If Tom Friedman were to employ the same derogatory innuendo that appeared in his recent NYT columns towards any other minority – gays, blacks, Hispanics – he would be unceremoniously fired. Thomas Friedman a columnist for ‘The New York Times’
The powerful pro-Israel lobby… can force the administration to defend Israel… even when it knows Israel is pursuing policies not in its own interest or America’s. – Thomas L. Friedman, “Israel: Adrift at Sea Alone,” September 17, 2011.
The main Israel lobby, Aipac [sic], has made itself the feared arbiter of which lawmakers are “pro” and which are “anti-Israel” and, therefore, who should get donations and who should not – and you have a situation in which there are almost no brakes, no red lights, around Israel coming from America anymore. – Thomas L. Friedman, “Why Not in Vegas?,” July 31, 2012.
Never have I seen more lawmakers – Democrats and Republicans – more willing to take Israel’s side against their own president’s [policy]. I’m certain this comes less from any careful consideration of the facts and more from a growing tendency by many American lawmakers to do whatever the Israel lobby asks them to do in order to garner Jewish votes and campaign donations. – Thomas L. Friedman, “Let’s Make a Deal,” November 19, 2013.
Tom Friedman is back in Judeophobic “Elders-of- Zion-Jews-rule-the-world” mode. In his latest rant in The New York Times, “Let’s Make a Deal” (November 19, 2013), in which he berated Israel, as the Jewish state, and its US supporters for opposing the emerging appeasement of Iran, Friedman sinks to a new nadir of journalistic drivel and racist incitement –which is no mean feat, given the lows he has stooped to in the past.
Potpourri of pernicious poppycock
As he is normally prone to do, when writing on Israel, Friedman has, in his column this week, penned his usual pernicious potpourri of the malicious and the mendacious, generously seasoned with logical inconsistencies and factual inaccuracies.
Of course, journalists are permitted to produce pure poppycock if the media outlet they are associated with has no objection to publishing it, or to leading its readers astray. So the claptrap that Friedman inflicts on his readers in not really a valid reason for his dismissal by the NYT – which has given ample indication that not only does it have no objection to leading its readers astray, but when it comes to Israel, it has a strong interest in doing so.
But surely, his unbridled bigotry is such a reason – especially in the pristinely politically-correct milieu Friedman is associated with.
Indeed, in recent years, there have been numerous instances of people, across the social strata–from well-known media celebrities to unknown fast-food employees– being dismissed from their jobs for racial slurs far less serious, less malevolent and less calculated than those expressed by Friedman.
The fact that Friedman’s bigoted bile is directed against his own ethnic kinfolk should make little difference.
Indeed, earlier this year a high-profile former black football star was fired from his position as a TV sports commentator for making racially disparaging remarks about his black co-host.
Calculated campaign?
In past columns, I have repeatedly exposed the faulty– often blatantly self-contradictory – analysis and argumentation that Friedman employs in his frequent anti-Israel tirades.
His offering this week is no less flawed than his previous ones. However, rather than once again focusing on the almost infantile claims and glaring non-sequiturs that “grace” Friedman’s latest column, I shall turn attention to his incendiary Judeophobic innuendo; referring to his faulty logic and factual inaccuracies only when these are instrumental in shedding light on his hurtful racial slurs and his hateful racist incitement.
Indeed, in a world where you can lose your job for making remarks that are borderline offensive, expressing little more than awareness of someone’s ethnic origins/sexual preferences, the lack of outrage at Friedman’s inflammatory insinuations is remarkable.
After all, were Friedman to employ the same derogatory innuendo that appeared in his recent NYT columns towards any other minority – gays, blacks, Hispanics – he would be unceremoniously fired. But when it comes to the Jews, apparently things are different.
Clearly, this week’s blatant barb as to the iniquitous impact of Jewish plutocracy on US national interests cannot be dismissed as a momentary, unintentional slip of the pen – or a mistakenly depressed computer key.
As can be seen from the introductory excerpts, this has been a recurring theme in his columns over recent years, making it look like an ongoing vendetta against the Jewish state and its Jewish supporters in the US and very much a calculated campaign.
Bin Laden would concur
Friedman’s repeated allegations point almost inexorably to an unequivocal conclusion: The Jews control US foreign policy and have reduced America to no more than a banana republic, where elected representatives are willing to sell their nation’s – and hence their constituents’ – interests to the highest bidder and can be bought by unscrupulous, conniving Judeo-plutocrats (with hooked noses?).
