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.
Delphic Tom, indeed. His pomposity knoweth no bounds, and, as you rightly observed, Richard, the only real positive for Friedman I can see for the world at large is that he has become quite irrelevant, drowned in the deeps of his own significance. Amazing how many people, the NY Times perhaps deliberately so, he has conned with his innumerable reductio ad absurda pronounced from on high. Not for him the quite honest Hamas win in that 2006 democratic election – see 1953 and our position and moves following that election in Iran when we somehow couldn’t accept the results, just as we and Mr. Friedman and the Israelis couldn’t in 2006. Deja vu, Mr. Friedman, and all that there stuff.
Very good Richard.
The Friedman formula is roughly the following–
1. When writing about the failings of Arab societies, pull no punches and ignore or dismiss any role that Western powers might have played in their plight. If the Arabs try to blame the West, treat it as an excuse and nothing more.
2. When writing about US or Israeli failures, always balance any criticism with criticism of the Arabs. Also, treat the Western atrocities as PR problems, not moral problems and as aberations, not as events which show something deeply wrong with Western society.
3. Defend terrorism when inflicted by Israel, but of course don’t call it that. Condemn it when practiced by Arabs.
People say Friedman was better in the 80’s when he wrote “From Beirut to Jerusalem”, but I think the differences between the 80’s Friedman and the current one are not that great. You can see the same condescension in the early Friedman–it just wasn’t as blatant all the time. And winning a Pulitzer clearly doesn’t mean that much–Friedman always phoned it in on global economic policies, his other supposed area of expertise. His first globalization book was a hymn to the wisdom and beneficence of the financial markets and CEO’s.
From Beirut to Jerusalem wasn’t all that.
Friedman used to be anti Israel, but when he realized Arafat was a rejectionist, he changed his tune. After Abbas rejected Olmert’s offer, Friedman realized Abbas is as much a rejectionist as Arafat.
At this Palestinian convention, there glorifying terrorists against Israel, saying Israel killed Arafat. Even Richard should be shocked at this. I know he’ll never criticize Palestinian incitement.
I can’t think of much that would be more preposterous than this statement. The rest of yr comment deserves even less attention.
Look everyone! We have a comedian in the house!
“Tom Friedman has long since ceased being relevant in any meaningful way to the debate about the Israeli-Arab conflict.”
This implies that Tom Friedman was ever actually relevant.
I actually think towards the beginning of his career when he was more open & more challenging, he WAS more relevant. At least that’s my recollection of reading him then & now.
In the spirit of the suq I will grant you that he was less irrelevant in the early years, and certainly less “so incredibly sophomorically self-important and empty-headed that you wanted to punch him every time he opened his stupid mouth”, but really he was never as great as people thought he was.
A few years ago – long after he ceased to be “less irrelevant” I had one of my very rare days of being sick at home. I was in front of the TV with an American channel on, drifting in and out of a serious-pain-killer-induced sleep. I dreamed that I was in some sort of an institutional building, and came across a crowd who was listening to some man carry out in the most outrageously ignorant way about the Middle East, so I joined the crowd and began to challenge him on every point. After a while I began to wake up, and slowly realized that on the TV was none other that Tom Friedman blathering on about the Middle East. I had been debating Tom Friedman in my sleep.
And, still his points have merit.
The fact of improved formulation, administration, and prosecution of law is a big deal.
It does enable external investment that is not charity, to the West Bank.
It does create a path for normalization with Israel and Israelis.
Whether economic development, and legal development is the sole determinant of Palestinian progress, it IS a critical one.
Like Israel’s needed cessation of settlement expansion is a tipping issue for describing Israel’s intent, what Fayyad represents is a tipping issue for describing Palestine’s intent.
The solely political approach is thin. It ignores as much as it satisfies, more.
It does question the relevance and potential of BDS, which I regard as an immoral (though rarely necessary) approach.
If the goals of definable and consented borders are achieved through the Fayyad approach (which have NOT been with the 40 years of political resistance approach), will you acknowledge your error?
That’s mostly fine, Richard, if Friedman had included Israel’s responsibility for Palestinian suffering, but he didn’t.
And as for BDS, I would never favor any policy which would inflict even half as much suffering on the Israelis as the checkpoints and the blockades have inflicted on Palestinians. But then I’m also opposed to the checkpoints and the blockade on Gaza.
