(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Tom Friedman's column [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-21 Let me start with a disclaimer… I am not a fan of Tom Friedman. You will see this in my commentary below. I remember Friedman as one of the loudest cheerleaders of the Iraq war. There were others, of course, but Tom Friedman belongs to the category of Iraq war cheerleaders who has learnt nothing from the experience of being wrong. George Bush, with his moral clarity between right and wrong, is the ringleader of this group, of course. Regardless, Friedman is very well connected in Washington, so when he writes a column on the current situation in Israel/Gaza, it gives us a a window into what (some) senior policy makers are thinking. Consider Friedman as the note-taker who disseminates a set of talking points that a “senior government official” wants disseminated… perhaps as a public propaganda campaign against opposing viewpoints being advocated by other “senior government officials”. The senior government official that Friedman quotes anonymously could be the President, or the Vice President (as it often was during the Iraq war), or the Secy of State/Defence… or the WH Chief of Staff… or… So what does Friedman (or his Senior Government Official SGO) have to say? I believe that if Israel rushes headlong into Gaza now to destroy Hamas — and does so without expressing a clear commitment to seek a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority and end Jewish settlements deep in the West Bank — it will be making a grave mistake that will be devastating for Israeli interests and American interests. ----- There will be no one to extract Israel and no one to help Israel pay the cost of caring for more than two million Gazans — not if Israel is run by a government that thinks, and acts, as if it can justifiably exact its revenge on Hamas while unjustifiably building an apartheidlike society run by Jewish supremacists in the West Bank. That is a completely incoherent policy. So, some noteworthy highlights. First, the 2-state solution is dead. Anyone who now talks about a 2-state solution is either living in Egypt (i.e., in the state with de-Nile), or just seeking to blame Palestinians for not accepting a Bantustan that is now available to them as part of the 2-state solution. I suspect Friedman is living in denial… as an influential foreign affairs columnist at the New York Times, he is very much part of the group that killed the prospect of the 2-state solution, so he is very motivated to live in denial. To my knowledge, this is 2nd time that Friedman has used the dreaded A word in reference to where Israel is headed (the first time, according to a google search was earlier this year). “Apartheid-like” is not the same as “apartheid”, and “building an apartheidlike society” is not the same as being an apartheid society, and there is no direct quote on this from a senior US government official; but it still represents a radical shift. The only step that remains is for this unnamed Senior Government Official to come out and state this publicly. “The US Government believes that Israel is building an apartheidlike society...” Coming back to Friedman, as recently as 2021, he was writing that Israel was building a “diverse idealistic society”, and that the Palestinian issue had largely “disappeared“ (thankfully, he doesn't quite say “solved”). “ Their defining external threat of the second half of the 20th century — the Cold War for America and the Arab-Israel conflict for Israel — which had a huge binding effect on both nations, has largely disappeared, and nothing remotely as compelling has come along to cement national solidarity.” Notice the word “unjustifiably” placed before “building an apartheidlike society”. I find this word choice interesting. Why is it there? Doesn’t everyone know that apartheid is unjustifiable? Well, not quite. Some people (myself included) have long memories. I remember previous US administrations that went to great lengths to justify the original apartheid regime. The justification involved the standard combination of ignorant gaslighting (for instance, Reagan once claimed that apartheid South Africa had eliminated all segregation) and demonization of the other side (Mandela was supposed to be a communist, and everyone knows that communists are worse than bigots). In my mind, there is a decent possibility that Friedman himself, as recently as 2021, considered the “apartheidlike” conditions in Israeli occupied territories as being justifiable; and what has changed is that he now considers the apartheidlike society to be unjustifiable. This is consistent with human nature; we tend to minimize the depravity of immoral deeds if we consider them to be justifiable. Terrorism becomes a freedom struggle if it is justifiable, for instance. And this is where the biases come in. Palestinians are Muslims (some are Christian, but those who hold the bias largely ignore this); and the Ottomans were also Muslim. Therefore, the Palestinians are the same as the Ottoman (and other Muslim) oppressors, who drove aways the Jews from their homes in Baghdad, and Tehran etc. They are the same as those who flew planes into the World Trade Center on 9/11. They are the same as the Saudis, the Iraqis, the Pakistanis. Well, maybe they are not the same.. that would be too overtly ignorant, right? But, all of them exist in one bubble.. the terrorism bubble. And the justification for the Iraq war was that American boys and girls were needed to be seen as going house to house in Basra, so that those who live in the terrorism bubble could “suck on this”, thereby bursting the terrorism bubble. That is Friedman’s exact description. By contrast, Israel had him at hello (again, exact words). This is notwithstanding the fact that the creation of Israel itself was just as overtly juxtaposed with terrorism as anything Hamas or 9/11 hijackers have done. So why this sudden change of heart? Fear is the great leveler. Thucydides wrote about how wars are fought over fear, honor and resources (in that order). Friedman is afraid that the situation has the potential to upend the American led order. Otherwise, what began as a Hamas onslaught against Israel has the potential to trigger a Middle East war with every great power and regional power having a hand in it — which would make it very difficult to stop once it started. ---- The hour is late. I have never written a column this urgent before because I have never been more worried about how this situation could spin out of control in ways that could damage Israel irreparably, damage U.S. interests irreparably, damage Palestinians irreparably, threaten Jews everywhere and destabilize the whole world. This would have been comical, if it were also not so tragic. The greatest disasters of American foreign policy in the last 75 years (Vietnam and Iraq wars) were brought about by ignorance (specifically, ignorance about Asian history… I am clubbing Vietnamese and Middle East histories into Asian because American policy makers tend to be ignorant on both counts), and the preceived threat to an American led order even when doing so places you on the immoral side. Notice what Friedman, and his Senior Government Officials do not say: Apartheid (or Apartheidlike) societies are unjustifiable because they are morally corrupt, and we will oppose it for that reason alone. That would have been moral clarity, and a pathway to victory for all (i.e. peace). 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