Last week, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman let his anger with Israel and its American supporters, including some Republican presidential candidates, get the better of him. In the course of a diatribe in which Friedman falsely claimed increasing numbers of American Jews were turning on Israel, he asserted that the ovations Congress gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.” This invocation of the Walt-Mearsheimer canard about a Jewish conspiracy manipulating American foreign policy earned him the rebukes of even liberal Jewish groups who normally laud his every utterance. That has caused Friedman to backtrack on his slur, though only just a bit. In an interview with the New York Jewish Week’s Gary Rosenblatt, he said the following:
“In retrospect I probably should have used a more precise term like ‘engineered’ by the Israel lobby — a term that does not suggest grand conspiracy theories that I don’t subscribe to,” Friedman said. “It would have helped people focus on my argument, which I stand by 100 percent.”
But this weasel-worded attempt at walking back his brief foray into anti-Semitism shouldn’t convince anyone. There is no real difference between “engineered” and “bought and paid for.” Both terms seek to describe the across-the-board bi-partisan support for Israel that the ovations Netanyahu received as the result of Jewish manipulation, not a genuine and accurate reflection of American public opinion.
The interesting thing about Friedman’s rant and his subsequent clarification is not so much his dim view of the Republicans, Netanyahu or even his litany of Israeli sins that, at least in his view, justify American abandonment of Israel. Rather, it is the easy way in which a person who claims to be an ardent supporter of Israel slipped into the traditional themes of Jew-hatred.
Friedman rightly says that dissent against particular Israeli policies does not make him an enemy of the Jewish state. But what we are talking about here is not political give and take but engaging in rhetoric that seeks to smear the state, undermine its right of self-defense and brand those who do back it as acting against America’s best interests. Such rhetoric is anti-Semitic in nature and purpose.
Friedman may think the use of the offending phrase distracted readers from his argument, but he’s wrong about that. At the core of his piece — which contained the astounding suggestion that a left-wing campus such as the University of Wisconsin at Madison is more representative of American opinion than those elected by the people to Congress — is a belief that Israel must be put in its place and that those Americans who speak up for it are supporting a bad cause. He claims his “deep concerns” about Israel’s future and its democracy are well-intended. However, his resentment of Israel’s democratically elected leaders as well as his frustration with the support they are given by both Republicans and Democrats here is enough to blur the distinctions between such a friend of the Jewish state and its enemies. The applause that he has gotten from leftist foes of Zionism speaks volumes about how his writing has now crossed the line from friendly criticism of Israel to delegitimization.
What really ticks Friedman off is Israel’s decision to ignore his advice. That is something the Times columnist cannot abide. While he may not wish to see it destroyed, he clearly believes it should be punished for its temerity.
It remains to be seen whether his attempt to explain himself will allow Friedman to worm his way back into the good graces of liberal Jewish groups that have been paying him generous honorariums for speaking engagements for the last two decades. I wouldn’t bet against it. If groups do continue to honor Friedman in the future, it will be proof that even dabbling in anti-Semitism isn’t enough to wean some Jews from their worship of the Times and its liberal icons.
The pr*ck just doubled down on what he originally said. n nEither that, or he's not nearly as good at words and meanings as people make him out to be.
F Friedman and Klein; my advice to them is to hire body guards. They'll need them.
Friedman stream of consciousness: n nIsrael is tainted by having the Likud in power. 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, always give back 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 I 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 which you eat as you try to figure out how to get the hot chick with a big rifle on her shoulder to notice you, which she never does. She'll pay some day when you're a famous journalist at a famous newspaper, who married a rich lady. n n n n
it "remains to be seen" if all will be forgiven with liberal Jewish groups? please. who are you kidding? the national org. for Reform Jews just gave Obama a hero's welcome the other day. if they can forgive Obama, who is truly doing harm to Israel, I'm sure they'll forgive Friedman.
