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Tom Friedman: Consultant to IDF General Staff

Saturday, August 15th, 2009

Now here I thought Tom “Terrific” Friedman was the Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for the N.Y. Times. Little did I know he’s carrying on a nice little consulting business on the side giving lectures to members of the IDF general staff and passing on intelligence information to them he gleaned from visits to Arab states:

…Friedman gave a lecture last week to a number of members of the IDF General Staff. He spoke to them about his impressions of his recent visits to Arab countries.

Friedman visited Israel and the territories last week and published a two-part column on the situation in the territories after most IDF checkpoints were removed and Palestinian security forces moved in.

Friedman met personally with IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi during his visit, and spoke to the deputy chief of staff, the head of Military Intelligence, the head of the Home Front Command and the head of the planning branch.

Nice work if you can get it, Tom. Helena Cobban summed it up best I think:

Someone tell me why anyone should consider this guy a “neutral observer” of matters Middle Eastern? Someone tell me whether him behaving like this is quite okay by the New York Times– sort of par for the course for the way they expect their very handsomely [paid] columnists to behave?

Someone tell me why anyone in the rest of the Middle East would even agree to meet with this guy, given that he sees his role as being a snoop for the Israeli generals?

Clark Hoyt, the NY Times ombundsman, and Friedman’s editors should explain to his readers how this doesn’t violate the paper’s ethics rules. How should this guy be allowed to write a word about Israel’s relations with the Arab world when he is entirely compromised on that score? If you want to make your own feelings know, send an e mail.

Helena also correctly notes the egregious error in the Haaretz article which claims “most” IDF checkpoints were removed from the West Bank. SOME checkpoints were removed, not “most.”

Returning to Friedman…Tom has fallen very far from earlier in his career when he actually had something interesting to say about Israel once in a while. But that was before his ego swelled to the size of an overripe watermelon (I’m really doing the watermelon an injustice here). It is sad how whatever promise he once had has dissipated. But I guess someone’s got to pay the mortgage on that $9-million home he owns in suburban Maryland:

As the July edition of the Washingtonian Magazine notes, Friedman lives in “a palatial 11,400-square-foot house, now valued at $9.3 million, on a 7½-acre parcel just blocks from I-495 and Bethesda Country Club.” He “married into one of the 100 richest families in the country” – the Bucksbaums, whose real-estate Empire is valued at $2.7 billion.

So OK, that was from 2006 and his manse is only worth $5 million (a guess) and the Bucksbaum fortune (if they weren’t tight with Bernie Madoff) is down to a paltry $1 or $2 billion. The point is that with all that money Tom is now coasting through life and a journalism career, phoning it in for his adoring readers and editors. Now, everyone should know he’s little more than a shill for the IDF general staff and the hasbara crowd. Yes, he’s a cut above the rest with a bit more class and intelligence. But there’s very little difference between a con man and a smart con man. They just wear better suits, use bigger words, and go to better colleges.

You’re going to have to trust me that once (a long time ago) Tom Friedman stood for something and had something to say. No longer.

Tags: idf general staff, married into bucksbaum family, tom-friedman
Posted in Mideast Peace, Politics & Society | 32 Comments »

Tom Friedman Heart Fatah

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

Tom Friedman Heart PA

Tom Friedman has long since ceased being relevant in any meaningful way to the debate about the Israeli-Arab conflict. But every once in a while he weighs in from on-high where he dwells with the journalistic equivalent of the Delphic oracle. Yesterday, he wrote a paean to the “new” Palestine under the effective, vigorous, non-corrupt leadership of rump Fatah prime minister Salam Fayyad. And I tell you Salam is one heckuva guy. So swell that Tom coined one those neologisms of which he is so godawful proud–Fayyadism:

Fayyadism is based on the simple but all-too-rare notion that an Arab leader’s legitimacy should be based not on slogans or rejectionism or personality cults or security services, but on delivering transparent, accountable administration and services.

It means basically, this guy’s everything Hamas is not; and everything Arafat was not. A guy Israel and the U.S. can do business with.

