17 thoughts on “Even Tom Friedman’s Ready to Dump Bibi Down Drain – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. Mr. Friedman shout stick to the facts:

    “but make sure that President Obama can’t ask for anything in return ”

    This is simply not true. The state of Israel implemented 10 month long building moratorium in Judea and Samaria, which the didn’t help getting the PA back to the negotiation table.

    Turkey – people like Silverstein and Friedman are fixated on the apology. Turkey raised 3 demands: Apology, Compensation and lifting the LEGAL siege of Gaza. Israel could have given them the first two and then what ? allow non inspected ships to travel to gaza ? Allow Hamas to get more rockets ? making it easier on them ?

    In short Friedman, very much like yourself, deviates from the facts in order to present the picture he wants.

    1. Wow, you know where Shmegegi stands when even America’s best friend in the NYT isn’t sycophantic enough. The settlers have a method for dealing with “freezes.” They front load construction just before the freeze begins by securing hundreds of permits. Once approved they can be constructed during the freeze because they’ve been approved before it began. In that way, in essence, the freeze was a fiction.

      Turkey raised 3 demands: Apology, Compensation and lifting the LEGAL siege of Gaza.

      Turkey has NEVER said that refusal to lift the siege was a deal breaker. It was a demand. Everyone makes demands, & then gets down to tachlis when they make a deal. You, I & the world know that Turkey wanted an apology & compensation. Ending the siege was icing on the cake & Turkey would’ve settled without getting it. Turkey’s goal was to put the siege on the table for future lobbying. So in essence Bibi was right about one thing: even had Israel acquiesced to an apology & the issues would’ve been resolved, Turkey & almost everyone else in the world would not have given up on lifting the siege.

  2. A recurrent thought of mine for the past year is that Netanyahu and his pals are on an openly suicidal course, and seem blissfully unaware of it.

  3. Am I making a mistake? Tom Friedman for the first time admitted the Congress is effectively bribed by AIPAC. Pretty amazing that Americans don’t revolt at the thought of a foreign power bribing and blackmailing their legislative body and destroying the democratic apparatus of the USA.

  4. I always get nervous when Tom Friedman seems to say something wise and reasonable. He’s always been, seems to me, a one-two person, with an inevitable follow-up to what he has said before. For example, he definitely favored our Iraq War, but then when our criminal aggression wasn’t going too well, he became, with his habitual pomposity, a critic of same, largely because our sundry powers-that-were-at-that-time failed to heed his advice as how to proceed. I must admit, though, that I never heard a two of his after he had declared that France should be booted from its UN position for not supporting America’s invasion of Iraq. But anyhow, I’d be only too happy to give the devil his due if this time around Mr. Friedman proves to be honest as well as wise.

  5. I always get nervous when Tom Friedman seems to say something wise and reasonable. He’s always been, seems to me, a one-two person,

    and i don’t understand why he is given so much importance, he’s a turncoat

    Anyone note how the “predictions” of these so called political analysts never turns out how they “predict”?

  6. I’m gonna run with Stephen Walt’s line. While its’ great to see such a high profile NYT writer writing such stuff, the reason Friedman’s doing it now is because it is obvious. He’s stating the obvious but only after it has become obvious to EVERYONE. Others were stating the obvious, however, when it wasn’t obvious. Still … I like it.

    1. No, there is more to it (and everyone is so astonished at Friendman’s comments that they are missing the point!) Firedman is making the “poor little Israel argument” used so effectively in the past, only now it is updated to include not only the big bad enemies but Bibi as well, letting Zionism, aggressive Zionism, off the hook to some extent. If you read him as a casual American John Q., you get worried about Israel and maybe cut a check to AIPAC.

      It is interesting, however, that Friedman acknowledges that Israel is the tail wagging the American dog, so maybe I’m wrong (as above).

      Or there are elements of both messages.

  7. Of course, the real villain of the Exodus story isn’t Pharaoh, but God, who keeps hardening Pharaoh’s heart so as to give himself an excuse to pound the Egyptians some more.

  8. This is really funny, Friedman is a long time enemy of Israel. His long years in the middle east have contributed “less than zero” to his understanding of the dynamics going on in this region. After this introduction, are there any reasonable Israelis who are going to be more worried after reading his nonsense? Hell no!
    One thing which should be noted though, is thatin the recent months Friedman is expressing the opinion of the White house rather than his own (although differences are insifnificant). So, what we read here are the words of the president. If he stays in power, Israel will probably suffer, but the US is really going to go down the drain.

    1. Yours is the biggest heap of steaming nonsense I’ve read in some time. You know nothing about Tom Friedman’s views about Israel. You know nothing about Friedman’s views on Obama policy. I’d prefer commenters to talk about what they know and not degrade the discourse with sheer nonsense.

      1. I set a google alert for “Tom Freidman” + Israel, years go. I think that saying that I don’t know his views about Israel is equivalent to saying that I don’t know how many fingers I have (I can almost imagine seeing you nodding for agreement).

        1. How much of an enemy of Israel can the guy be if he considered bombing Gaza an ‘education’? (Unless you see this in my terms of course… but hey, that would take some time to explain.)

          BTW, you may not have found much, setting your google alert for “Freidman”.

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