Friedman's pretense that "engineered" is significantly less offensive than "bought and paid for" is disingenuous. Isn't he stupid for thinking that the readers are too stupid to realize that "engineered" is hardly less offensive than "bought and paid for." Perhaps a millimeter less offensive, since "engineered" does not mention money explicitly. At any rate, it is obvious that he is "bought and paid for." He gets a swell salary for scribbling for the NYTimes, a king's ransom, you could call it. And he'll write in favor of whatever policy they tell him to favor.His books are basically in the same vein. They bring in big money too. And he hobnobs with the POTUS. You can hardly describe him as talking "truth to power" when he in fact writes in favor of power, that is, of the Obama administration foreign policy. n nIt is very sad that American liberalism has come down to the apologetics for White House policies as produced by Friedman and Ezra Klein.
This is really astonishing stuff. Jews are 2% of the population and concentrated as voters in states that are rarely in play. They are 40-60% of the contributors, and the big players tend to be fervent Zionists. If you think public opinion alone sways congress-critters from Wyoming or New Mexico to offer Soviet-style "loud and stormy applause" for the likes of Netanyahu, you probably need a guide dog, because you won't believe what's in front of your own lying eyes.
Typical ant-Semitic logic, if your lying eyes offer incontrovertible proof that there is mass support for Israel, say, I dunno, a bipartisan Congress cheering the Israeli Prime Minister–it cannot mean, gosh that the majority, as mediated by the wheels and cogs and votes and deals of American democracy supports Israel. God forbid. It only means that the Jew Zionist conspiracy is that MUCH BIGGER!!!! The only possible reason for someone to support Jew Zionist Israel is that they are a) dupes, fooled by the Jew Zionists, b) whores, bought out by the Jew Zionists. The anti-Zionist illuminati are stranded like the SubGenius truthers in the land of pinks, or those frazzled truthseekers and truthtellers in Invasion of the Body Snatchers–their neighbors are being transformed into supine pod people, snatched by the alien Jew Zionists and subverted from the outside in, or the inside out, or both, or alternately. But let's cut to the chase and hear the real Ron Paul truth and truther about the Soviet-style puppet manipulations in ZOG. You know, about how Mossad and Bush pulled the strings for Bin Laden who really was just a patriot provoked by Federal Soviet-style tyranny and, well, the Jew Zionists of course. Like, ah, Alwaki, and Jefferson Davis, and another great American patriot according to the Good Doctor, Brad Manley. And Farrakhan's spaceship, that's real isn't it?
Kudos to Tom Friedman for finally admitting what so many of us have known for years! n nIn a nutshell: "What I write is not what I mean; so don't bother reading much into it. It's essentially meaningless blather…." n nSo give the man another Pulitzer, this time for sheer honesty!! n nAnd wish him perhaps just a bit of introspection as he embarks on the next stage of his career in punditry—as attack dog for Obama's concerted (but necessarily ambiguous) attempt to browbeat supporters of Israel and undermine the security and existence of the Zio-Likud Entity. n nWay to go, Tom!! n
Right Tom, widespread suport for Israel can't possibly be based on the fact that their adversary, the Palestinians, blow up a school bus and then are disappointed that it had discharged its passengers moments before so that they succeeded in murdering only one teenager; or attack an elementary school and murder a couple dozen of its students (Ma'alot 1974); or spontaneously celebrate by the thousands in Nablus after the 9-11 attacks; or lionize the perpetrators of attrocities against Jewish civilians by naming soccer tournaments, schools, and public squares after them; or when an elderly Palestinian woman interviewed in Hebron remembers, and praises, the 1929 massacre there of elderly Jewish men and women; and etc. etc. etc. continuously for 90 years. No, the only possible reason why huge majorities of Americans are shown by polling to favor the Israeli side of this long fight, is that a sinister campaign by a tiny minority exercising a Svengali-like influence has "engineered" it. As the character in Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters" played by Max von Sydow says, "If Jesus were to return today, he would never stop vomiting."