He prefaced his column with an “analysis” of the deficiencies of governance in the Arab world:

In 2002, the U.N. Development Program released its first ever Arab Human Development Report, which bluntly detailed the deficits of freedom, women’s empowerment and knowledge-creation holding back the Arab world…

Coming out so soon after 9/11, the report felt like a diagnosis of all the misgovernance bedeviling the Arab world, creating the pools of angry, unemployed youth, who become easy prey for extremists. Well, the good news is that the U.N. Development Program…came out with a new Arab Human Development report. The bad news: Things have gotten worse — and many Arab governments don’t want to hear about it.

Tom takes the typically noblesse oblige western approach to the morass that is the Middle East: look at the mess those Arabs have made of things! If they’d only tidy themselves up a bit they could even be presentable at one of our dinner parties!

What Tom conveniently forgets is the mess that we westerners have made of the Middle East ourselves after a century or more of colonization, war, and all manner of misbehavior. How far back does one want to go? If we stay within recent memory we can recite a litany of bad behavior from the U.S.’ 1953 overthrow of Iran’s democratic government, France’s debacle in Algeria, our decades-long support for the Shah, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, etc. While no one here is excusing the Arabs’ own share of responsibility for their woes, to blithely blame all the misery on them means you’re wearing historical blinders.

And in his entire recitation, he focuses almost entirely on economic factors that inhibit development in the Arab world and has nary a word to say about politics, liberty, democracy or human rights. Which is why he can champion the West Bank economic miracle, all the while ignoring the terrific fragility of this hothouse flower in the absence of a key ingredient for growth: political freedom.

The root of this story is that Tom Friedman decided to waste his and the NY Times’ time and money by covering Fatah’s first party conference in 20 years (one that had been scheduled and continually cancelled for over a decade). What was so momentous that Tom thought it worth his while to attend? Frankly, you’ve got me. But the general impression is that Tom’s been reading his colleague Ethan Bronner’s copy extolling the virtues of the “new” West Bank under the shiny leadership of the self-same Fayyad. Malls are opening, people are attending the movies, a major road checkpoint or two has been removed by those gracious hosts, the IDF. It’s a regular economic miracle! Well, Tom doesn’t go quite that far. He only titles his column, Green Shoots in Palestine. He could’ve called it Fayyad’s Miracle or some such nonsense. But even he realizes that whatever progress is being made in the West Bank is tenuous.

That doesn’t stop him from drinking some very serious Kool-Aid regarding the wonders being implemented by Fatah in the West Bank. Just for example, if you’ve ever wanted to know how Palestine is like an off-Broadway show, just ask Tom. He’s not shy, he’ll tell ya. But before he does I’ve got to say this guy has one helluva case of self-regard:

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to the wider Middle East what off-Broadway is to Broadway. It is where all good and bad ideas get tested out first. Well, the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, a former I.M.F. economist, is testing out the most exciting new idea in Arab governance ever. I call it “Fayyadism.”

Tom Terrific thinks things are just peachy keen in Fayyadville:

Things are truly getting better in the West Bank, thanks to a combination of Fayyadism, improved Palestinian security and a lifting of checkpoints by Israel. In all of 2008, about 1,200 new companies registered for licenses here. In the first six months of this year, almost 900 have registered. According to the I.M.F., the West Bank economy should grow by 7 percent this year.

What Tom neglects to tell you is that the West Bank economy has been a basket case since the first intifada which was 20 years ago. So a 7% growth rate appears terrific, but not so much when you look at it in economic context (which Tom doesn’t of course).

When you read the following passage, besides noting the dripping condescension towards the Arab bruthas, note what is missing (hint: it starts with an “I”):

Something quite new is happening here. And given the centrality of the Palestinian cause in Arab eyes, if Fayyadism works, maybe it could start a trend in this part of the world — one that would do the most to improve Arab human security — good, accountable government.

The world according to Tom posits that Palestinians are solely responsible for their own fate. And if Fayyadism fails, then certainly the Palestinians will have only themselves to blame. What is remarkable about this entire column that there is not a single reference to Israel or the Occupation. It’s as if Robert Oppenheimer sat in a room with the Manhattan Project scientists and never mentioned the word “nuclear fission.” How in the hell is Salam Fayyad supposed to succeed without addressing that 800 lb. elephant in the room?

