This Israeli Government Is a Danger to Jews Everywhere

by Thomas Friedman NYT

Israelis, diaspora Jewry and friends of Israel everywhere need to understand that the way Israel is fighting the war in Gaza today is laying the groundwork for a fundamental recasting of how Israel and Jews will be seen the world over.

It won’t be good. Police cars and private security at synagogues and Jewish institutions will increasingly become the norm; Israel, instead of being seen by Jews as a safe haven from antisemitism, will be seen as a new engine generating it; sane Israelis will line up to immigrate to Australia and America rather than beckon their fellow Jews to come Israel’s way. That dystopian future is not here yet, but if you don’t see its outlines gathering, you are deluding yourself.

Fortunately, more and more retired and reserve duty Israeli Air Force pilots, as well as retired Army and security officers, are seeing this gathering storm and declaring they will not be silent or complicit in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ugly, nihilistic policy in Gaza. They have begun to urge Jews in America and elsewhere to speak up — SOS: Save Our Ship — before the widening moral stain of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza becomes irreversible...

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This Israeli Government Is Not Our Ally

(Israel-firster Tom Friedman has turned on Bibi and the messianic Zionists running Israel right now. That's kind of big.)

by Thomas Friedman NYT

Dear President Trump,

There are very few initiatives that you’ve undertaken since coming to office that I agree with — except in the Middle East. The fact that you are traveling there next week and meeting the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar — and that you have no plans to see Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel — suggests to me that you are starting to understand a vital truth: that this Israeli government is behaving in ways that threaten hard-core U.S. interests in the region. Netanyahu is not our friend.

He did think he could make you his chump, though. Which is why I am impressed by how you have signaled to him through your independent negotiations with Hamas, Iran and the Houthis that he has no purchase on you — that you will not be his patsy. It clearly has him in a panic.

I have no doubt that, generally speaking, the Israeli people continue to see themselves as steadfast allies of the American people — and vice versa. But this ultranationalist, messianic Israeli government is not America’s ally. Because this is the first government in Israel’s history whose priority is not peace with more of its Arab neighbors and the benefits that greater security and coexistence would bring. Its priority is the annexation of the West Bank, the expulsion of the Palestinians of Gaza and the re-establishment there of Israeli settlements.

The notion that Israel has a government that is no longer behaving as an American ally, and should not be considered as such, is a shocking and bitter pill for Israel’s friends in Washington to swallow — but swallow it they must...

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Israel Is Losing Its Greatest Asset: Acceptance

by Thomas Friedman from the New York Times

I’ve spent the past few days traveling from New Delhi to Dubai and Amman, and I have an urgent message to deliver to President Biden and the Israeli people: I am seeing the increasingly rapid erosion of Israel’s standing among friendly nations — a level of acceptance and legitimacy that was painstakingly built up over decades. And if Biden is not careful, America’s global standing will plummet right along with Israel’s.

I don’t think Israelis or the Biden administration fully appreciate the rage that is bubbling up around the world, fueled by social media and TV footage, over the deaths of so many thousands of Palestinian civilians, particularly children, with U.S.-supplied weapons in Israel’s war in Gaza. Hamas has much to answer for in triggering this human tragedy, but Israel and the U.S. are seen as driving events now and getting most of the blame.

That such anger is boiling over in the Arab world is obvious, but I heard it over and over again in conversations in India during the past week — from friends, business leaders, an official and journalists both young and old. That is even more telling because the Hindu-dominated government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the only major power in the global south that has supported Israel and consistently blamed Hamas for inviting the massive Israeli retaliation and the deaths of an estimated 30,000 people, according to Gazan health officials, the majority of them civilians.

That many civilian deaths in a relatively short war would be problematic in any context. But when so many civilians die in a retaliatory invasion that was launched by an Israeli government without any political horizon for the morning after — and then, when the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, finally offers a morning-after plan that essentially says to the world that Israel now intends to occupy both the West Bank and Gaza indefinitely — it is no surprise that Israel’s friends will edge away and the Biden team will start to look hapless...

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