Tom Friedman normalizes apartheid in the ‘New York Times’

When I hear some Americans talk about Palestine and Israel, I marvel at how effective the campaign to project a fictional image of that region is, even on liberals, progressives, and leftists. Then, if I must, I read Tom Friedman’s articles on the matter and despair at how many people think there is even a hint of reality in them.

But on Tuesday, Friedman outdid himself, topping even his fantasy fluff piece on Mohammed bin Salman in 2017. Friedman painted the past year in Israel—the first Netanyahu-free year since 2008—as an icon of democracy, where Israeli Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel danced together under the blue and white flag, in harmony and happiness.

It is a contemptible piece of fiction which erases apartheid, blames Palestinians for their own ongoing oppression, and praises those who would abandon their cousins under occupation. On top of all that, even if not quite as egregious, Friedman displays a comical ignorance of Israeli politics, a bit of knowledge you would think would be a basic qualification for the New York Times’ leading Israel apologist.

Friedman wastes no time by launching a flawed analogy between Donald Trump’s coup attempt and Benjamin Netanyahu’s various machinations to remain in office. He warns that the “win at any cost mentality” could tear apart democracy in both the United States and Israel.

Typically, Friedman ignores the fact that both of those countries, though having certain democratic structures, also have significant anti-democratic systems—apartheid in Israel’s case, and various limitations that resist democracy like the electoral college and the Senate in the United States—that maintain various forms of economic, social, racial, gender, and other discriminations.

Worse, Friedman personalizes the anti-democratic forces in both countries. Contrary to his formulation, Trump in the United States and Netanyahu in Israel are symbols of anti-democratic forces, they do not embody them. Indeed, many of those same forces have turned against the strongmen in both cases, as they value the system, not the particular leader.

Here in the United States, we are witnessing a whole array of people testifying and sitting on the January 6th committee who continue to support Trump’s policies, they just don’t want him. Similarly, while Israel’s biggest party, Likud, is keeping Netanyahu at its head, he is being challenged from within that party and from outside it by far-right nationalists, including the outgoing Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar, as well as by more conventional rightwing figures like Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz.

None of this registers with Friedman, who fails to see the irony when he describes his dream U.S. government—one that includes, “Joe Biden, Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney, Larry Hogan, Lisa Murkowski, Charlie Baker, retired admiral Bill McRaven, Joe Manchin, Amy Klobuchar, Mike Bloomberg, Jim Clyburn and Michelle Lujan Grisham.” It’s a bipartisan group who all have conservative politics, a union of Never-Trumpers and the farthest right wing of the Democratic party, one that is entirely filled with the wealthy and their servants, whose policies are responsible for most of the mess we have been in economically, politically, socially, and internationally for all of American history.

https://mondoweiss.net/2022/06/tom-friedman-normalizes-apartheid-in-the-new-york-times/?ml_recipient=59430041178605289