Not to mention that the focus on economics to the exclusion of all else suits the Bibi narrative perfectly: give ‘em a few more jobs, ease up on the checkpoints so it takes only 2 hours to go 5 miles instead of five, put some more products on the store shelves. In short, let ‘em eat cake. If they eat enough of it they’ll forget about their political goals and be satisfied with the fact that Israel doesn’t plan on giving an inch on any of the major political issues.

Really, Tom, is this the best you can do? It seems that long ago he started phoning it in and this story is a prime example: smug, self-serving, simplistic. A sad development for this former Pulitzer-Prize winner.

Tags: green shoots in palestine, salam fayyad, tom-friedman, west bank economic miracle
Posted in Mideast Peace | 28 Comments »

Tom Friedman Wins Journalism Award, Lamest Paragraph Written About Gaza

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

Tom Friedman wins the award for worst single paragraph written about the Gaza war by someone who ought to know better:

The fighting, death and destruction in Gaza is painful to watch. But it’s all too familiar. It’s the latest version of the longest-running play in the modern Middle East, which, if I were to give it a title, would be called: “Who owns this hotel? Can the Jews have a room? And shouldn’t we blow up the bar and replace it with a mosque?”

This is utterly inane and shows Friedman at his most reductionist. He has this annoying habit of trying to reduce complicated issues into neat digestible concepts. What makes it especially annoying is that he does it in a smug self-satisfed way; as if to say: “Aren’t I clever?”

Here his tendency to reduce the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to three neat syllogisms founders. I was wondering when Friedman was going to get around to pontificating on Gaza. It only took him twelve days to figure out what he wanted to say as 600 Gazans died. And then when he spoke it was like a hot air balloon with all the helium drained out of it.

There is a strange bifurcation going on at the Times. The news reporting has generally been first-rate. And I say this as someone who’s been critical of Ethan Bronner’s reporting from his start a few months ago. But the editorial page has been AWOL: one editorial which pussy-footed around the issues and tried to be all things to all people. Two columns written by David Grossman and Benny Morris. The latter’s column was typically whiny and beside the point; and Grossman’s advocating a 48 hour truce was definitely not his best work. David Brooks and Bill Kristol both sprached about Gaza in their typically neocon fashion. No columns by anyone critical of the Gaza attack and most significantly nothing by an Arab, Muslim or Palestinian.

No liberal vision at all. It’s a glaring gap in the Times’ coverage. It seems to show an editorial board which is at sea and simply doesn’t know how to address this travesty. This is not the glorious (though many would disagree), comprehenvsive approach, so superior to that of the Washington Post, that I’ve come to expect of the Times on this subject.

I recall the Times’ coverage of the Lebanon War being much more sure-footed including editorials which analyzed the issues without fear or favor to the Israel lobby. I don’t know what’s happened in the interim.

NOTE: After writing this I just noticed that Nicholas Kristof has finally spoken about Gaza, including this incisive passage:

Barack Obama has said relatively little about Gaza. At first, given the provocations by Hamas, that was understandable. But as the ground invasion costs more lives, he needs to join European leaders in calling for a new cease-fire on all sides — and after he assumes the presidency, he must provide real leadership that the world craves.

Aaron David Miller…suggests…that presidents should offer Israel “love, but tough love.”

So, Mr. Obama, find your voice. Fall in tough love with Israel.

So we can at last say that one of the Times’ liberal columnists has said something decent and articulate on the subject. About time. What took them so long?

Tags: tom-friedman
Posted in Mideast Peace | 6 Comments »

Tom Friedman, Israel’s Dr. Pangloss

Sunday, June 8th, 2008

You remember that famous quote: “Everything for the best in this best of all possible worlds.” Well, that defines Tom Friedman’s perspective on Israel and his perspective on the ability of global trade to triumph over the all the world’s ills. Ostensibly, the subject of Friedman’s column in today’s NY Times was to compare the indomitable economic engine Israel has become with the lumbering dinosaur that is Iran. Friedman’s proof positive was Iscar, one of the newer additions to Warren Buffett’s stable of companies. Here is some of his cheerleading:

…From outside, Israel looks as if it’s in turmoil, largely because the entire political leadership seems to be under investigation. But Israel is a weak state with a strong civil society. The economy is exploding from the bottom up. Israel’s currency, the shekel, has appreciated nearly 30 percent against the dollar since the start of 2007.

