“…Bibi Netanyahu, Mahmoud Abbas, and President Obama all spoke at the U.N. last week... Obama’s [speech] read like an appeal to Jewish voters in Florida. The president meant well, but domestic politics required that he whisper where he once spoke bold truths to both sides.”

Apparently the speech Friedman heard was not the same one the rest of the world heard. President Obama was whispering? The speech I heard Obama give was one of shouting quite clearly his complete and unconditional support for any future request the Nation of Israel might desire. Spin it however you like, but what Obama did with that speech was state his opposition to Palestinian autonomy. He is solidifying the occupation. Friedman heard Obama whispering/appealing “to Jewish voters in Florida?” Kind of. More like appealing to the Knesset.


“The whole soap opera was just another reminder of how broken the peacemaking effort is today and how much both sides still suspect the other of really wanting two states for one people rather than two states for two people.”

This is simplistic, self-serving moral relativism. Firstly, when you read an article about the conflict and a sentence starts with “Both sides…” and continues on to equate the two parties, invariably you’re reading some sort of Israeli apologetics. The sides of the conflict are completely out of balance and everyone who has been observing the conflict for any extended length of time knows this. More on that later. Secondly, “soap opera?” Soap operas are meaningless daytime television programs designed to pass time. Friedman should try “tragedy.” But more importantly, as relates to Friedman’s sentence above, judging from actions and results over the last century it’s obvious that it’s the Zionists, not the Palestinians, who appear to be the ones successfully working toward a “2 for 1” State. And with U.S. representative Joe Walsh’s recent introduction of House Resolution 394 into congress, and an upcoming vote in the Knesset on the full annexation of the West Bank into Israel this month, it should now be very clear that what Israel and the Zionists have been working toward this entire last century has been a “1 for 1” state with full subjugation and/or transfer of the entire Arab population. Obama’s total lack of interest in aiding the Palestinians coupled with Netanyahu’s belligerence is opening the door to Israel’s true “final status” goal.


“[T]he Israeli newspaper Haaretz summed up the Netanyahu and Abbas performances perfectly, saying: “From these two narratives of demand and complaint, it appeared as if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict traveled in a time machine back to the end of the last century, and decades of dialogue were wiped out — to the great joy of the extremists on both sides. Not peace, but rather the very fact of direct contact between the parties is once more perceived as a goal, and even that is increasingly fading into the distance.”

That is, indeed, where we are — questioning whether the two sides will even talk to each other anymore, let alone negotiate an implementable deal. Yet both sides act as if time is on their side. I beg to differ.”

More examples of the ever-present relativism here from both Friedman and in the Haaretz editorial piece he quotes (“two sides,” “both sides,” etc…). Not surprisingly, however, Friedman doesn’t point out what could easily be interpreted as the short editorial’s strongest point. Here’s the point from the editorial Friedman would rather not include: “But the responses by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's circle and by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman were no less pessimism-provoking: These figures were quick to pounce on the speech as ‘the greatest incitement ever heard’ and to depict it as a challenge to Israel's very existence. This they did while twisting some of Abbas' words and ignoring the fact that he focused mainly on the obstacle posed by the settlements and also ignoring his declaration, ‘Our efforts are not aimed at isolating Israel or delegitimizing it ... [but only] to delegitimize the settlement activities and the occupation.’ That spirit, which attempts to cover up the question of the settlements, which is stuck in the heart of the conflict like a thorn, also enveloped the speech of Netanyahu [emphasis added].” So the point that Netanyahu’s people and Lieberman (ie: the Israeli government) are trying to cover up the ‘heart’ of the conflict - the settlements – by lying about Abbas’s intentions to ‘delegitimize’ Israel in his U.N. speech, is not one Friedman chooses to include in his piece. Haaretz, as is often the case, is more truly balanced and illuminating than Friedman and the U.S. press. Even their editorials have more information than most of our legit stories.

And for Friedman to write the above paragraph’s last sentence, “Yet both sides act as if time is on their side. I beg to differ,” intimating that time is on the Palestinian’s side, without pointing out that it’s the Israelis and the U.S. who have been playing the waiting game for well over 60 years, is grossly dishonest (to put it lightly). It’s their “facts of the ground” routine that has ruined the general population’s ability to accurately read history. They incrementally steal land and create new mazes of law that favor their interests. Then, knowing the public has no memory, wait for time to pass so that their newly molded reality becomes accepted “history.” Time has been on Israel’s side, Friedman knows it, he knows how they use it, and he knows they know it.