And now let us hope that F. actually reads such critical comments. But I fear he does not – enclosed as he probably is within the “cordon insanitaire” of his self-regard.
Just to clarify Richard, Salam Fayyad is not a member of Fatah but of the Third Way party which won about 2 per cent of the vote in the last elections. Having him as PM is roughly equivalent to installing Ralph Nader as President of the US following the 2000 elections. His government has never had the confidence of the Palestinian Legislative Council.
Correction noted. And yr analogy to Nader is apt as well. So now Fatah has a rump government managed by a rump prime minister who represents 2% of the Palestinian population. Fayyad may be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but how can he actually run a government??
I hold Tom Friedman in even lower regard than I do David Brooks, and that’s saying a lot (at least Brooks has a little color in his loopy tin-pot sociologisms). Friedman never says anything substantive or anything which indicates a concrete, complex bearing on reality, and I doubt that he’s even capable of critical thought. In column after poorly-written column, he makes the same tired old arguments for American corporate-military dominance, for plutocracy, for hyper-predatory unregulated global capitalism.
He clearly holds average working Americans in abject contempt as well as America’s New Deal history of industrialism, manufacturing and a strong, well-paid middle class, he deeply resents social democratic Europe as well as European culture (this is something under the surface but shared by both American neo-liberals and neo-cons), and lazily pisses on Arabs and Muslims whatever chance he gets in his never-ending apologia for Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and American military aggression. To any serious thinker or intellectual, he’s a (bad) joke.
What’s far more disturbing than a mediocrity like Friedman in himself, though, is the golden stature he holds among the mainstream-establishment “intellectual” class in this country. I see it as a metaphor for how lost and intellectually-morally bankrupt we are as a society and culture that Friedman is considered a serious intellectual at all, even calling him that is really a debasement of the term.
tom still has a job? who knew!
P.S.—If you want a bit of contrast to the moral-intellectual black hole that is Tom Friedman, a glimmer of intelligence and thoughtfulness amidst the sewage of establishment American commentary, look at Friedman’s colleague on the Times OP-ED, Paul Krugman.
Krugman unfortunately shares a bit of Friedman’s corporate-globalist outlook, but he manages to nuance and temper this with real critical engagement with and understanding of political and economic issues, and an old-school FDR liberalism (Krugman merits the designation “liberal”, Friedman definitely does not though he is often referred to as such in the press).
At least Krugman has enough intellectual honesty to acknowledge the problems created by “globalization” (and I think his position has evolved somewhat since the Clintonian ’90’s). Though I’m to the left of Krugman, I appreciate his commentary and intelligence and the contrast between the two further highlights what a dolt and dim-wit Friedman is.
Alas, Krugman plays it safe and does not comment much on the Middle East or Israel/Palestine, focusing mostly on domestic issues, the economy.
I would appreciate one less “insider” type critique of Friedman– one that I could effectively share with a well-intentioned family member– one who had been infatuated by Friedman, but who is beginning to have
doubts about his perspective and positions. Thanks in advance.
Read up on Naomi Klein. She’s refuted his work brilliantly. Here’s one piece she wrote about him. And another good one critiquing one of his articles which I too flayed here. I believe, though I haven’t read the book myself, that Klein’s Shock Doctrine takes on Friedman as well.
Naomi is an intellectual and ethical goddess, and attractive as can be on top of it all!
I still find his reading to be interesting.
People mean different things by globalization. I’m a rural sustainable economy advocate, in contrast to Friedman’s urban emphasis.
I think it is important to identify and appreciate the features of a system, even one that one rejects, so as to be able to build a better mousetrap.
Otherwise, one is only complaining. Important work to complain, but ultimately not enough to improve things.
I guess to some people that combination of fatuousness and self-important pomposity are interesting.
If you consider sustainability issues merely fatuous and self-important, then we live on different planets.
The world does not revolve around Israel, Palestine, or politics even.
Richard Witty, that does not even make sense. I thought ou at least had a better understanding of language than that. The words fatuous and self-important are adjectives for people or behaviour, not things.
Tom Friedman is the very definition of fatuous, and self-important.
I thought you were talking about me.
“<iI thought you were talking about me.”
If the shoe fits…isn’t that the expression? :o}
You didn’t get the importance of understanding the system (and appreciating the features and relationships) that you are criticizing?
How will your efforts result in improvement, if you don’t even understand what occurs?