The reason? Israel is a country that is hard-wired to compete in a flat world. It has a population drawn from 100 different countries, speaking 100 different languages, with a business culture that strongly encourages individual imagination and adaptation and where being a nonconformist is the norm. While you were sleeping, Israel has gone from oranges to software, or as they say around here, from Jaffa to Java.

…Wertheimer [Iscar's owner] is famous for staying close to his customers and the latest technologies. “If you sleep on the floor,” he likes to say, “you never have to worry about falling out of bed.”

That kind of hunger explains why, in the first quarter of 2008, the top four economies after America in attracting venture capital for start-ups were: Europe $1.53 billion, China $719 million, Israel $572 million and India $99 million, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. Israel, with 7 million people, attracted almost as much as China, with 1.3 billion.

This kind of Friedmanesque prose makes me feel like I’m reading the work of a good advertising copywriter. He’s something like the Hollywood screenwriter assigned to work in product placement and script plugs on behalf of the film’s corporate sponsors. “From oranges to software, from Jaffa to Java.” It sounds so bubbly, so trite and so superficial. Is Friedman telling us anything new, useful or important? Well, sort of. He’s basically telling us that Israel has a lot of things going for it economically. That’s good as far as it goes.

But what is Tom leaving out? A whole lot, it turns out. I’ve been keeping this important report in abeyance, not knowing how or when I would write about it. Now is the time. Rory McCarthy, writing in The Guardian, reports that Israel’s Adva Center released a study, The Cost of Occupation – The Burden of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (pdf), documenting the costs to the Israeli economy of its Occupation. The results are staggering:

Israel’s occupied territories and conflict with the Palestinians has undermined the country’s economic growth and has cost at least an extra 36.6bn shekels (£5.7bn) in defence spending over the past two decades, according to an Israeli thinktank.

Calculations by the Adva Centre, an independent policy centre in Tel Aviv, suggest Israel’s economy has been held back, inequality within the country has grown and there have been significant government budget cuts to pay for mounting defence spending.

Adva openly admits that its findings, contained in a new report published today and entitled The Cost of Occupation, challenge the widely received opinion that Israel’s economy is successful despite the conflict: economic growth last year reached 5.3% and was above 5% for the previous two years.

However, Adva’s report said: “The truth is that the conflict with the Palestinians is like a millstone around the neck of Israel: it undermines economic growth, burdens the budget, limits social development, sullies its vision, hangs heavy on its conscience, harms its international standing, exhausts its army, divides it politically, and threatens the future of its existence as a Jewish nation-state.”

Adva’s figures show Israel’s economy grew 43% between 1997 and 2006, well behind world economic growth during that period of 67% and growth of 68% in the US and in the EU.

Although it is almost impossible to calculate an accurate cost of the occupation of the Palestinian territories because much of the defence budget is secret, Adva said that additions to the defence budget to pay for increased military activity in the territories came to 36.6bn shekels between 1989 and 2008.

That amount is greater than the government’s budget for elementary, secondary and tertiary education in Israel this year, it said.

In addition, the cost of the withdrawal of Israeli settlers from Gaza in 2005 came to 9bn shekels and the cost of the West Bank barrier, which Israel is now building, is estimated at an extra 13bn shekels.

The problem with Friedman’s warped view is that he’s trying to make you believe that Israel’s economy is humming along at warp speed with nary a care in sight. But he’s not dealing with a full deck, as the Adva report makes clear. And the next time one of these “all’s for the best in this best of all possible Israels” partisans tries to pass off Friedman’s views as gospel, remember to tell them that Adva estimates Israel diverted $500 million per year from all that wonderful economic development in order to fund the Occupation. Tell them that Israel, no matter how strong it is, could be far stronger without that “millstone” around its neck. Tell them that the gap between rich and poor, Arab and Jew, religious and secular, might have been far less with that additional economic development. Tell them that many of those Israelis who fall beneath the poverty line might have found jobs had these economic limitations not been imposed:

Adva said that one in every five Israeli families now ranked as poor, against one in every 10 in the 1970s, which it said was partly a result of the conflict and partly due to the arrival of hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the Soviet Union and Ethiopia who have struggled to find work. Social security payments, particularly child allowances, unemployment compensation and income maintenance, were cut significantly between 2001 and 2005, at least in part because of rising defence costs.