“This is a “New Middle East” — but not in the way that we had hoped. When you leave the field empty of diplomacy now, with so many unstable characters roaming around — like extremist Israeli settlers given to occasionally daubing “Muhammad is a Pig” on Muslim buildings in the West Bank and extremist Palestinians from groups like Islamic Jihad given to shooting Israeli civilians or lobbing mortars from Gaza onto Israeli towns — you are really asking for trouble because many of the old firewalls are gone.”

Notice the examples Friedman uses as “extremists” for both sides. For the Israeli: he presents a rude, “occasionally daubing” graffiti artist. For the Palestinian: he presents murderers. This is Friedman’s idea of presenting a fair, journalistically balanced picture - as if the deaths in the conflict aren’t grotesquely higher on the Palestinian side, with the percentage of Palestinian civilian deaths also much higher than on the Israeli side (Alan Dershowitz’s obtuse and tortured definitions aside.) Yet Friedman, like every other Israeli apologist and nearly all mainstream media, presents his little example of “Israel does this (graffiti) while Palestinians do this (kill people)” as some kind of representation of the equality of violence and death produced and inflicted during the conflict. It’s not equal and he knows it. It’s dishonest. He’s turning reality on its head. Also, the Israelis and the Friedmans of the world consistently point to the “lobbing of mortars from Gaza” [as he does above] as justification for the bombing of Palestinians. It was the official pretext they used for starting Operation Cast Lead, and it was the official reason they gave for bombing Gaza just the other day, killing 3 Palestinians. As in Cast Lead, the mortars the other day referred to by the Israelis killed not one Israeli. In fact, the Israeli spokesperson stated that the 3 Palestinians who were killed were targeted because they were suspected of planning to lob mortars. That’s straight up Bush pre-emption doctrine. Israeli “retaliation” to similar mortars during Cast Lead killed 1,400 Palestinians, a third of them civilian, while only 13 Israelis, mostly soldiers, were killed. Keep in mind these mortars Israel refers to are crude rockets that rarely do much human damage and more rarely take any human lives.



“If clashes erupt between Israelis and Palestinians today, there is no President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt to absorb the flames. Now there is a Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, ready to fan them — toward Israel. It is not an exaggeration to say that if serious clashes erupted between Israelis and Palestinians, both the peace treaties between Egypt and Israel and Egypt and Jordan could be undermined. And if Palestinian violence spreads in the West Bank, Abbas may just tell the Israelis that he is shutting down the Palestinian Authority and will no longer serve as Israel’s policeman on the West Bank. That would be the last nail in the coffin of the Oslo accords. So all three pillars of peace — imperfect as they may have been, but so vital to Israel’s security since the 1970s — are in danger.”

Where even to begin with this last paragraph above… Firstly, the whole tone seems to say, “Maybe other countries would help the Palestinians if Israel were to keep killing them off when they fight for their sovereignty. That would be awful. Poor little Israel. What would they ever do if the Palestinians really started to fight back?” Well, Israel would likely crush them like ants as they’ve consistently done many times before. They have the fourth largest military in the world, which is some kind of bizarre, post-modern miracle of military gluttony considering they’re a country about the size of New Jersey. They also have the U.S. watching their back, and we all know what happens when the U.S. doesn’t like what a group of dark-skinned people in a foreign land are doing. We bomb and kill them, take their natural resources, replace their government with one which will do as they’re told, and then make them thank us for it. As if Israel really has anything to worry about compared to the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Friedman’s specific references to Egypt and Jordan seem like a sort of journalistic pre-emption - laying some type of media-groundwork to promote a vision that Jordan and Egypt are now more militarily dangerous to Israel because they may become more Democratic.

But by far the most frightening aspect so far in this typically simplistic, Israel supporting article pretending to be an even-handed, contextualized piece of journalism is this from the above paragraph: “And if Palestinian violence spreads in the West Bank, Abbas may just tell the Israelis that he is shutting down the Palestinian Authority and will no longer serve as Israel’s policeman on the West Bank. That would be the last nail in the coffin of the Oslo accords (emphasis added).” Stunning. The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem could write an entire report parsing out the problems in those two sentences alone. Friedman’s reference to ‘Palestinian violence’ specifically in the West Bank here gives legitimacy to U.S. Representative Joe Walsh’s (R-IL) House Resolution 394 in congress, and the similar vote coming up in the Knesset, advocating for the full annexation of the West Bank by Israel. Is Friedman saying above, “Full annexation of the West Bank is justified?” Further, in those two sentences we find Friedman’s term “Palestinian violence.” Yet it’s really Israeli violence as it’s occurring on internationally recognized occupied territory that Israel’s military isn’t even supposed to be in. It’s “Israeli violence,” not “Palestinian violence.” Some may call this semantics, but it’s not. Friedman turns reality on its head again.