Mearsheimer and Walt – and subscribers to their venomous views regarding the sinister influence of the “Israel (read, “Jewish”) Lobby”– could hardly ask for a more ringing endorsement of their noxious doctrine! Indeed, much of the criticism leveled at Mearsheimer and Walt’s shoddy slander could equally apply to Friedman’s writings.
Thus, following the endorsement of their work by none other than Osama bin Laden(!), who urged his followers to read their book, David Rothkopf, chief executive and editor at large of the Foreign Policy Group wrote: “All [this] book did was weave precisely the kind of fabric of partial truths and old biases that are used to dress up the hatreds of demagogues everywhere.”
What a fitting description this would be of Friedman’s accusations that Jews in America deliberately press for policies that harm the national interest! Osama would doubtless concur.
The left-leaning The Forward, in reportedly the longest editorial in the paper’s 120-year history, aptly titled “In Dark Times, Blame the Jews,” castigated the Mearsheimer-Walt thesis.
Expressing surprised concern at “the flimsiness of their work,” it noted disparagingly, “Countless facts are simply wrong. Long stretches of argument are implausible, at times almost comically so….An undergraduate submitting work like this would be laughed out of class.”
So would Friedman’s – as will shortly be shown.
What Friedman cannot fathom
Like Mearsheimer and Walt, Friedman seems totally incapable of fathoming the true texture of the Israel-US bond – at least, as it was perceived and prevailed until the advent of the current Islamophilic administration that has proved itself to be totally unmoored from the Judeo- Christian heritage, which underpinned that bond for decades.
Thus, The Forward concluded its previously-mentioned editorial with the following words: “Mearsheimer and Walt join a long line of critics who dislike Israel so deeply that they cannot fathom the support it enjoys in America, and so they search for some malign power capable of perverting America’s good sense. They find it, as others have before, in the Jews.”
This is a diagnosis that fits Friedman’s malevolent malaise like a glove.
In similar vein, Madeleine Albright, secretary of state under the Clinton administration, dismissed the Mearsheimer-Walt credo, now enthusiastically embraced by neophyte Friedman: “I think it’s very easy to get on this tack all of a sudden that it’s some kind of an overly powerful Jewish lobby. There are other lobbies that are very strong, and Washington is full of lobbyists. So I would not…stress that as much as I would stress the fact that the US does have an indissoluble relationship with Israel that is based on history and culture” –i.e. Judeo- Christian heritage which underpinned that bond for decades.
‘Wrong facts, comical arguments’
“Countless facts are simply wrong. Long stretches of argument are implausible, at times almost comically so.”
This is how The Forward characterized the Mearsheimer-Walt dogma. Now watch how this pertains to what Friedman provides his readers.
With stunning gall, he writes: “Iran has lied and cheated its way to the precipice of building a bomb, and without tough economic sanctions – sanctions that President Obama engineered…. Iran would not be at the negotiating table.”
Sanctions that Obama engineered? Really? One can only wonder whether Friedman is counting on his readers’ total ignorance or total amnesia. Or whether he is suffering from them himself.
In fact the Obama administration was one of the greatest obstacles to the sanctions that brought the Iranians to the table, virtually coerced to do so by pressure from Congress (and even some Europeans).
He presumably missed this report in The Wall Street Journal (August 8, 2011): “The Obama administration has fought Congress on Iran sanctions for much of its time in office. The White House deeply opposed a bipartisan congressional effort in 2011 to impose US sanctions on Iran’s central bank, the primary conduit for Tehran’s oil exports. US officials today acknowledge that the sanctioning of Iran’s central bank, and the European Union’s oil embargo on Tehran, have probably been the most punishing measures on Iran to date.”
So much for the “Obama-engineered-sanctions” canard!
‘Wrong , comical ’ (cont.)
But more of the ludicrous is yet to come. As we have seen Friedman concedes: “Iran has lied and cheated its way to the precipice of building a bomb, and… without tough economic sanctions Iran would not be at the negotiating table.” Incredibly, he now recommends the US desist from the only thing that has worked (i.e. tough sanctions) and adopt what hasn’t (i.e. belief in the goodwill of those who have lied and cheated).You have to read to believe!
Friedman tries to reassure us that “the deal Kerry is trying to forge with Iran [by dialing down the sanctions] is good for us and our allies”.
Well, Tom, that line might carry a bit more weight if the Obama-Kerry duo had given even the slightest indication that they have a clue about foreign policy, in general, and in the Mideast, in particular. Sadly, quite the opposite seems to be true. They have shredded the standing of the US across the globe but especially in this region, where the wreckages of American policy initiatives (and non-initiatives) litter the horizon –in Libya, in Egypt (repeatedly), in Syria.