Tom Friedman is a smart guy. But he’s too smart by half if he thinks the pablum he published today tells anywhere near the whole story of Israel’s economic situation.

Tags: adva center, costs of occupation, israeli economic miracle, People vs. Dinosaurs, tom-friedman
Posted in Mideast Peace | 4 Comments »

Will U.S. Finally Get a Mideast Policy?

Saturday, March 24th, 2007

Lots of unintentional humor of a dark kind in today’s NY Times article, Rice Hints at U.S. Peace Push on Mideast. It’s the type of article that unfortunately reinforces just how dim U.S. policy is toward the Israeli-Arab conflict. First, surprise, surprise, after campaigning on a promise of never trying to impose U.S. will or solutions on the parties to the conflict and spending the last six years coasting on a policy of do-nothingness, Condi Rice has decided that well, maybe she needs to pull a Bill Clinton and actually come up with some creative ideas to move the parties forward:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has opened the door to the possibility that the United States might offer its own proposals to bridge the divide on some of the issues that have bedeviled the region since 1979.

“I don’t rule out at some point that might be a useful thing to do,” Ms. Rice told reporters in Washington before departing for Aswan, Egypt.

Of course, trying to impose an American-made solution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has, for years, been the very thing that Bush administration officials have steadfastly said they would not do.

But times have changed.

Indeed. Iraq in full civil war mode. Gazans starving. Israelis wallowing in scandal and post-war malaise. Bush’s presidency in the toilet. What can she lose? But just think if she had come to this realization when Bush actually had some of that famous political capital he promised to invest in resolving this conflict. Come to think of it–don’t think of that. It’s enough to make you weep.

Here’s more of what I call “Boker tov” (which could roughly be translated as “gee, dya think??”) policy wonk moments:

Several State Department officials say that there is now an acknowledgment within the administration that the hands-off policy has caused prospects for peace to deteriorate.

“This is a place where if you leave things alone, they don’t just stagnate,” one administration official said. “They get worse.”

Ms. Rice has been pushing for openings even as multiple doors have appeared to slam shut.

It took them six years to realize this?

In Egypt this weekend, Ms. Rice is expected to try to prod America’s Sunni Arab allies to augment a 2002 Saudi peace proposal when the Arab League holds its meeting in Riyadh at the end of the month. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations, who is on his own tour of the Middle East, will also be there.

American officials have largely given up their hope that the Arabs might actually change the initiative to include things more palatable to Israel — like, for instance, signaling a willingness to at least discuss ways to settle the issue of Palestinian refugees who left, or were forced to leave, their homes in Israel.

But Ms. Rice may be able to get some sort of formal or informal mechanism going that could give the Israelis the hope of eventually normalizing relations with the Arab world, American officials said. “It would be a very good thing if at some point, the Arab initiative provided a basis for discussion,” Ms. Rice said.

This is all so hopelessly vague and even unnecessary. Why in God’s name do you try to tinker with a pre-negotiation proposal when that’s what you’re supposed to do during actual negotiations? It reminds me of the days of Bobby Fisher when he used to bargain endlessly on the most minute rules of the chess match before he even sat down to play. I say, play the game. Stop trying to change the rules for the negotiation and just negotiate. In fact, the very notion that the rules of talking must suit you fully BEFORE you talk is a way to prevent anyone FROM talking. Rice is still playing the Israeli game here. And that is a sure sign of a hopeless outcome even before she’s starting.

There’s this new meme reflected here and in Tom Friedman’s last column (TimesSelect required) that the onus is now on Saudi Arabia to carry water for the U.S. in brokering Arab consensus to make peace with Israel. I’m sorry but it just doesn’t work that way. This is just an acknowledgment that the U.S. is so hopelessly biased in favor of Israel that it can’t possibly serve any useful or honest broker role between the sides. That leaves it to the Saudi king to lay his entire prestige on the line on behalf of peace. The Saudis have always been loathe to bet the house when there is so much to lose. And besides, relying on them so completely is yet another sign of the weakness of our own position.