Further again in the two quoted sentences above, Friedman refers to Abbas as “Israel’s policeman in the West Bank.” He’s not. Israel is the real policeman in the West Bank. They control all the check points, all the main roads, have constructed the “security wall,” many of the settlers themselves are armed [this has been facilitated by the IDF so it’s essentially government sanctioned] and regularly act aggressively toward the Palestinians who live nearby. This behavior has been documented by B’Tselem. Finally, from the two quoted sentences above, “…final nail in the coffin of the Oslo Accords.” Many of the most serious writers on the subject (Robert Fisk, Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, etc…) regard the Oslo Accords to be a cruel joke in terms of addressing Palestinian concerns, and generally having been useless in addressing anything very specifically in the conflict. The Oslo Accords had a nail in its coffin from the moment Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands in front of President Bill Clinton in 1993. The Accords’ only real purpose seems to have been to create a smokescreen under which more Israeli “facts on the ground” could be created to further solidify the illusion that history, as well as the current situation, is morally on Israel’s side.



“Given these stakes, here is what a farsighted Israeli government would say to itself: ‘We have so much more to lose than the Palestinians if all this collapses. So let’s go the extra mile. Abbas says he will not come to peace talks without a freeze on settlement-building. We think that is bogus. We gave him a 10-month partial freeze and he did nothing with it. But you know what? There is so much at stake here, let’s test him again. Let’s offer him a six-month total freeze on settlement-building. What is six months in the history of 5,000-year-old people? We already have 300,000 settlers in place. It is a win-win strategy that in no way imperils our security. If the Palestinians still balk, they will be the ones isolated, not us. And, if they come, who knows? Maybe we cut a deal.’”

Friedman’s ‘farsighted’ proposal above of a 6-month settlement freeze (going the extra mile), which is implied here to be some sort of generous offer like the Oslo Accords, gives the Palestinians exactly… what? Nothing, that’s what. Or maybe Friedman is so very, very far-sighted that he can see into a whole other realm: a realm where simply doing nothing is equated with being proactive; a realm where simply not taking something away is magically transmuted into giving something. Friedman speaking as a ‘farsighted’ Israeli leader: “We have so much more to lose than the Palestinians if all this collapses.” Oh really? How’s that Mr. Friedman? Both Israelis and Palestinians are dying, but somehow the Israelis have more to lose. This is scary close to Friedman just coming right out and saying Israeli lives are more important than Palestinian lives. It’s close to being as condescendingly offensive as Golda Meir’s famous quote, “We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”

More from farsighted Friedman as Israeli Prime Minister: “Abbas says he will not come to peace talks without a freeze on settlement-building. We think that is bogus. We gave him a 10-month partial freeze and he did nothing with it.” Friedman is saying here that it’s bogus of Palestinians to want Israel to stop building settlements. This is directly saying that he believes that the occupation is not an occupation. That is not an overstatement. That’s what he’s saying. He’s like an Israeli negotiator version of Rene Magritte: “This is not a pipe/This is not an occupation.” If you feel it’s not a problem for Israel to be building Jewish only settlements on land they acquired through war from the Palestinians in 1967, which is illegal according to the Geneva Conventions, then you’re denying that there is an occupation. And this doesn’t even touch on the racist nature of the Jewish only colonization. And if you’re saying, as a farsighted Israeli Prime Minister, that you believe there’s never been an occupation, then you’re admitting that the last 20 years of ‘negotiations/peace process’ have been nothing but a big, big lie on the part of Israel and the U.S. They have been nothing more than a means to string along the Palestinians - a stalling for time to rewrite history in favor of the winner – the aggressor. Again, time is on Israel’s side and everyone knows it.

