a cliff… The White House knows there’s a new mood out there among American Jews… [the] chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told [the] President Monday that American Jews want the President to press both [the Palestinian President] and Benjamin Netanyahu to do what’s needed to restore the peace process, and then let the two of them negotiate a settlement.
There’s a much longer post to be written about the Alienation Thesis, the two-pronged claim that American Jews are increasingly estranged from Israel and that the estrangement is driven by Israeli policies. Matthew Ackerman debunked the latter, causal claim a few months ago, and Jonathan Tobin did the same for the former, empirical claim over the summer. But it keeps getting unblinkingly repeated in articles like Friedman’s, and it was a critical pivot in Jeffrey Goldberg’s recent dust-up with Israel’s Immigrant Absorption Ministry. The thesis wasn’t true 14 years ago and it isn’t true now, but– again–it’s obviously going to take more data to put the claim to bed.
In the meantime, there’s a legitimate debate about the source of Friedman’s deepening venom toward Israel’s American supporters. One theory holds that it’s driven by sheer frustration: “Why won’t American Jews do what I said they were going to do?” The other theory suggests it’s a kind of paranoid rationalization: “American Jews did do what I said they were going to do, but the lobby is obfuscating the evidence by controlling Congress.” Clearly there are arguments to be made on both sides.
Friedman's issues elicit a narcissistic personality. I still remember one of the most striking lines in his book From Beirut to Jerusalem, when discussing the Sabra and Shatila massacres during the Lebanon War, Friedman tells how he walked into a room full of Israeli commanders and instead of questioning them in a rational journalistic way he begins to scream at them. He continues in his book to tell readers, that in the back of his head he was yelling…"How could you do this ti ME. I am the only Jew in Lebanon." So even then it was all about Tom. (Yes, I know, odd the things we remember.) n nOn another note: Friednman talks about how if Netanyahu went to give a speech on the campus of the University of Wisconsin he wouldn't receive a standing ovation and would probably be rejected outright. There are many ways to decide this country's future but to base how this nation runs on the words and actions of children who attend one of the most left-wing colleges in the country is not what I would consider indicative of how this nation thinks. I suppose he had to search high and low for someone who agreed with him on Israel, as every poll has positive support for Israel in the US at anywhere between 65 -70% of the population. Honestly I think the only thing this shows about UofW is the fact that the parents of these children who attend UofW need to get their money back, as their children are not getting an appropriate education. n n
Funny you should mention that Tom would have to search high and low for someone who thought poorly of Israel. Tom recounts a story where he n n" 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." n n
Friedman really said that? I guess that's the sort of irresponsible blather you get from a guy who goes on UN sponsored junkets to Thailand probably paid for by the UN or NYTimes.
No, it was satire on my part. I want to influence Obama too.
Self-parody. Tom goes on junkets to four-star hotels, luxuriating in the potted and portable de-cultured surplus wealth enabled cocoons made available to the de-ratiocinated international elite, and is convinced he’s descried a new international order of harmonic congruence and natural rights. Then and there he caps idiocy with retrograde anti-Semitism and been-there-done-that totalitarian chic by invoking the Chinese politburo to stick it to the Jews. Then he orders room service.
Unless this is just parody without the self–but then again there’s a kind of egoless purity in the mediocre narcissism of Tom to begin with.
I find the latest assault on Israel among Jewish liberals to be downright terrifying, n nIf we were in the throes of a major terrorist campaign from which they didn't believe Israel should defend itself, had we just seen a major PR success from the Arab enemies of Israel, were there a major confrontation between Obama and Netanyahu, then the smears against Josh Block, the anti Israel screeds from Jeffrey Goldberg and Thomas Friedman, the new burst of unfounded claims that American Jews are abandoning Israel — these would be expected. n nBut when a journalists and think tanks who are well connected to the Obama administration launch an assault on Israel and its elected government seemingly apropos of nothing, I have to assume this is preparatory for something big and ugly
"I have to assume this is preparatory for something big and ugly" n nMy thoughts, exactly. Friedman was cited by Obama as one of the two journalists he most respects. The other was Fareed Zakaria. The question to be asked is; Does Friedman write what he believes will curry favour with Obama's non-too-secret inclinations towards Israel in order to preserve this venerable status? Or does he get someone who heard something from someone to whisper in his ear that it would be greatly appreciated if he were to lob another one of his stink bombs at Israel? In other words, is he merely a flatterer or a lackey?
Take heart Seth. American liberal Jews are on doomed to extinction in a few years. Low birth rates and intermarriage will be their undoing while religious, conservative American Jews are in ascendance.
there’s no mystery about Friedman’s “deepening venom” toward Israel. Israel did not pay obeisance to Obama like they should have, so they are dead to kool-aid imbiber Tom “JINO” Friedman.
I mean, Bibi offended our thin-skinned Commander “and” Chief. we can’t have that!