I always like hearing from David Makovsky on the Israel-Palestine conflict. He always has something relatively innocuous and useless to say that reflects hopelessly pro-Israel prejudices. Here he doesn’t disappoint:

“We’re at a critical juncture right now,” said David Makovsky, a Middle East specialist with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The Arab states can reach out to the Israeli center, and to Olmert,” who Mr. Makovsky pointed out is politically weakened right now within Israel. “But if they don’t, they shouldn’t be surprised if Israel moves rightward.”

Oh, you mean the Arabs should be shivering in their boots at the prospect that if they don’t make their best deal with that well-known “centrist” Olmert that Netanyahu is in the wings? And this is supposed to intimidate them? Look, they’ve lived through Netanyahu, Shamir and Sharon before. Israeli right wing ogres just don’t intimidate like they used to especially after Israel’s shellacking in Lebanon.

I say boys and girls, get down to talking before it’s too late for both of your sides.

Tags: condi-rice-in-middle-east, david-makovsky, new-york-times-Rice-Hints-at-U.S.-Peace-Push-on-Mideast, saudi-peace-initiative, tom-friedman
Posted in Mideast Peace, Politics & Society | 1 Comment »

Tom Friedman to Israel and U.S.–Don’t Sink Hamas, Let It Sink or Swim On Its Own

Friday, February 17th, 2006

Hey, it’s Tom Friedman’s red letter day. This may be the second time in this blog’s four-year existence that I’ve featured one of his columns. That’s because I normally find him a pontificator full of self-regard and lacking in new ideas. His opinions always seem to go right down the middle rarely swaying right or left. As a result, I find much of what he writes full of stasis with little to surprise or offend. But today’s column (TimesSelect sub required) about the approach Israel and the U.S. should take toward Hamas was right on the money:

This moment has the potential to open some new, intriguing possibilities for a long-term settlement, or truce, in Israeli-Palestinian relations…

If Hamas is going to fail now in leading the Palestinian Authority, it is crucial that it be seen to fail on its own — because it can’t transform itself from a terror group into a ruling body delivering peace, security and good government for Palestinians — not because Israel and the U.S. never gave it a chance.

“Any minute that it is evident to the Palestinian public that Hamas is being forced to fail will guarantee that any future elections will only produce another Hamas victory,” said the Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki…

“We want to provide Hamas a [Palestinian] context within which to begin to moderate its views — without being forced to do so by the West and Israel,” Mr. Shikaki said. If Hamas is going to change, it will change only if it is forced to confront the reality that it can get so much more for Palestinians by negotiating with Israel than by fighting Israel…

Friedman argues that it is in Israel’s long-term interest in getting a peace agreement that it test Hamas rather than declare all out war on it:

Israel has an enormous interest in testing Hamas’s ability to evolve. Because if Hamas keeps to the current cease-fire, focuses on better governance and begins to tacitly, but not formally, support a negotiating process with Israel, the benefit to Israel would be enormous…

Israel was obsessed with getting the P.L.O. to renounce its charter, but in the end, that did not affect Yasir Arafat’s real behavior one whit. That’s why, regardless of the conditions Israel lays down for allowing funds to flow to a Hamas-led government or negotiating with it, Israel needs to ask itself this: What would impress Israelis most — if Hamas recognized the Jewish state today and sang Hatikva, the Israeli national anthem, or if it maintained the cease-fire and the negotiating process?

The last paragraph in particular is full of wisdom that Israel, AIPAC and the American Jewish community needs to hear. If you scheme against Hamas and engage in full-throttled battle then you may be losing out on a last best chance for peace with the Palestinians. Of course, no one knows what Hamas will do and no one should be so foolish as to believe that the best possible scenario is the one that will prevail. But we should at least allow for the possibility that it might, especially if we don’t go about mucking things up with plots to undermine Hamas and topple it’s new Palestinian government even before it begins its rule.

Tags: hamas, israel, Mideast Peace, new-york-times, palestinians, tom-friedman
Posted in Mideast Peace | 2 Comments »