Then this from Friedman’s farsighted leader: “What is six months in the history of 5,000-year-old people?” Thank you Mr. Friedman for dragging in some thinly veiled, pseudo-biblical ancient history murk into the mess. That’s helping. Friedman here is referencing the kind of quasi-religious nonsense that many settlers – the ones he referred to as ‘extremists’ earlier in the article – regularly cite as justification for their brutality. Many conservative American Jews (not to mention the Christian Right like John Hagee) as well use biblical arguments for the justification of Israel’s expansionism. This type of language also slips into Netanyahu’s jargon regularly. But Friedman’s right: a 6-month freeze is nothing in the larger scheme of things. Israel has been building illegal ‘settlements’ for a very long time now. Pretending like a 6-month freeze, with no intention/promise to not immediately resume building the second the freeze ends, doesn’t really hurt the Israeli colonization much in the grand scheme of things. What’s 6 months in the history of 5,000-year-old people? And finally, this: “And, if they come, who knows? Maybe we cut a deal.” That colloquial, ‘shoot from the hip’ little phrase at the end is meant to endear us toward this “far-sighted” Israeli leader’s vision and to inject a little humor into the situation by speaking in a relaxed manner. Plus, he only said “maybe” cut a deal. Amazing. But instead of funny it’s more like George W. Bush and his infuriatingly arrogant use of good ol’ boy language. This “far-sighted” Israeli leader indeed does have vision: way far off beyond the event horizon he can see a purely Jewish Promised Land which includes all of Gaza, West Bank, and possibly Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.



“That is what a wise Israeli leader would do now. And when this Israeli government won’t do that, it fans the Palestinian fears that Israel really wants two states — both for itself. That is pre-1967 Israel and post-1967 Israel, i.e., Israel, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.”

And that is very much what many of the very conservative in Israel do in fact want, and Friedman knows it. They also know that the way things have gone for the last 60 years, particularly the last 20, it looks like they could get it. Hence the upcoming vote to annex the whole of the West Bank. The very thought of actually bringing that to a vote in the Knesset (though many would likely have been in favor of the action) was unthinkable 20-30 years ago.


“The Palestinian leadership, though, could do much more to encourage such an overture because the only thing that can force Netanyahu to move is the Israeli center. It has done so before. Why not now? Because when the Israeli silent majority sees its army unilaterally withdraw from Gaza and uproot settlements there and get rockets in return, and when they see previous, dovish, Israeli prime ministers make far-reaching withdrawal proposals and get nothing back, and when they hear that Palestinians insist on the “right of return” for some of their people — not only to the West Bank, but to Israel proper — it raises Israeli fears that the Palestinians still dream of having two states, both for themselves: the West Bank and pre-1967 Israel. If Abbas spoke more directly to those fears, Netanyahu would be under much more domestic pressure to move.”

Friedman here mischaracterizes the withdrawal from Gaza, as all mainstream media does, as some kind of total pull out leaving Gaza to be completely self-governed. That’s total nonsense, just as they’re not really self-ruled now. Israel still controlled their waters, and borders of Gaza after the “pullout” decimating their economy and quality of life. What People would consider themselves “autonomous” in their own land when they don’t control freedom of movement, borders, waters, economy, etc… It’s nonsense. And these other ‘far-reaching proposals’ proffered by other ‘dovish’ Israeli Prime Ministers Friedman mentions have been more of the same. The rhetoric used to speak about the proposals/offers in public sounds grand, but they all give the Palestinians essentially nothing when looked at up close. These offers are akin to an abusive, wife-beating husband offering his wife the generous olive branch of a two-week “beating freeze” while she still remains restricted to her bedroom and the kitchen; and with no guarantee that things won’t go back to normal after the freeze is lifted. No – the generous and morally right offer would be his moving out of the house and paying reparations; let alone doing time. As for the “right of return,” it’s been in U.N. Resolution 242 for decades now (“just solution to the refugee problem”) and the entire world, apart from the U.S. and Israel, has voted favorably on it for many years. It’s not something to be left out of any deal/offer. And to the Palestinian desire for their own ‘2 for 1;’ admittedly, and unfortunately, that certainly does exist for some. The thing about it is, however, is that everyone involved knows that it’s an impossibility considering the sheer might Israel and the U.S. lord over the Palestinians. On the other hand, a ‘2 for 1’ for Israel is a true possibility and is therefore the only ‘2 for 1’ option worth being worried about.


“We really are back at the beginning of this conflict. Until each side reassures the other that both of them really do want two states for two people — not just for one — nothing good is going to happen out there, but something really bad might.”

And with his last sentence, Friedman again uses the classic faux-moderate technique of phrasing which equates the two sides of the conflict: “each side,” “both,” etc.... making it sound as if both sides have equal power to negotiate, equal power militarily, have had equal casualties, etc… I guess some ‘sides’ are more equal than others. When a dangerous situation is out of balance and you treat the sides involved as if they’re equal, it favors the side that has more power. An object in motion stays in motion.