One-two punch in ‘NYT’ includes longtime Israel apologist Friedman saying two-state solution is moribund
No doubt the U.S. pro-Israel lobby held emergency meetings yesterday, after the Sunday New York Times appeared. Two items in the Opinion section must have frightened them. First, a very long report by Thomas Friedman in which the columnist admitted in the opening paragraph that “the prospect for a two-state solution has all but vanished;” then, a full page offering by the entire Editorial Board headlined: “The Ideal of Democracy in a Jewish State Is in Jeopardy.”
Benjamin Netanyahu has already responded angrily to the Times editorial, accusing the newspaper of “demonizing Israel for decades” and “undermining Israel’s elected incoming government.”
The back-to-back Times opinions are worth examining. What’s more, the Times reporting staff should also be squirming, because both pieces relied on information that over the years the paper’s own reporters have ignored, covered up or twisted. The editorial even shamefully had to cite a report in the upstart online publication Axios instead of being able to turn to its own journalists.
Friedman’s piece, which covered two entire pages in the print edition, is the greater threat to the lobby. Neither he nor the Times editorial writers used the word “apartheid” a single time, even though human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have said it characterizes Israel’s behavior, both inside the pre-1967 borders and in the occupied Palestinian territories. But Friedman clearly continues to break with his own decades-long unstinting support for Israel, as he already signaled back on November 4 in the wake of the Israeli election.
Let’s start with some of Friedman’s challenges to the pro-Israel orthodoxy. After opening by declaring that the two-state solution is “in hospice,” and that “only a miracle cure could save it now,” he actually uses his own recent reporting trip to Israel/Palestine to compensate for a few of his own paper’s failures. First, he cites simple facts; he breaks the Times’s taboo on quoting B’Tselem, the respected Israeli human organization, and points out that in the past year in the West Bank, “roughly 20 Israelis and more than 150 Palestinians have died in violent incidents.” He does use the passive voice, concealing who caused those deaths, but most mainstream reports ignore Palestine casualties completely.
Netanyahu has been basically telling American officials, American Jews and Israel’s Arab allies that although he’s putting foxes in charge of hen houses and distributing gasoline to pyromaniacs, his personal power and savvy will . . . keep his extremist partners from taking Israel over a cliff.”
Friedman also doesn’t whitewash the dangerous Itamar Ben-Gvir, the racist, Jewish-supremacist who is likely the next Minister of National Security as Benjamin Netanyahu returns to power. He notes that Ben-Gvir takes charge of law enforcement agencies that he “would easily be able to weaponize . . . against the Israeli Arab and Palestinian populations.” Friedman also has little patience for Netanyahu’s promise that he will keep his new ministers under control:
Netanyahu has been basically telling American officials, American Jews and Israel’s Arab allies that although he’s putting foxes in charge of hen houses and distributing gasoline to pyromaniacs, his personal power and savvy will . . . keep his extremist partners from taking Israel over a cliff.”Mondoweiss.
