Soccer Dad

You're one of the destructive ones tom

I'm happy today that Thomas Friedman appreciates the difference between "constructive" and "destructive" critics of Israel.

I write about this now because there is something foul in the air. It is a trend, both deliberate and inadvertent, to delegitimize Israel -- to turn it into a pariah state, particularly in the wake of the Gaza war. You hear the director Oliver Stone saying crazy things about how Hitler killed more Russians than Jews, but the Jews got all the attention because they dominate the news media and their lobby controls Washington. You hear Britain's prime minister describing Gaza as a big Israeli "prison camp" and Turkey's prime minister telling Israel's president, "When it comes to killing, you know very well how to kill." You see singers canceling concerts in Tel Aviv. If you just landed from Mars, you might think that Israel is the only country that has killed civilians in war -- never Hamas, never Hezbollah, never Turkey, never Iran, never Syria, never America.

I'm not here to defend Israel's bad behavior. Just the opposite. I've long argued that Israel's colonial settlements in the West Bank are suicidal for Israel as a Jewish democracy. I don't think Israel's friends can make that point often enough or loud enough.

But there are two kinds of criticism. Constructive criticism starts by making clear: "I know what world you are living in." I know the Middle East is a place where Sunnis massacre Shiites in Iraq, Iran kills its own voters, Syria allegedly kills the prime minister next door, Turkey hammers the Kurds, and Hamas engages in indiscriminate shelling and refuses to recognize Israel. I know all of that. But Israel's behavior, at times, only makes matters worse -- for Palestinians and Israelis. If you convey to Israelis that you understand the world they're living in, and then criticize, they'll listen.

However, the record shows that despite his claims to the contrary, Thomas Friedman is a destructive critic.

A few weeks ago he wrote a column, War, Timeout, War, Time ..., which compared Israel's limited wars against Hamas and Hezbollah to the Syrian massacre in Hama. I criticized the comparison at the time, as did others.

Or just consider two simple searches. One is a search on Friedman's name with the words "Israel" and "apartheid." You get 19 results. Now see how many times he wrote about thte Goldstone report. None.

The Goldstone report was the result of an effort to delegitimize Israel and effectively prevent it from defending itself. Friedman had no words to defend Israel. But he was willing, nearly 20 times, to warn that Israel was heading towards apartheid. Maybe he understands the difference between constructive and destructive critics of Israel, but Friedman belongs in the latter group.

In the next to last paragraph Friedman writes:

Destructive criticism closes Israeli ears. It says to Israelis: There is no context that could explain your behavior, and your wrongs are so uniquely wrong that they overshadow all others. Destructive critics dismiss Gaza as an Israeli prison, without ever mentioning that had Hamas decided -- after Israel unilaterally left Gaza -- to turn it into Dubai rather than Tehran, Israel would have behaved differently, too. Destructive criticism only empowers the most destructive elements in Israel to argue that nothing Israel does matters, so why change?

The effort to delegitimize Israel comes from the Arab world. The world Friedman claimed not so long ago was seeking to make real peace with Israel. He (and they) of course ignored the many tangible concessions Israel made to that point. Friedman has failed to take the Arab world to taks for this. It is as if Israel exists in a vacuum and that only Israel can make peace if only Israel .... But of course, peace is not at hand.

One point that Friedman fails to acknowledge was that many of the points made by Israel's "destructive elements" were correct: don't trust Arafat, withdrawing from southern Lebanon and Gaza would be risky.

Even today's column isn't a full defense of Israel, but an ambiguous one.

If Friedman really wants to be a constructive critic of Israel he really needs to find another party in the Middle East to blame first.

Crossposted on Yourish.