So should we really bet the farm that they will get it right with Iran? In his confusion, and desperation to avoid accepting that Israel and its pliable Jewish minions in their perfidious lobby are right, Friedman finds himself forced to embrace–heaven forfend–the Bush Doctrine of regime change! No kidding! He writes, “The only lasting security lies in an internal transformation in Iran, which can only come with more openness.”
He then goes on to make the totally unsubstantiated and implausible assertion that: Kerry’s deal would roll back Iran’s nuclear program, while also strengthening more moderate tendencies in Iran.”
Yeah, right, Tom. We saw how eagerly Obama seized that opportunity in 2009, when, as the moderates rose to protest a rigged election and were brutally repressed, he remarked, impotently, that it was “up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran’s leaders will be.”
Why fire Friedman forthwith
Tom Friedman has surrendered every shred of professional integrity in favor of defending an indefensible policy of an indefensible administration.
He has shown himself to be ill-informed and incoherent; either woefully misled himself or willfully misleading his readers.
But worse, he is exploiting his potent journalistic platform to incite against the Jews, to insinuate–indeed openly accuse – that they are disloyal to their country or, at least, have a greater loyalty to another.
This is as unacceptable as it is untrue. In this, he brings discredit to his profession and his paper. For this, he should be fired – forthwith!
Martin Sherman (www.martinsherman.net) is founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.
@ SHmuel HaLevi 2:
That was stunning!!!!!!!!
TF should be ignored. NYT a nest full of anti-Semites who hate to be challenged by IL.
yamit82 Said:
Never boring!!!!!!!!!! Useful is a matter conjecture. And didn’t drone on about the meaning of the word stranger, Sugar
honeybee Said:
I reckon zoomies and cowboys were more interesting and useful than all the other stuff. 😉
@ mar55:
I agree with all you have said here. Take care of yourself.
I love Martin Sherman. He always supports his opinion with much researched details. I only hope that he didn’t actually purchase a NY Times. To quote my late mother, a Holocaust survivor who would surely be turning in her grave if she heard this fellow Jew, a successful writer, reporter, professor and Jew hater actually perpetuate the myth that Jews control the world; ‘Friedman is a piece of dreck’. As we well know by now or at least should know, some of the worst anti-Semites are self hating Jews. Friedman is no different. So weak and pathetic they are that they will do anything to move up the gentrific ladder to obtain success even if it means attacking their own people. It’s obvious that he was probably influenced by his favorite professor of all time, Albert Hourani, a Christian Arab from Lebanon and G-d knows who else. Jews like Friedman would have been the kapos of Nazi times – the Jews that were given the job of policing themselves by the Nazis. Their reward for doing this besides getting the odd extra piece of rotten potato, was the hope that turning in a fellow Jew into the oven might mean their own escape from such a fait. In the end they all went into the ovens together. If G-d forbid, the Friedmans in this world manage to convince the world to ease sanctions on Iran and the worst happens, those Friedmans will perish just as quickly and terribly as the rest of us.
I dare to repeat the story about a capo that was caught at the Municipal livestock and fowl Wholesale Market? Why not? Three years after WWII ended. I was a young tyke. Seven plus and helping dad at his yard in the market. Dad asked me to take a break and go with him to witness something. At one of the passageways leading to the docks we saw about twenty people at a small side enclosure. Three at a table and one tied to a chair.
Some standing behind. It was a field trial. The capo was a German “Jew”. Identified and indicted he did not respond to the charges and witnesses. The Jury ordered his execution.
Dad took me away.
Two Polish boxers destroyed the creature and his carcass was thrown into the dead fowl container at the docks.
Not all cases we confront require such extreme punishment but many do.
It would be up to a NEWLY elected Judicial system to determine the way to cut down saboteurs, collaborators, traitors, etc. And add torturers and murderers.
The Jewish people cannot continue to allow such element among us.
