Oy Vey! Thomas Friedman Gives Palestinians More Unsolicited Advice #zionism #palestinians #gazaprotests

Liz Rose has a fine article at Mondoweiss.net about Thomas Friedman’s latest bit of unsolicited advice for the Palestinian refugees held prisoner in Gaza.  Here is an excerpt from her piece:

“One of the advantages of being a liberal Zionist is that you never have to take responsibility for what Zionism does.  You can blame Palestinians for their own demise, maintain a sense of righteousness while people die, and defend Israel no matter what it does.  And you can state emphatically that you know what Palestinians need to do, though you’ve never considered their experience.  They exist, for you, only in a theoretical sense.

“’Just what are we going to do about the Palestinians,’ you and your liberal Zionist friends can ask over lattes and chai teas at coffee shops.  And when you write about them, you can consider the Palestinian people only as a theory–something abstract to be grappled with–rather than human beings who deserve the dignity and freedom that you have.  You don’t ever have to acknowledge Palestinian history or experience.

“Take, for example, Thomas Friedman’s May 23, 2018, opinion piece in The New York Times, ‘Hamas, Netanyahu and Mother Nature.’  Friedman’s critique–which shakes its finger at the Palestinians who have screwed up again–is yet another liberal Zionist apology for Israel’s recent massacre of 62 people at the Gaza border.  ‘If Hamas had chosen to recognize Israel and build a Palestinian state in Gaza modeled on Singapore,’ Friedman writes, ‘the world would have showered it with aid and it would have served as a positive test case for the West Bank.’  Using an ‘If-X-then-Y’ equation, Friedman knows what’s best for what ails Palestinians.  If they just behaved better, he declares, Israel’s treatment of them would improve.”

You can read the entire Mondoweiss article here.

If you follow my blog, you will remember the piece I wrote several months ago entitled “Where is the Palestinian Gandhi?”.  I referred to a similar Friedman suggestion offered in 2002, urging the Palestinian people to send their women, especially grandmothers, unarmed to the front lines to confront Israeli forces with massive, Gandhi-like non-violent protests.

We all saw how Israel responded to that strategy in April and May during the Gaza Land Day Marches.  More than 100 unarmed men, women – including grandmothers – and children were shot and killed by Israeli snipers.  Over 13,000 were seriously injured.

Zionist apologists like Friedman have employed all their tricks of mental, ethical gymnastics in justifying the slaughter.  No matter what the Palestinians do, their deaths are always their own fault.  Unsurprisingly, Mr. Friedman remains stunningly unaware of how brazenly immoral his unsolicited advice continues to be.

For not only does he fail to make the connection between his heartfelt 2002 recommendation of Palestinian self-immolation, he essentially repeats it in a recent New York Times Opinion Piece he calls “Hamas, Netanyahu and Mother Nature.”

“What if all two million Palestinians of Gaza marched to the Israeli border fence with an olive branch in one hand and a sign in Hebrew and Arabic in the other, saying, ‘Two states for two peoples: We, the Palestinian people of Gaza, want to sign a peace treaty with the Jewish people — a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, with mutually agreed adjustments.’”

Except, we have all seen that movie, Mr. Friedman.  We already know how it ends: 100+ innocent civilians dead and over 13,000 injured, many crippled for life.

For his own safety, the New York Times should take away Friedman’s pen.  People exhibiting such evidence of advanced dementia, amnesia and/or psychosis should not be allowed to play with sharp objects.

Besides, it just plain hurts to see such deep-seated, pathological moral blindness on display in the opinion pages of one of the world’s leading  newspapers.

Perhaps Mr. Friedman needs a reminder:

1. NO ONE could walk to the “border fence,” Mr. Friedman, because Israel has never declared its officially recognized borders. (Hard to believe but true). Israel simply grasps more land while the world impotently watches.  The fence you refer to is a Gulag barrier where Israel forcibly contains 1.8 million Palestinian refugees. It does not mark a border.
2. Almost 30,000 residents of Gaza have already tried your Gandhi tactic, Mr. Friedman. But you know that.  You also remember, as I do, the words of General Amos Gilad (Director of Policy and Political-Military Affairs at the Israel Ministry of Defense) when he told American government officials, “we don’t do Gandhi very well.”  This was his tongue-in-cheek explanation for Israel’s 2011 decision “to increase violent pressure on the demonstrations ‘even [if the] demonstrations appear peaceful.’”  You know as well as I do that Israel shoots Gandhi whenever and wherever they see him, Mr. Friedman.
3. Please, Mr. Friedman, save your protestations about the lack of Palestinian olive branches and peace signs written in Hebrew and Arabic. What will your excuse be next time: “If only 2 million Palestinians approached the fence and shot themselves in the head, saving Israeli ammunition, THEN…”?
4. Mr. Friedman, you know as well as I do that Yasir Arafat, the leader of the PLO, acknowledged Israel’s right to exist in 1988. And even though Hamas still does not acknowledge Israel’s right to exist (see point 5 below), according to its new 2017 charter, they no longer demand Israel’s destruction and have welcomed the creation of a separate Palestinian state in the lands occupied in the six-day war of 1967 (here, here, and here).
5. Finally, Mr. Friedman, your political Zionist bona fides are fully displayed when you direct the people of Gaza to confess that they “want to sign a peace treaty with the Jewish people” (emphasis mine).  Notice that the object of the sentence is not the state of Israel but the Jewish people.  Here, finally, is the racist bone that will forever stick in the Palestinian throat, as it does in mine. This outrageous demand ought to stir the entire world to reject “the legitimacy” of the current state of Israel. For here Mr. Friedman and his Zionist compatriots openly confess that Israel is a state for the Jewish people and no one else. All non-Jews are second-class citizens under the rule of political Zionism. No one with a conscience can defend Israel’s “right to exist” as long as it remains a racist state of, for and by Jews alone.

As Archie Bunker used to say, Mr. Friedman, stifle yourself.  Your so-called advice is stale, rehashed Zionist propaganda.

You and yours are morally bankrupt.

You take the vitriol of a racist, apartheid state, siphon it through your effete blender of “reasoned discourse” and offer your readers a sensible justification for mass murder.

You and Joseph Goebbels could be kissin’ cousins.

Author: David Crump

Author, Speaker, Retired Biblical Studies & Theology Professor & Pastor, Passionate Falconer, H-D Chopper Rider, Fumbling Disciple Who Loves Jesus Christ View all posts by David Crump