There is an ugly mental strain that runs in humans – the need to fit and and be accepted by others in the majority even if it is on the other’s terms. We see it in so many Jews and we see it in Friedman. I do not think it is a Jewish trait, it is just that the Jews are prone to it due to their relative position in the World. But it is a weak and somewhat despicable mind that gives in to it. Friedman and others of his ilk are so sure of their positions. How could they be? They do not even seem to consider the other, more rational and logical positions of others. When in grade school, I – a Jew – was good friends with two other Jewish boys. We hung together. One of the boys was tall, good looking, athletic and started to play on the school sports team. Not only did he drift from me and the other as a friend, but he started to pick on us physically and mentally, and in front of his other new found (non-Jewish) friends. It is a lesson that has stayed with me for many years.
yamit82 Said:
the solution to the libelers is not argumentation rather it is decapitation.
reply 12 in moderation(already? its my first post.)
retired Said:
In a nutshell 🙂
I read some of the comments & am amazed how many posters beat around the bush.I hear that Friedman does not understand this,or is misinformed about that.Friedman is wrong in his analysis or is “taken out of context”!I hear all of these excuses splitting hairs about what Friedman really means & what he is really about!
Lets stop fooling around & call him what he is.Friedman is a self serving S.O.B who licks the boots of the current Sulzberger who isn’t even Jewish.Good old “Skip” Sulzberger fancies himself a blue blooded Wasp member of the establishment elite.We know how these people feel about Jews & Israel.Even before the Present regime this rag of a newspaper was anti-Zionist & anti Jewish.During the Holocaust they were busy doing all they could in burying news about the genocide in Europe & running interference for F.D.R. Roosevelt was a passive anti-semite & never voluntarily lifted a finger to help the Jews escape the Nazi’s.In fact he helped in the genocide of European Jews by working thru his henchman in the State Department.This was perfectly all right with the N.Y. Times & Sulzberger Senior.Friedman & Sulzberger are Jews the way Soros,kissinger & Casper Weinberger are/were Jewish.A cancer on the Jewish people!
1)Friedman is a well paid hack who is given a narrative,with well defined perimeters,within which he writes his rants & Screeds.He is a latter day Walter Duranty or Herbert Matthews,highly paid propagandists who followed the scripts handed them by the Times.
yamit82 Said:
I majored in History,Govt and Eng {zoomies and cowboys too,but that is another story] which is why I had to get married. In order to eat [smutly}!!!
May I suggest that you and Norman read Thomas Costain,”History of he Plantagenets”.
yamit82 Said:
I have a friend who is an desendent of Issac of York!!!!!!!!!!
Friedman disdains Israel so much so that he can’t think straight. He reflexively takes whatever stance is opposite that of the Jewish state, regardless of the merits of that position. Even the Saudis have publicly expressed agreement with Israel on Iran. This makes Thomas Friedman more anti-Israel than the saudis.
However I don’t want him to be fired and made into a martyr by the anti-Israel crowd.
I actually think this is a positive thing. The NY slimes and the rest of the leftist media deserve to be discredited.
yamit82 Said:
And today there are the Friedmans trying to show the Arabs they are better Arabs than they are Jews!
@ honeybee:
In history, there were no bigger anti-Semites than those Jews who were trying to out-christian the christians.
honeybee Said:
Medieval documents tell stories describing how a Jew (usually called always called Abraham) steals a wafer from a church, sticks a knife in it, and blood starts pouring out. And then he cuts it up into pieces and sends it to different Jews who all torture it.
Who are more weird the Jews or those stupid christians?
This is also what happened in England where heavy taxation of the Jewish population of about 5,000 people supplied the crown with almost 20% of all of its income.
yamit82 Said:
yamit82 Said:
Jews work in “mysterious ways” their wonder to preform, is that answer good enough for you, Sweets
Anti-Semitism remains protean, dangerous and persistent.
Its found in both the West and the East.
The difference between Tom Friedman’s denouncing the Jews as loyal to Israel and Iran’s Grand Poobah Ali Khamenei denouncing the Jews as rabid dogs is merely a difference of degree, not of kind.
Both leftists and Islamists can both agree hating the Jews is a beautiful thing, indeed.
Why fire Friedman forthwith
Using the above criteria for dismissal of journalists would depopulate the journalism profession of over 90%.
I don’t buy the NYT, Read the NYT and when possible avoid purchases of the products of their main advertisers I let them know of my actions and why.
Beginning a mass movement against buying and reading and quoting the NY slimes, if even partially successful would be more effective than just calling for the TF’s dismissal.
Surprised he didn’t add well poisoning and Barn burning to his litany of Jewish and Zionist sins. 🙂
Past calumny against Jews:
Starting in Switzerland and Germany in the 13th century, Jews were accused of kidnapping communion wafers from churches. Why would the Jews do this in Christian view?
To torture it.
This would be funny, if not for a fact that thousands of Jews were slaughtered as a result of such stories. For example, the entire Jewish community of Berlitz, near Berlin in Germany, was all burned alive based on the accusation of torturing a wafer!